For those of us who care about living standards Monday of this week, 1 April, was no joke. April Fools’ Day it may have been but for people on the receiving end of the government’s savage clobbering of the welfare system that day will have very real consequences. As if that were not enough, a …

The campaign to increase the £6.19 an hour national minimum wage to a living wage of £8.55 in London and £7.45 in the UK should be supported on the grounds of both equity and efficiency. The living wage is good for families and workers, but also for firms and for the UK economy. Joint research …

One of the most surprising things about George Osborne’s omnishambles budget statement was that it undermined his reputation as a canny – some might say devious – political operator. The autumn statement has gone some way to restoring this reputation. His proposal to cap benefit payment increases has set a potential trap for Labour. We …

These are very difficult times for councils. We’re in the middle of the biggest funding cut since the second world war – figures out this week show that areas with high levels of deprivation, like Islington, are seeing our budgets slashed by almost 10 times the amount lost by the more affluent, mostly Tory, boroughs. …

Away from the single-issue pressure-group politics of the SNP’s referendum, the Scottish parliament is trying to continue with the matters which impact on people’s day-to-day lives. Public sector procurement is an unlikely bread and butter issue but it presents an opportunity for progressives in Scotland to make positive impact on the income and lives of …

As part of his Real Change to Win tour, Ed Miliband was in Walthamstow today to see how Labour and Movement for Change activists are working within local communities to take practical action on the issue of ‘legal loansharking’. As a community organiser at Movement for Change, most of my time (like that of my …

When Ed Miliband first started talking about the ‘squeezed middle’, many in the political and media establishment professed confusion. But it didn’t take long before the phrase began to appear in newspaper headlines, with the Oxford English Dictionary pronouncing Ed’s coinage their new ‘word of the year’ in 2011. Why has this phrase gained such …

The party still lags on the economy but an honest conversation with the public about the future could help it win trust Labour is right to take no pleasure in the fact that the government has been proved wrong on the central macroeconomic question of the day: how to restore economic growth while cutting the …

Thursday 12 May will usher in the second anniversary since the formation of the coalition. A week after Cameron and Clegg had their now infamous press conference in the Downing Street garden, the four-page Coalition Agreement was published; a 36-page manifesto, a £6.2bn cuts programme and a 22-bill Queen’s speech.  2011 was the first year since …

In Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall the main character, neurotic comedian Alvy Singer, notes that ‘sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad: sun, milk, red meat, college.’ I was reminded of this line sitting through Tuesday night’s Progress debate on creating a new economy. In their haste to …