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By Joe Cox The acid test of any Labour government is whether it leaves society more equal than when it came to govern it. One of this Labour government's finest achievements is the minimum wage - but this does not end the vast dispersion of…
By Alexandra Kemp Anyone can make a mistake. We can all say things we later regret in an unguarded moment. And, after all, Tory MP Alan Duncan quickly apologised for his extraordinary recent assertion that MPs, on a salary of £64,000 plus…
By Mike Aistrop I am becoming more and more irritated with the continuous attacks on the people who are claiming benefits. The benefit system is a God send to people who have fallen on hard times and need help. Yet this system is attacked…
By Will Straw / @wdjstraw In his keynote speech at Demos, titled "Progressive reform in an age of austerity," George Osborne refused to embrace a policy of progressive taxation or set out what a progressive foreign policy under a…
By Toby Flux The Conservatives have denied that they have a secret scheme to increase VAT to 20% if they win the next election. "There are absolutely no plans for such a rise and there's never been any discussion about it," claimed a Tory…
By Lewis Goodall For me, the most shameful day in this Labour government's life came on 7th November 2007. This was the day that Alistair Darling more than doubled the threshold on inheritance tax, for nothing more than shallow political…
By Bill Dewison Who can forget that famous speech made on the steps of the Lincoln Monument in 1963 when Martin Luther King said "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the…
By Matthew Pennycook A growing number of our fellow citizens are suffering from the deadening, debilitating effects of unemployment. Yet the ordinary working men and women adding their names to the lists of job centres and employment…
The Duncan Weldon economics column In my first post on LabourList I set out some of the economic challenges that will be faced by the next government and noted how the solutions to these economic challenges must be informed as much by…
By Poul Nyrup Rasmussen Today is Europe Day, the annual celebration of European integration. It marks the day in 1950 on which the Schuman Declaration was signed, launching the Coal and Steel Community: the start of what we now call the…
By Hugh Lanning In a recent online debate, readers of the Economist were split 50/50 as to whether the rich should pay higher taxes. In contributing to the discussion I made the point that the rich should pay more taxes in three ways…
By Tom Miller By its nature, Government is something that requires compromise, yet political activists, in contrast, tend to be people with developed and specific opinions about how things should go. I'm afraid I happen to be one of those…
