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By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

I was recently asked by Power2010 to submit an idea for how political reforms might affect the future of our democracy. My instinct was to say that any changes to the way our economy and our democracy are run would be bottom-up, and that political reform would have to keep up with the people power, not the other way round.

My full response is below. It's very vague, but it's a notion that has come to me over a period of time after conversations with a number of people, including Chris Cook and Anthony Painter, who both have their own variations on this theme. Let me know what you think.

You can also submit your own contributions to Power2010 here.

The disconnect between politics and the people it seeks to serve has rarely been more complete. Most of my mates - who as often as not were raised in state schools by parents on and off benefits and in and out of hospitals - resent paying tax, not because of any political ideology but because they see no correlation between the chunks scythed from their pay cheques each month and the schools they attended, the roads they get to work on and the police that make them safe. Instead, all they see in the press are stories and political or personal mismanagement of their money and often willful abuse for private personal gain.

That has to change. And it will, inevitably, change. But it won't be government legislation or a shift in our political culture or the academic thought of an Oxbridge elite that change it.

The new involved democracy will be bottom up, spontaneous and people powered. Like Google or the rise of the Arctic Monkeys, its onset will be rapid but its effects will resonate down generations. It will make democracy local, personal, open source and instant - a place where everyone will see that a street light will only go up outside their house because of their own direct involvement, or it will remain dark at night.

But where will this development come from? How will it start?

I suspect, as with Google or the Arctic Monkeys, it will begin in a bedroom in San Francisco or a sedate moment in Sheffield. Someone will develop an online or handheld application that will revolutionise the way we interact, and politics and democracy will inevitably have to follow, as it always has and always will.

By Jag Singh / @jagsingh

Lord Ashcroft last week bought the ConservativeHome stable of sites, along with the PoliticsHome news aggregator, for what some would say was a paltry sum of £1.3 million. Yes, I’m just jealous – LabourHome’s sale last summer was a big deal and one of the first of its kind - just not a £1.3mil-kind-of-big-deal).

I don’t see a business case for investing in a firm with no revenue (though you could argue the sites are very strong brands - ConHome is read by nearly every Tory operator, and PoliticsHome distributes content to most media/broadcast outlets in the country, bypassing traditional filters and getting straight to the opinion formers). No, this was entirely a political game, and Lord Ashcroft has upped the ante. But Labour will fight back.

This deal signals that the Tories are very serious about their online operations. Most of us have known about this for a while now, and a number of people on our side, like Sue MacMillan, Alex Smith, Sunder Katwala, Mark Hanson, Greg Jackson and some others have been working tirelessly behind the scenes (with very little support and even fewer resources - though Labour has really started to catch-up and will continue to expand, not by having someone to compete with Guido, but in terms of organising potential, and within the context of the collateral they are producing) on some exciting things. But looking at the bigger picture, WebCameron is easily contrasted with the PM’s now-notorious YouTube videos (though he does know how to tell a good joke).

It’s important we use the word online operations, because their activities won’t be restricted to the blogosphere. Tim Montgomerie and Lord Ashcroft are skilled and smart operators, and they understand how the blogosphere is essentially a distribution channel – but they've also got a wider vision, and it’s not at all blog-centric. Be prepared to see:

Online micro-fundraising on steroids
Essentially community fundraising for “approved candidates” who adhere to the ConHome principles of Conservativsm (these candidates don't actually need the cash, of course - but fundraising brings along with it a level of support and endearment by voters and constituents that is unmatched by other electioneering activities - it's about getting people involved with the whole process)

Video attack ads with very high production values
Don’t forget 18 Doughty Street folded into the PoliticsHome stable, bringing along with it lots of experience in the video/visual arenas.

mobile-targeted content and social networking functionality
From giving Conservative activists the tools to execute and gather data from exit polls in constituencies during by-elections, to pushing election results data to the talking heads’ Blackberries whilst they are on live on TV

Smarter gathering and usage of polling data
Relating to everything you can imagine, from the brand of chocolate preferred by Conservative candidates during their tea breaks, to the specific kind of content that is most viewed by likely Conservative supporters on the web, right down to which lines are being spun by public affairs agencies on specific policy areas that are preferred by the incoming batch of Tory MPs.

