Ed’s inbox: January 28th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

If Ed Miliband could only read five blogposts each day, he’d read these ones…

Cameron betrays 60,000 families as 250 Sure Start centres set to shut – Left Foot Forward
By Will Straw

Sixty thousand families have been betrayed by David Cameron as a new survey indicates that 250 Sure Start centres will close over the next 12 months. The findings undermine key promises before and after the general election by David Cameron and Michael Gove. – Read more.

Demanding councillors not set budgets will weaken the anti-cuts movement – Left Futures
By Jon Lansman

Refusing to set a cuts budget is a tactic that can work. It did, for Liverpool, in 1984, a fact most commentators choose to ignore because of Militant’s influence on the council at that time but which was noted by a Times leader which began “today in Liverpool municipal militancy is vindicated”. The following year, it was a strategy that had very broad support – a fact that Labour bloggers choose to forget – including notably David Blunkett, Labour’s then council-leader in Sheffield, Margaret Hodge, his equivalent in Islington, Labour Party conference and even the Liberal local government spokesman, a certain Simon Hughes, now risen to (slightly) greater things. The context though, when the strategy was planned, was the miners strike, and the prospect of a “second front”, which the Tories were keen to avoid. The context now is very different. It won’t happen this year, and demanding now that it should will serve only to weaken and divide the anti-cuts movement. – Read more.

NHS: Cumbrian case study shows Labour, not the Tories, are the reformers – Labour Uncut
By Jonathan Todd

Labour’s compassion built the NHS under Attlee and Labour’s investment saved the NHS under Blair and Brown. But it is Labour reform that has kept Cumbria’s community hospitals open and achieved better health outcomes in so doing. These successes are now threatened by Tory incompetence.

Gerry Robinson, the management guru who once tried to “fix the NHS”, bemoaned the lack of piloting contained in Andrew Lansley’s NHS plan on the Today programme last year. The presenter (Evan Davis, as I recall) then misdirected him towards Cumbria. While Cumbria may have much GP commissioning, it has benefitted from Labour reform, not opened a window on Lansley’s future. – Read more.

The truth about Egypt – New Statesman
By Mehdi Hasan

As the protests escalate across Egypt, I have a simple question: on which side are the US and UK governments? The side of the protesters, fighting for their democratic rights and freedoms, or the side of the ageing, corrupt dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and his secret police? The US and UK governments, aided and abetted by the US and UK media, might like us to believe that it is the former, rather than the latter.

But the reality is that Mubarak is in power in Cairo with the west’s blessing, approval, support, sponsorship, funding and arms. Democrat and Republican presidents, Labour and Conservative prime ministers, have all cosied up to Egypt’s “secular” tyrant, a self-proclaimed but ineffective bulwark against “Islamic extremism”, since he assumed the presidency in 1981. – Read more.

Long live Nelson Mandela – Alastair Campbell
By Alastair Campbell

As visitors to my home know, I never went a bundle on getting myself photographed with the powerful people I met and worked with. I sometimes wish I had, not least when we were trying to get decent photos to go with my diaries.

I have plenty with Presidents Clinton and Bush, because US Presidents have an official photographer with them all of the time, and pictures get sent to virtually everyone they meet. I have a few of me and TB, mainly sent to me by UK photographers, but that’s about it.

Up in my office, I have a couple of Clintons, one TB (with my daughter and her best friend on the steps of Number 10 in Santa hats), and one Bertie Ahern. But the one that I value most of all pre-dates my TB days, and is a picture of me shaking hands with Nelson Mandela. – Read more.

Our suggestions for Ed’s inbox are limited by what we read – so if you’ve seen a blogpost that should be in Ed’s inbox, let us know.