Barack Obama has put the plight of the ‘squeezed middle’ at the heart of his re-election campaign, finds Robert Philpot Twenty years ago next month the American right’s lock on the White House – which had seen Republican victories in five of the previous six presidential contests – was finally unpicked. One of the key …

Hugh Gaitskell was the original Labour party moderniser. Sadly, he is rarely credited as such. In fact, he is rarely credited at all. For an entity that has often viewed itself as a crusading, near-religious, movement, the party has deified other party greats – none more so than Aneurin Bevan, the founding father of the …

Over two years; or more than 48 months; or 730 days; or 17,520 hours – 99,700 people in Britain have now been unemployed for at least that period of time. The publication by the government of the latest disastrous figures showing the increasing number of people in Britain who are regarded as ‘long-term unemployed’ once …

‘I don’t think it’s the job of our generation to come back and lecture people about what you should be thinking. Ask for our views, draw on our experience, share thinking but don’t regard our views as the Holy Grail. Times change.’ This was Peter Mandelson’s opening observation to those gathered at the NUT’s Stoke …

The Adam Smith Institute arrived unannounced in the late 1970s, heralding the collapse of the postwar Keynesian consensus and the birth of a new order with sharp, boldly designed and pithily titled pamphlets. Its name became synonymous with the radical leading edge of neoliberalism. It gained widespread media coverage for its ideas and gathered round …

1) David Cameron’s acceptance in Brussels yesterday that Britain would place no obstacles in the next stage of European development is the biggest U-turn by a British prime minister in the decades-long tortuous history of the UK’s relationship with Europe. Six weeks ago Cameron came back to cheers from Eurosceptic MPs and press as he …

Labour needs to find a new way back to a new centre-ground, argues Liam Byrne In the 1990s, progressives learned an important lesson about how to win elections: we built wide coalitions; we held firm to traditional values; but we freed the political mind for new solutions, new methods, new ways of doing business. We …

As one of the authors of ‘In the black’ Labour,  I approached the publication of ‘White Flag’ Labour by Compass with an enjoyable sense of anticipation. There is something exhilarating about being excoriated, especially when the critic is someone as highly regarded as Howard Reed. Sadly, I was disappointed by the paper. Far from being …

Governments don’t like risk but growth economies need risk takers.  So why is the default setting for debate on the needs of business stuck on red tape?     Small medium enterprises (SMEs) are not just the engine rooms of any new economy or one needing to grow.  They are the nimble footed, responsive and …

The problems faced by the peripheral countries of the eurozone have, for the first time in many years, propelled the oft-cited bond yield figures into the national conscience. George Osborne, the chancellor of the UK, has played a role in this as he is fervently claiming that the low yields enjoyed by the UK is …