Stephan Shakespeare also knows a thing or two about gathering data, and using it. This also shifts the burden of attack away from CCHQ, to a private, shadow team. Yes, it’ll be owned by the bloke who happens to have an office larger than the party leader’s, but it won’t have the CCHQ logo on it. And their videos will probably look better than the official CCHQ versions.

It’s straight out of the American electioneering playbook – the best attack ads in the US always come from ‘outside’ the bubble. Remember the spoof 1984/Apple ad that attacked Hillary Clinton? It was the opening salvo from the Obama campaign, and it was Blue State Digital wot won the election. Oh, and one of their employees created that ad.

So what does this all mean? In one fell swoop, Lord Ashcroft has streamlined the Tories' area of the web, and created a private firm that combines all the synergies that come along with having access to arguably the biggest pipeline/distribution network, with access to all the important media contacts,  as well as the content that flows through that pipeline, and the knowledge of what kind of content is most popular and effective.

PS: Fret not, comrades – I know of a number of initiatives that will address Lord Ashcroft’s desire to dominate the world. From Will Straw’s Left Foot Forward to John Prescott’s GoFourth to my own online fundraising project (due to launch Q1 2010) to [name redacted]’s UK version of the Huffington Post. All I can say is, watch this space.

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

And so here we are. What a strange Parliament it has been. 2005 seems a world away. These will be remembered as the credit crunch years. It will be remembered for the nadir of expenses corruption that gripped the nation’s legislature. But that is for the historians. For after almost four and half years, the election starts now.

Next Tuesday, Gordon Brown will have to deliver the speech of his life. Nothing short of that will do anything to restore Labour’s fortunes. It is easily forgotten that he came up with the line of the conference season last: it was "no time for a novice". But it hasn’t stuck.

A year later and the country seems absolutely willing to consider passing the keys of the kingdom to a novice. Not only that, but to a novice that has shown himself incapable of getting any of the big calls right.

To return to a theme that I have touched upon before, the election of a Conservative government risks economic disaster.  Don’t take my word for it. Take the word of Lord Skidelsky. He put the argument with pithy disdain in The Telegraph a few days ago:

“Almost all that Osborne said is right and sensible in conditions of full employment; most of it is wrong and wrong-headed when there is heavy and persisting unemployment. Although he understands that we have been in the deepest recession since the war, his strategy for recovery assumes that there is nothing to recover from – except a Labour government!”

But nobody is listening. Instead, the cuts bandwagon gathers momentum. Sirens in reverse - those who warn passing ships away from the rocks - are ignored, and instead we obsess about the fiscal deficit. To add the necessary caveat here, by no means do I wish to suggest that when normal times return serious fiscal retrenchment will not be necessary. Put simply though, we are not in normal times.

So when Vince Cable makes an excellent contribution to the discussion about how to close the deficit and reduce national debt, he fails to add an equally necessary caveat - ‘when the time comes’ - in any meaningful sense. So he describes as a ‘fiscal crisis’ what I hope he knows is actually an economic crisis with very serious fiscal consequences. The nuances are important.

My concern with the cuts dynamic is not partisan. My concern is substantive. If it gathers an unstoppable momentum - as it may already have done - the political driver will be towards bad economic policy.

For all of this, any alternative message has just not got through. The reason? The public are not receptive to it.

Nor will they be receptive to the ‘global influence’ narrative. The time to make this case was after the G20 Summit but very quickly there were distractions - smear emails and the like. If Gordon Brown’s speech next week is just a litany of ‘big decisions’ made at big international conferences then that also will be water of the duck’s back for the electorate.

