The local elections showed voters tiring of party politics but not personalities There were two big winners on 3 May. Not Ed Miliband and Boris Johnson but ‘disenchantment with party politics’ and ‘politics with a personality’. The results were clearly great for Labour, far surpassing expectations. There is no doubt that it is now conceivable …

Two years after David Cameron entered Downing Street, Progress presents our take on the government’s record so far A Aircraft Carrier The government’s defence review in 2010 axed 7,000 soldiers, 5,000 personnel from the RAF and 4,000 from the navy. But most media attention was focused on the decision to leave Britain without an effective …

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, …

To understand Ken Livingstone’s loss, we need to look back to his selection By Wes Streeting —There is no need for a protracted postmortem on the effectiveness of Labour’s London campaign: Labour won, Ken Livingstone lost. Whereas Boris Johnson’s personal popularity provided the Tories with their only boost on election day, Livingstone threw away Labour’s …

The Conservative part of the coalition comprises a damagingly irresponsible mix of ideologues and amateurs, writes David Blunkett Last month, Professor Anthony King of the University of Essex wrote of David Cameron in the Financial Times: ‘The recent comedy of errors has revealed weaknesses in Mr Cameron’s premiership that should have been evident for months. …

Labour should seize the chance to bring about a new age of  powerful city politics in Britain Corporation Street in Birmingham is a testament to the power of local authorities and civic leaders of the calibre of Joseph Chamberlain to shape cities. Under the sweeping authority of the Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act of 1875, …

The BNP gets a pasting but that does not mean the far-right threat is finished By Nick Lowles and Ruth Smeeth —This month’s local election results saw another major reversal in the fortunes of the British National party. In 2010 the BNP were wiped out in Barking and Dagenham. Last year was the turn of …

Today, on the eve of two years of the anniversary of the coalition, we publish the A-Z of the coalition government: from the Aircraft carriers with no jets, to the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, with contributions from Andrew Adonis, Nick Pearce, Stephen Beer, Fiona Mactaggart, Jane Kennedy, Alan Milburn, Steve Reed, Kate Green and David …

The local elections of 2012 were a considerable success for Labour, and – without lapsing into complacency or triumphalism – Ed Miliband can take a little time to savour that success. The number of seats and councils gained was above the upper end of respectable published forecasts, despite some desperate Conservative attempts to claim otherwise. …