Ed’s inbox – March 29th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

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

The biggest lie in British politics – Johann Hari
By Johann Hari

British politics today is dominated by a lie. This lie is making it significantly more likely you will lose your job, your business, or your home. The lie gives a false explanation for how we came to be in this crisis, and prescribes a medicine that will worsen our disease. Yet it is hardly being challenged.

Here’s the lie. We are in a debt crisis. Our national debt is dangerously and historically high. We are being threatened by the international bond markets. The way out is to pay off our debt rapidly. Only that will restore “confidence”, and therefore economic growth. Every step of this program is false, and endangers you. – Read more.

Boris has caught royal wedding fever. Can you help him? – Snipe
By Darryl Chamberlain

Sorry to put you off your lunch – but here’s the mayor’s newest transport innovation, the royal wedding Oyster card.

It’s not just available to ardent royalists – you could buy one, go to the end of the Metropolitan Line, and disappear off into the hills, avoiding all flagwaving and human contact for the day.

“Just as royal wedding fever starts to take hold in the city, this fantastic commemorative Oyster card is a great chance for Londoners and visitors to have a slice of the action as a fabulous memento of the happy day,” said Boris Johnson, presumably while ironing his best suit. – Read more.

Toby Young is wrong about the cuts and wrong about the march – Left Foot Forward
By Nicola Smith

Writing on the Telegraph website yesterday, Toby Young accused the TUC of “a ceaseless barrage of propaganda” about the cuts.

Apparently the continual stream of media coverage given to our misleading views led half a million private and public sector workers, pensioners and children to choose to demonstrate in central London in Saturday under the misguided understanding, propagated by the TUC, that their services and jobs are at severe risk.

‘Cuts, what cuts?’ asks Young – all of those worried about the devastating impacts these negligible spending reductions will have (and our polling shows it’s not just half a million marchers but over half the country) are simply ‘useful idiots’. – Read more.

Divide and Conquer – Will the left EVER learn? – Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
By Sue Marsh

So, I see the debate is still raging over how, where what and why the March for the Alternative has become the “March that all went a bit Wrong”

Well shame on commentators, is all I can say. The TUC haven’t fallen for all this divide and conquer nonsense. UK Uncut haven’t either. The march didn’t all go a bit wrong, it was a terrific success, but people like me, who spend their time offering opinions that they assume the country want to hear have lined up to criticise, analyse and judge. – Read more

A Labour-SNP coalition after May? Stranger things have happened (just) – Labour Uncut
By Sunder Katwala

Could Labour and the Liberal Democrats govern together, despite their current animosities? It would be unwise to rule anything out about what is a very unpredictable electoral environment in 2015. But we might have a Lab-Lib government in five weeks rather than four years, once the Scottish elections take place on May 5.

Who governs Scotland may be the biggest unknown about May’s elections.

Labour, having performed extraordinarily well in Scotland in the British general election last May, remains favourite to top the poll, though SNP first minister, Alex Salmond, remains the dominant public figure in Scottish politics, and the latest polls are neck and neck. – 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.