Nick Clegg chose to use his platform this week to indulge in a series of tactical manoeuvrings that started off with the bizarre and has continued on to the perverse. On Saturday, he opposed holding a referendum on electoral reform on the basis that, “Anything Gordon Brown proposes now will turn to dust.”  So who’s going to do it for you, Nick? David Cameron? Because, in case you haven’t noticed, you haven’t got the parliamentary votes. You are the third party.

He then proceeded to characterise a vote for the Green party as a wasted vote. Things have got a bit silly in Bournemouth - and just for or a change it wasn’t the delegates who were culpable. It was the party leader. It wouldn’t have happened in Ming’s day.

David Cameron has the easiest job in the world. He could read his conference the entire works of Marcel Proust and the media would characterise it as charismatic and visionary. They will marvel at the sight of a bipedal standing without support. He could bounce on one foot while singing the frog song and it would excite comparison with the best of The X-Factor compared with Strictly’s finest moments. You get the picture.

But Gordon Brown has to reach a whole new level. Perhaps there were hints of what he could do at the TED conference - but a one liner won’t be enough this time; a rabble-rouser will hit the wrong note; an aloof statesman act will fly invisibly above the clouds -  he has to do something more.

He has to convince that he has the ideas, and determination to continue. He doesn’t want to win just in order not to lose. He has to have a notion that connects his personal philosophy with a better Britain. He has to acknowledge mistakes, ditch the political baggage, and free himself for the good fight. He has to speak to the nation and say we’re better than to give up in an economic storm, things aren’t so bad that we have to turn to the first travelling salesman who passes through town, the years ahead are tough - and when things are tough you see the best in us.

And now is not the time to give up on social justice. Now is the time to advance it: less inequality, less environmental destruction, greater opportunity for all, a world united in facing up to its enormous collective problems, and a politics that is more open, democratic, and involving. If there is one lesson from financial calamity, it is that we must build a different way of doing things.

Perhaps we were complacent in the good times. It would be amazing if in twelve years of government mistakes weren’t made and we didn’t have regrets. But we did make this country a better, fairer, place with greater opportunity. We could and should have done much more. But that is not reason enough to give in.

If Gordon Brown mixes this humility with determination, optimism with honesty, and speaks to the nation on its terms, then he can begin to shift the political mood. If he ditches tactical manoeuvring and instead presents a vision of a different Britain that can inspire then just maybe David Cameron will be begin to lose his lustre.

That is the challenge. Over to you, Prime Minister.

By Cath Arakelian

Life isn’t a bowl of cherries and it isn’t predictable. You choose your A levels at 17, graduate at 21, you get a job, you get bored, you get another job, you start a family, you get a different job  - different industry, place, sector. The modern portfolio career structure means that skills and knowledge constantly need to be updated. To prosper the country needs many more people to voluntarily re-skill as they get older.

To nudge people into continuing to upgrade their skills, the Labour Party Election Manifesto must offer to people of all ages student loans for post-graduate qualification on a similar basis to those available for first degrees.

The number studying at post-graduate level has increased by 27% in the last decade. Since 1997, the Government’s support for the UK science research base has risen from £1.3 billion to £3.4 billion, including providing significant funding for internationally acclaimed research activity through the various research councils which support post-graduate study. In 2009/10, the research councils are funding for additional post-graduate places in the four key priority areas of ageing research, bioenergy, bioprocessing and environmental change.

To help learners tackle the challenges arising from the economic downturn, in 2008 the Labour government repositioned Career Development Loans as a key additional source of support to help people finance learning, as new Professional and Career Development Loans (PCDLs). In May 2009 the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills announced funding for around 14,000 additional postgraduate places - supported by 30,000 extra Career Development Loans. The Government will have increased the number of PCDL from 15,000 to 45,000 by 2010/11. PCDLs offer more people the opportunity to improve their employment prospects by offering more generous terms for the learner, such as loans up to £10,000 and lower interest rates.

