Use the filters below to refine your search
It is a mark of how much our public services have deteriorated that the famous pledges on which Labour fought and won the 1997 election now look laughably unambitious. Treating an extra 100,000 patients on waiting lists, reducing primary…
Gordon Brown’s report on the future of the UK constitution has been attacked as a distraction. Labour, it is argued, should focus on more immediate matters, such as the cost-of-living crisis and growing backlogs in the NHS. This was the…
The Conservative and Labour Parties are making precisely the same mistake in their battle to fend off the UKIP marauders laying siege to their city. Both believe they can defeat the party on policy when the real key is to promise radical…
UKIP’s rise is a mid-term protest vote that could turn into a disaster for British politics. There is a real risk now that all the main parties will be dragged towards Farage’s social and cultural illiberalism in an effort to shore up their…
Judging by the broad, if sometimes shaky, support Ed Miliband enjoys from the Labour left, there is a general acceptance now that the Party has moved some clicks along the political spectrum towards socialism. In fact, Labour is seized by…
Within seconds of Osborne sitting down, Labour tweeters, bloggers and columnists were denouncing the sheer evil on display. They will, no doubt, now redouble their efforts to expose the Coalition’s rotten core and persuade everyone else in…
They are so fragile and young, we can’t even call them green shoots. The recent indications of some pick-up in the economy might better be described as a germinating seed struggling in a soil weak on nutrition and beset by pests. But there…
Politicians have found themselves swimming in new shallows this week. With the economy in deep crisis, party political debate is now dominated by Fred Goodwin’s knighthood, a couple of percentage points on or off VAT and the prospect of a…
Those who welcomed the publication of In The Black Labour just over a month ago will be cautiously relieved to hear the speech Ed Miliband delivered this morning. At last, this is a leader who is placing a commitment to deficit reduction at…
The Policy Network’s new pamphlet, Cameron’s Trap, written by Gregg McClymont MP and Ben Jackson, contains two very important historical lessons and two equally important recommendations for the Party. The first lesson is that austerity…
In the space of one week In the Black Labour has stimulated debate across the Party. There has been both support and opposition. This is an attempt to respond as briefly as possible to what seem to me to be the main criticisms. 1. Black…
By Adam Lent, Associate Fellow at IPPR The recent wild fluctuations in equity markets have once again highlighted the extent to which short term concerns can shape a defining sector of our economy. Unfortunately this is not an outlook…
