My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, My government’s programme I lay before thee, It shall be based on transparency and utmost honesty, It shall be based on civil liberty. My government shall respect and recognise love, Love and commitment in many forms, It should give equal rights no matter their sexuality, My …

Progressive politics in an era of ‘less’ means refocusing the regulatory levers of the state in order to deliver outcomes that contribute towards social democratic goals of greater equality and social justice. An efficient state can still be a muscular state – using the power of regulation to reshape society and the economy after the …

It’s International Women’s Day on 8 March – a time to celebrate progress toward economic and political gender equality. Or that’s the aspiration at least. However, there’s bad news for British women I’m afraid. In the UK the current picture is bleak for gender equality and it seems as if Tory-led governments, economic gloom and …

Inequality is now an issue for ‘middle Britain’, Stewart Wood tells Robert Philpot and Adam Harrison When Ed Miliband made his first 10 appointments to the House of Lords last November, three of them were academics. None were exactly political neophytes: Ruth Lister, the expert on poverty, social exclusion and women’s issues, is a regular …

The government’s efforts to show how women-friendly it is would be almost laughable – if they didn’t reveal a profound indifference to the real impact its policies are having on women’s lives. Struggling to make ends meet, worries about unemployment, cuts to help with childcare, loss of public services, and an attack on the value …

Last week I decided to attend the Purple Book event organised by Progress in Manchester. As the former chair of Manchester Young Labour I was particularly interested in how The Purple Book talks about the role of young members in ensuring we win back government in 2015. Although I hadn’t read the book before the …

Speaking at last night’s Progress event, ‘The Purple Book: what does the something-for-something welfare state look like in practice’, IPPR fellow Graeme Cooke was right to say that, increasingly, ‘welfare’ is seen almost as a dirty word. Much of the overall narrative – around ‘workshy’, ‘scroungers’ and ‘spongers’, which is so visible in the media …

I must admit I haven’t read every chapter of the Purple Book. But two chapters in particular have caught my attention: those by Frank Field and Liam Byrne. These chapters grapple with Labour’s post-election anxieties about public hostility to ‘welfare’. Both favour a more contributory, personalised approach to social support. The more you put in, …