Ed’s inbox – March 31st

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

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

Nick Clegg’s own constituency party ditch him from election leaflets – Political Scrapbook
By James Dixon

A day after the Liberal Democrats’ leader in Liverpool told Nick Clegg he wasn’t welcome on Merseyside it emerges even his own constituency party is shunning him. Councillors fighting to hang onto ward seats in Sheffield Hallam have refused to put their local MP, party leader and Deputy Prime Minister on their latest election literature:

This is in stark contrast to their previous local election literature, which saw Nick Clegg plastered all over issues of Focus. For the 2010 local and general elections, this copy of the Hallamshire Herald featured no fewer than 13 photographs of the Lib Dem leader and asked people to donate to “Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems” – Read more.

What’s in a name…? – The Tide Will Turn
By Katie Mccrory

Ahh, weddings. We are now approaching the season, and as if it weren’t enough already for my serotonin levels that many of my friends have started getting hitched this year, there are now three sets of high profile nuptials this Spring around which Otherwise Totally Rational People can get well and truly overexcited about: Kate and Wills, Zara and that shaven-headed Rugby player, and now Justine and Ed. – Read more.

Lansley needs to watch his back because Cameron is working behind it – Alastair Campbell
By Alastair Campbell

I know it is wise not to believe everything you read in the papers, but if I were Andrew Lansley, I would not like what I see. There is enough around, as his officials will be muttering nervously to each other this morning, to suggest David Cameron is about to cut him adrift. By this I do not mean that he faces the axe in the reshuffle, though it is not impossible. What I do mean is that the Prime Minister’s political instincts finally appear to be kicking in, and he is seeking to avert the car crash Lansley has inadvertently caused. – Read more.

The good news and the groupthink – Labour Uncut
By Peter Watt

Less than a year after the horrors of securing a derisory 29% in the general election, Labour is competitive again and is rightly optimistic for the first time in many years.

The party is consistently ahead in the polls, and by-election results are stunning at a Parliamentary and local government level. At the same time, the government seems gaffe-prone: just think forests, Andy Coulson or school sport partnerships. And it is doing things which are unpopular and controversial like introducing spending cuts, raising tuition fees and reforming welfare. Economic recovery is slow at best, inflation is a problem and interest rates look like they are on their way up, pushing up mortgage costs. And all that before the full impact of the cuts are felt and the outcomes of May’s elections and AV referendum impacts the morale and unity of the government. Mutterings in the newspapers about a possible early general election following a coalition ripped apart by its own divisions are nonsense – but they are indicative of unease. And all this less than a year into the government. – 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.

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