Ed’s inbox – May 10th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

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

Gains from the Tories – Luke’s Blog
By Luke Akehurst

There’s a bit of a myth developing that last Thursday’s council elections did not see Labour progress against the Tories. This is because gains from the LDs by the Tories in rural areas which are not General Election battlegrounds for Labour offset the Tories’ losses to us.

There were 837 Labour gains and 61 losses, not including the councils with new wards. The Conservatives had 657 gains and 641 losses. – Read more.

Unfortunately for Labour, the voters are never wrong – Labour Uncut
By Tom Harris

The late Jimmy Allison, legendary Scottish organiser of the Labour party, addressed the Scottish reception at annual conference in 1990, just a couple of weeks after I had started work as a press officer. “We won 50 seats at the last election, despite the fact that, unlike England, we have a four-party system,” he proudly told approving and slightly drunk delegates.

That claim jarred with me at the time, and I contemplated it for some months afterwards. There was an error in Jimmy’s logic that, as a new arrival at Keir Hardie House, I didn’t have the confidence or the authority to challenge. Our landslide victory north of the border in 1987 was despite a four-way split in the vote? Or because of it? – Read more.

New poll shows public prefer Darling’s deficit reduction plan to Osborne’s – Left Foot Forward
By Will Straw

Today’s Times (£) carries a new Populus poll detailing an “unhappy anniversary” for Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. But the poll also shows that the public remains sceptical of George Osborne’s economic strategy.

When read out two different views about the economy – one corresponding to George Osborne’s plans to eliminate the deficit in this Parliament and the other in line with Alistair Darling’s proposal to halve the deficit in four years – excluding don’t knows, the public favour Darling’s approach to Osborne’s by 55 per cent to 45 per cent. – Read more.

Decline in philanthropy leaves Cameron’s “big society” in tatters – Political Scrapbook
By Matthew Zarb-Cousin

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for David Cameron and Steve Hilton’s big society project, the recent publication of the Sunday Times Rich List raises questions about the viability of philanthrocapitalism in the UK. In December, the prime minister, David Willetts, Jeremy Hunt and Francis Maude argued that:

“philanthropy must be at the heart of the big society”

Yet according to research by the Charities Aid Foundation, charitable donations by the top 100 philanthropists in the UK fell by almost a third in one year. – Read more.

Are MPs surgeries sacred – Tom Watson MP
By Tom Watson MP

The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint made by Mr Tim Farron MP, President of the Liberal Democrat Party, that a series of articles in The Daily Telegraph in December 2010 contained information which had been obtained using subterfuge in breach of Clause 10 (Clandestine devices and subterfuge) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

The articles quoted a number of comments made by senior Liberal Democrat MPs in their constituency surgeries, which had been secretly recorded by the newspaper’s journalists posing as constituents. The MPs featured included Vince Cable, Ed Davey, Steve Webb, Michael Moore, Norman Baker, Andrew Stunnell, David Heath and Paul Burstow. The complainant – who was formally acting on behalf of the MPs concerned, with their consent – said that the newspaper had embarked on a ‘fishing expedition’ designed solely to entrap Members of Parliament” which had no plausible public interest justification. – Read more.

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