Labour’s top team believed Ken Livingstone was destined to lose the London mayoral election well before polling day. A not entirely subtle distancing operation followed that conclusion. The message was an each-way bet. If Livingstone lost, it was his fault alone. If he won, it was the Labour leadership that dragged him over the line …

Nuggets of interest abound for Labour in Policy Exchange’s latest publication, Northern Lights, which declares itself nothing less than an ‘attempt to update our maps’, doing away with ‘long-defunct ideas’ about why people vote. Despite the title, it examines not just the north of England but the Midlands, the south outside London, and the capital, …

‘Mia san mia’ – we are who we are – is the unofficial motto of Germany’s most successful football club, Bayern Munich. It has come to symbolise the Bavarian team’s ability to win through no matter what, a self-congratulatory creed that emphasises the club’s credentials as one of the world’s biggest. While to opponents ‘mia …

In my family, where my mum, dad and sister are all teachers, we had a special family rule during my two stints as a schools minister. We didn’t discuss education at family get-togethers! Having been a teacher myself, I totally understand the traditional school staffroom temptation to grumble about the government. As Woody Allen once …

Amid the pomp and the catcalls from Dennis Skinner, last week’s Queen’s speech offered a defensive government a rare chance to gain political momentum. It is a statement on the coalition’s serial dysfunctionality that it proved unable to seize this opportunity. The sovereign’s offering was a decidedly unimpressive list of bills – on, for example, …

After the lacklustre Queen’s speech the deputy prime minister said in a letter to his party activists this week that: ‘Liberal Democrats are punching above their weight’. At last, I said at Business Questions on Thursday, we have an  acknowledgement from them – that they are in the political lightweight division. After all, this is …

I’ve had a couple of weeks to reflect on the short time I spent in northern Iraq. I am one of those many Labour party members who backed Tony Blair over Iraq. In retrospect, I can see what all the intelligence agencies and governments of the world couldn’t see at the time, that Saddam Hussein …

Yesterday’s Queen’s speech exposed a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of Conservative economic policy. It is not the case, as their actions imply, that the key to unlocking higher levels of growth is to reduce the so-called ‘burdens on business’. The deregulatory initiatives in the Queen’s speech, portrayed as part of a growth agenda, will …

One of the upsides of blogging is being able to indulge in compiling lists that wouldn’t otherwise be published. So here’s the change in the number of Labour councillors last Thursday, ranked by authority and divided into type of authority, and so London doesn’t feel left out, the change in vote share by GLA constituency. …

Ed Miliband’s tone was exactly right on Friday when he came to the west Midlands to recognise the successes of the council elections. In Birmingham, where Labour had regained control, he spoke of the Labour councillors working every day to repay the trust placed in them. In Worcester, where Labour had made gains but not …