Politics blog + Labour

Tuesday 27 July 2010
Guardian/ICM polls: every one since 1984

Please update your Flash player

Link to this interactive
The Guardian and ICM have been conducting monthly polls since 1984. Here is the full data going back to then. Plus, for the first time, we can bring you the trends in the big questions and how they've changed over time. Continue reading...

Posted by Simon Rogers 10.30 BST
Tuesday 20 July 2010
10 things you didn't know about Labour, from Gordon Brown's pollster

Gordon Brown was a fan of slogans, Labour pollster Deborah Mattinson reveals in her new book. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

The Times reportedly paid £350,000 to serialise Lord Mandelson's book. My budget for book serialisations is rather more modest – but I did manage to wangle a copy of Deborah Mattinson's book, Talking to a Brick Wall, and it's definitely worth a blog.
Mattinson was involved in polling and focus group research for Labour for 25 years, and describes herself on the dustjacket as "chief pollster to Gordon Brown", although the book reveals that they fell out before the 2010 election.
It's not the best book on New Labour, but it contains more insight and less bile than many memoirs and probably deserves more attention than it has received. Continue reading...

Posted by Andrew Sparrow 17.01 BST
Friday 16 July 2010
Diane Abbott labels Labour leadership rivals as 'geeks in suits'

Labour Party leadership candidate Diane Abbott. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Andrew Sparrow: MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington stirs things up with jibe at her opponents Continue reading...

Posted by Andrew Sparrow 12.02 BST
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Did Tony Blair ape Margaret Thatcher and embark on backseat driving at Gordon Brown's low point?

Tony Blair predicted in private that Gordon Brown would face a leadership challenge if he failed to improve. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The extensive coverage of Peter Mandelson's memoirs today has largely overlooked an intriguing element in the book. This is Tony Blair's role behind the scenes as Gordon Brown's position became weaker and weaker.
The extracts today raise an interesting question: did the former prime minister break his word to the Labour party? Blair gave two key informal undertakings over the years. These were that he would:
• Not hang around in office as long as Margaret Thatcher. He stayed longer than expected. But his ten years at No 10 meant he observed this undertaking, if not in spirit, because Thatcher remained as prime minister for eleven and a half years.
• Not repeat Thatcher's mistake of behaving like a backseat driver. Blair issued a strong signal on this front when he stood down as an MP on the day he resigned as prime minister in 2007 to concentrate on his new role as Middle East envoy for the "quartet".
Continue reading...

Posted by Nicholas Watt 17.32 BST
Monday 12 July 2010
Mandelson, Blair and Brown - New Labour's conjoined triplets

Lord Mandelson, whose book, The Third Man (HarperCollins £25), is being serialised in the Times this week. Photograph: Pedro Armestre

Michael White: Lord Mandelson's memoirs remind us that the architects of New Labour were politically joined at the hip and brain, despite all the difficulties that existed between them Continue reading...

Posted by Michael White 13.42 BST
Thursday 1 July 2010
Politics Weekly podcast: Labour progressively defrocked

Tom Clark and Allegra Stratton are joined by Jonathan Freedland and Madeleine Bunting to discuss the ways in which the coalition has moved into Labour's natural territory

Posted by Allegra Stratton, Tom Clark, Jonathan Freedland, Madeleine Bunting, Iain Chambers 13.21 BST
Sunday 27 June 2010
David Cameron takes heart from Labour vitriol

David Cameron is at his first international summit, working the room, turning on the charm, establishing the personal rapport that is vital in high-level politics. Sitting in a room alone with seven other top leaders over lunch and dinner – albeit with officials listening in from outside the room – must be the moment you realise with total certainty that you are prime minister.
He has also piled up four bilaterals, including a big one yesterday with Barack Obama, a man of real professorial intelligence, but he is also thinking domestic politics. He is strangely thrilled at the way in which Labour is attacking the Liberal Democrats for the big betrayal of joining the coalition, especially Nick Clegg's role in the axe-wielding, VAT-raising budget.
Why is the prime minister so happy? Well, he thinks the tone of the Labour attacks is driving the Liberal Democrats deeper into the arms of the Conservatives, and that from Labour's point of view this is hardly intelligent politics. It is creating a realignment in which Labour ends up on the wrong side.
Continue reading...

