Ed’s inbox – June 29th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

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

Why Parties need to become Movements again – Social Europe Journal
By Marcus Roberts and Daniel Elton

Winning progressive parties in the 1990s were those that had learnt the lessons of the 1980s: that division, disorganisation and an obsession with a core left vote was no way to win. As a consequence from Blair and New Labour to Schroeder and the SPD’s Neue Mitte, progressive parties in the ’90s embraced change through discipline, professionalism, tight message control and a focus on the political centre ground. Such an approach made sense at the time both as a response to the defeats of the previous decade and as a positive appeal to the moderate-minded electorates of the affluent 1990s. – Read more.

Ed Miliband needs to be braver, by supporting the union strikes – Liberal Conspiracy
By Sunny Hundal

I was disappointed by Ed Miliband’s unwillingness to support the unions yesterday, in their fight to maintain pension schemes.

I’m sure the unions expected it, since they did not offer any criticism in response. But this is an electoral mistake for the Labour leader.

And it ignores the very analysis that he offered during the Labour leadership. – Read more.

These attacks on Blue Labour are hollow – Comment is free
By Marc Stears

“Britain’s past was rotten and Blue Labour wants to bring it back.” That is the essence of an extraordinary series of recent attacks on Labour’s new thinking. Rarely can such a short political argument have been as wrong in as large a number of ways.

Even those who know nothing of Blue Labour should recognise that the attack can’t be true. To start with, our past simply wasn’t all bad. It is true that terrible things happened in our nation’s history. Slavery and empire were all too real. Women were excluded from our politics. Sexual minorities were oppressed. But as there were oppressors, so were there people who came together to struggle against their oppression. Britain’s cultural inheritance is one of openness and toleration, and of courageous campaigns for social equality, at least as much as it is of exclusion and domination. We have great heroes to celebrate as well as enemies to condemn. – Read more.

Nick Griffin “hopes” for suicide bombing in House of Commons – Political Scrapbook
By Political Scrapbook

With tweets a few minutes ago, it seems the BNP leader has managed to surpass even his own base standards, writing that he hopes controversial cleric Raed Salah, speaking today in Parliament “blows himself up there”: – Read more.

Rise in burglary illuminates the empty space where Cameron’s crime policy should be – Labour Uncut
By Matt Cavanagh

A couple of weeks ago, the media were briefed to expect David Cameron’s first prime ministerial speech on crime. They are still waiting. Crime remains a top-five issue for voters, but Cameron’s problem is that he doesn’t actually have any big ideas on crime, besides cutting prison places (maybe, or maybe not, it’s not quite clear) and cutting police numbers (definitely), and these aren’t policies to which he particularly wants to draw attention.

He could talk about the development of online crime maps (though don’t expect him to admit that Labour introduced them), and of course elected police and crime commissioners, though he has talked about those quite a lot already. He’s in danger of looking like he believes these mysterious individuals will cut crime all by themselves; and, anyway, there isn’t much new to say about them, other than explaining how he proposes to stop the House of Lords scuppering the idea altogether. – Read more.