Ed’s inbox – March 30th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

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

I plough a lonely furrow – Scarlet Standard
By Emma Burnell

The problem with being a reasonable moderate is that everyone thinks they are a reasonable moderate.

As I continue on my Labour journey it is astonishing how different the reactions I get to my blogging can be. When I try to examine how Labour can and should temper its message to the whole country, I am roundly derided as a Blairite out-runner. When I try to explain that this doesn’t mean capitulation on either message or medium, I’m decried as an idealist Leftie with my head in the clouds.

I don’t think I’m that different to most Labour Party members really, generally excepting those with a high profile. I also don’t think that Labour Party members are from Mars, and that we are as close to the mainstream as everyone else. Edging our way through the vagaries of life. – Read more.

Government plans “leper colony” offices for redundant staff – Political Scrapbook
By Laurence Durnan

Government departments are moving redundant civil servants to separate offices dubbed “leper colonies” by disillusioned staff, Scrapbook can reveal.

With the term originally coined as gallows humour by under-threat workers in the Department for Transport, the “Next Phase of Change” document issued to all DCLG staff recently shows Eric Pickles is planning something similar as part of his swingeing 40% staff cuts. – Read more.

Incompetence will destroy this government, not Cuts – Diary of a Benefit Scrounger
By Sue Marsh

I know, I’ve said it 100 times. I’ve said it since June. It won’t be the cuts themselves that destroy this government, it will be the unprecedented incompetence.

It seems astonishing to me that a Conservative Party that spent 13 years in opposition have such poorly thought through policies.

First we saw Gove scrap the Building Schools for the Future fund, finding that, in fact he was breaking contracts left right and centre. This led to a high court Judge ruling that,

“Gove’s actions over the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) initiative last year had been “so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power” – Read more.

Warsi warns of BNP voters, but appealed to them too – Liberal Conspiracy
By Sunny Hundal

Conservative minister Sayeeda Warsi says today:

“Too often, those people tend to be the ones who vote for extremist parties.”

“This means AV could see candidates pandering to extremist voters – because to win a seat they will need to win the support of people whose first choices have already been eliminated.”

What kind of a candidate would pander to ‘extremist voters’ who might want to vote BNP?

Erm, someone like Sayeeda Warsi herself? – Read more.

What Osborne didn’t say in the Commons Budget debate – Left Futures
By Michael Meacher

It emerged in the Budget debate which ended yesterday in the Commons that the need for spending cuts is far from the inevitability that Osborne has always claimed. The independent OBR estimates of growth for the next 5 years, albeit recently scaled down, are still 1.7% this year, 2.5% next year, 2.9% the year after that, 2.9% again the following yeat too, and 2.8% in the fifth year. That will produce, on the Government’s own estimates, an increase in national income of £185bn. Governments always take about 40% of that in taxation. The extra revenues therefore accruing to the Government over those f years is £74bn. That is half of the current Budget deficit of £146bn and nearly three-quarters of the Government’s estimated structural deficit of £109bn. What that means is that the Government, on its own estimates, will halve the Budget deficit in 5 years without making a single public expenditure cut at all. – 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.