Posted by Patrick Wintour 13.19 BST
Wednesday 16 June 2010
How unions could play deciding role in Labour leadership

Labour leadership candidates Andy Burnham, Ed Balls, David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Diane Abbott. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty, David Levene, Toby Melville/Reuters, John Stillwell/PA, Martin Godwin

The MPs have largely cast their nominations, and the Famous Five are now touring the country speaking/pandering to various audiences in the constituency section of the Labour party, but soon the unions are going to come into play, and the focus will be on gaining the recommendations of the union executives. Unison and Unite, the biggish two of the unions, gather in Leeds on two consecutive days – 2 and 3 July – to meet the candidates and make a recommendation.
The unions represent a third of the vote in the electoral college, and, in a very tight contest, their votes will matter. One of the three leading contestants told me yesterday that they had no idea how the ballot would end save that it would be a very close result, and go right to the final round.
In 1994 the union executive recommendations counted for nothing in the Labour leadership contest. Faced by a choice of Tony Blair, John Prescott, and Margaret Beckett, every major union recommended their memberships vote for either Beckett or Prescott, and every single union membership voted for Blair. The media, and Blair's performance, trumped the guidance of the union leaderships.
Continue reading...

Posted by Patrick Wintour 15.29 BST
Thursday 10 June 2010
Politics Weekly podcast: Diane Abbott brings Labour leadership race to life

Diane Abbott scraped on to the ballot paper for the Labour leadership this week, throwing the contest wide open. Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr discuss the candidates and the rest of the week in politics

Posted by Tom Clark, Allegra Stratton, Polly Toynbee, Rafael Behr, Phil Maynard 15.59 BST
Thank you, Diane Abbott, for saving us from battle of the clones

Labour leadership contenders Andy Burnham, David Miliband, Diane Abbott, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband at last night's debate. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA

In a Westminster corridor last night I bumped into a battle-scarred Labour apparatchik who unleashed a torrent of invective about the fact that Diane Abbott had managed to get into the knockout stage of the party's leadership election.
Arrogant, unpopular, lazy, disloyal, the kind of foolishly leftwing MP who had done Labour so much harm since the 1980s when the future Hackney MP – first elected in 1987, long before any of her leadership rivals – cut her teeth on the destructive politics of London Labour in the Livingstone era's heyday.
These were some of the kinder epithets hurled Abbott's way. They are easy to find among MPs and party officials. Indeed, I heard a former colleague at TV-am roaring with laughter recalling how Diane – already a Westminster city councillor and Livingstone activist – got away with doing very modest amounts of work as a reporter/researcher, but always had the chutzpah to face down management complaints.
Continue reading...

Posted by Michael White 11.28 BST
Wednesday 9 June 2010
Politics live blog – Labour leadership and PMQs

The five candidates on the Labour leadership ballot: Andy Burnham, Ed Balls, David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Diane Abbott. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty, David Levene, Toby Melville/Reuters, John Stillwell/PA, Martin Godwin

Andrew Sparrow with all the latest political news today – including the deadline for Labour leadership candidates to win enough nominations to get on the ballot, and prime minister's question time
Continue reading...

Posted by Andrew Sparrow 08.49 BST
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Harriet Harman lends nomination to Diane Abbott in Labour leadership race

Harriet Harman and Diane Abbott. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

The Labour interim leader Harriet Harman is taking the controversial step of nominating Diane Abbott for the Labour leadership. Although strictly neutral in the campaign, Harman regards it as necessary to try to ensure a woman is on the ballot paper when nominations close.
Harman is expected to say she is doing this for the good of the party, and it may lead to a group of other people nominating Abbott before nominations close tomorrow.
Abbott is currently way off the 33 nominations from her fellow MPs needed to stand in the contest. She had nine at lunchtime, including her own.
Continue reading...

Posted by Patrick Wintour 14.48 BST
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Live blog: David Cameron's first PMQs as prime minister

David Cameron speaks in the Commons for the first time as prime minister on 18 May. Sitting next to him are William Hague and Nick Clegg. Photograph: PA

Join Hélène Mulholland for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition's maiden prime minister's questions
Continue reading...

Posted by Hélène Mulholland 12.07 BST
Thursday 27 May 2010
Politics Weekly: Fighting the right of your party

Two weeks in and the new prime minister is already taking flak from the right wing of his party. Michael White, Georgina Henry and Julian Glover also look at the Queen's speech, Osborne's cuts, and why only opposition parties talk about the primacy of parliament

Posted by Tom Clark, Michael White, Georgina Henry, Julian Glover, Phil Maynard 14.31 BST
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Guardian Daily podcast: State opening of parliament

The government has laid out its legislative programme. Michael White in Westminster hears reaction from MPs and Lords with analysis from the Guardian's expert columnists Julian Glover and Tom Clark

Posted by Michael White, Jon Dennis, Phil Maynard, Ben Green 17.46 BST