Ed’s inbox – April 19th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

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

Cameron’s “No to AV” campaign in xenophobic attack on Pacific Islanders – Political Scrapbook
By Political Scrapbook

Distancing himself from the attacks on Nick Clegg by the No to AV campaign yesterday, David Cameron said: “I don’t run the No campaign, I run the Conservative No campaign.” By extension, Scrapbook assumes he will be apologising for the xenophobic briefing issued by his press officers.

In addition to Australia and several jurisdictions in the United States, countries using the Alternative Vote system include the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea, ranked 137th on the Human Development Index and classified as having “low” development by the United Nations.

One can only imagine what possessed CCHQ to encourage national newspapers to print pictures of Papuan tribeswomen breastfeeding pigs, suggesting that this is “what we might have to look forward to under AV.” – Read more.

Richard Littlejohn gets it wrong on NHS funding – Liberal Conspiracy
By Sunny Hundal

It’s Richard Littlejohn fact-checking time again!

To be clear, we’re not doing this for sadistic reasons – otherwise this could become a full time job. I’m writing this up because these “facts” then become the subject of Conservative party speeches and reports. – Read more.

Did John Reid shift votes to the Yes campaign? – Alastair Campbell
By Alastair Campbell

I can only assume John Reid feels really, really strongly about AV to risk the inevitable opprobrium from some quarters for sharing a platform with David Cameron.

In common with a lot of people, I cannot claim to feel that much fire in my belly either way, but I have to say the nature of the No campaign is leading me towards a Yes vote. – Read more.

Purple bookers try to revive past New Labour glories – Labour Uncut
By Sunder Katwala

Looking back at the successes and shortcomings of the New Labour years, it could be argued that, if there was a missed opportunity which set the limits to the party’s ambitions for progress, it came with the 2001 general election campaign.

It was an election which Labour was never going to lose. William Hague’s unpopular populism was never taken seriously across the country. Yet New Labour high command could never quite believe that the party was going to win, and was concerned to close down issues which it feared were resonating.

So the posters were purple – a lot done, a lot to do – in a bid to seek a largely mandateless re-coronation of the then very popular Tony Blair. – Read More.

Labour must bury working-class conservatism, not praise it – Comment is Free
By Lynsey Hanley

Blue Labour’s fixation on the likes of Gillian Duffy confuses the need for solidarity with the desire for progress

If the past was so great, then why does all the pooled knowledge available to us from Britain’s social and economic history suggest that it was, in fact, shit? Migration every few years for work, intolerable housing, endless violence, terrible ignorance, and poverty-induced trauma so profound that it destroyed the mind before it did the body. – Read more.

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