Editorial: Welcome back, Labour politics
It was as though politics – and Labour politics at that – had made a sudden comeback. The main thrust of Gordon Brown’s statement on the Government’s policy relaunch was a sound recognition of the values, principles and aspirations of the party on whose shoulders he stands.
Accompanied by the effective ditching [...]

Far right contentious claims about immigration and midwife services must be contested, says Cathy Warwick

Is exposure or censorship the best way to beat the BNP asks Paul Donovan

Six months ago, just before I vanished from these pages on a prolonged sickie, I wrote a column expressing the opinion that the mothers of Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown must have been frightened during their pregnancy by rabid Trotskyists. No other explanation, I felt, could account for the terror both men exhibited when faced with the danger that what they were doing might actually be socialist.

Brownism was a difficult political creed in the best of times to define within “new” Labour, an occasionally wobbly blancmange of moral fervour and opportunism. The economic prosperity and social justice preached by Gordon Brown were deliberately vague, loose aims Tony Blair could also happily endorse – and sometimes did.

I am delighted to announce the launch of my professional advice service for Government ministers who are intent on resigning from their posts. It became very apparent from the performance of those luminaries who departed in the recent “Long Night of the Blunt Pen-Knives” that they had very little understanding of the finer points of resignation.

Over the past few months, a whole series of “events, dear boy, events” – as Harold Macmillan would have put it – have unfolded which no one could have predicted at the start of the year. The MPs’ expenses scandal has already destroyed a number of parliamentary careers, claimed the scalp of Michael Martin as Speaker of the House of Commons and quite possibly contributed to the election of two British National Party MEPs. The same period has also given us a new popular icon: Susan Boyle.

MPs are still far too focused on their own affairs rather than what concerns the rest of the country, writes Ian Hernon

The Labour Party’s desperate situation can still be rescued says “Arkwright”, a senior government insider

The House of Commons has had its Alice Through the Looking Glass moment. But it remains in its own little wonderland. The belittling, sixth-form level election of the Speaker provided an engaging distraction for MPs disengaged and seemingly unable to re-engage with the outside world.