Because PCDLs are commercial loans offered by participating banks, which the government now has a majority stake in, the number of loans in any year is in the government’s hands. In view of the opportunities now opening up in a wide variety of innovative fields, such as green technologies, there is no need for access to finance to be a barrier to aspiring post-graduates.

A manifesto commitment to provide easily accessible post-graduate loans will make it possible for all our people, whatever their age and experience, to fulfil their personal potential, and revitalise our country’s long-term prospects for growth.

Investing in people is good business!

By Amanjit Jhund / @amanjit

Since devolution we have seen a great number of disparities emerge in the care for patients in different parts of the UK. One of the most harrowing side effects of this has been the increase in postcode lotteries not bound by local areas or Primary Care Trusts but by national boundaries.

One of the most striking examples of this is prescription fees. Whilst in Wales prescription fees have been abolished altogether, in Scotland and Northern Ireland the devolved parliaments have committed to abolishing prescription charges by 2011 and 2010 respectively.

England now remains the only country in the UK to retain the principle of prescription charges. While the government has extended the exemptions on prescription fees to include cancer patients and has instituted a review on long term conditions, many organisations such as the British Medical Association believe that the government should go further and abolish prescription charges altogether, and I agree wholeheartedly with them.

Up until the recent alterations made to include cancer patients our current system had been unchanged since 1968. This has resulted in gross discrepancies within the system. Under our current system patients suffering from treatable conditions such as hypothyroidism are exempt from charges whilst those suffering from long term, terminal illnesses such as cystic fibrosis (CF) are forced to pay prescription charges from the age of 16 onwards. This is a situation that has arisen due to improved medications and increased life expectancy of CF patients (estimated at 31-36 years), many of whom died in infancy in 1968. There are many other injustices in the system with individuals suffering from debilitating long term degenerative illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease denied exemption.

To counter this the government has set up a review of prescription charges in long term conditions but my concern is that this will simply provide us with a new set of arbitrary dividing lines which over time will become unfit for purpose much like the current exemptions. Even developing a system of exemptions is fraught with difficulties. Simply extending the list of conditions which qualify for exemption does not solve the problem as it fails to consider the highly variable nature of disease from person to person and the impact that it can have on life circumstances. Medicine is often described as an art rather than a science and for this precise reason attempting to restrict exemptions along the lines of aetiology is both unjust and unethical

With the current review another concern is that the patient groups with the best funded and active pressure groups such as the British Heart Foundation will lobby for the inclusion of their patients on the exemptions list much in the same way that cancer charities and patient groups have already successfully done, whilst those with rarer and less publicised but no less debilitating conditions will lose out.

One argument often used for the retention of prescription charges is the estimated £435 million a year raised by prescription charges for the NHS. Whilst this is a substantial amount the Department of Health estimates that the cost of excluding cancer patients alone will cost £15.6 million a year. Combine this with the cost of excluding antidepressants estimated by the BMA at £24 million a year, anti-hypertensive medications at £37 million a year and inhaled corticosteroids at £11 million per year and the financial case for retaining prescription charges looks less and less viable.

If a serious and comprehensive review of long term conditions is carried out then not only these medications but hundreds of others will have to be made exempt for long term conditions. We may even reach a stage where the costs involved in policing, enforcing and administering such exemptions will outweigh the revenue generated by the remaining charges.

While we cannot afford to simply drop prescription charges in the current climate. Like the Fabian Society I would like to see a manifesto pledge to reduce prescription charges in the first instance with the aim of abolishing them altogether once our public finances allow it. Ultimately I believe that this is the only way to avoid these inequalities and resolve our current morally bankrupt and ethically indefensible position.

By Grace Fletcher-Hackwood

Labour has achieved many things for the millions of private tenants in the UK. The 2004 Housing Act made it easier for local authorities to prioritise action on health and safety hazards in privately rented homes, as well as introducing the more well-known tenancy deposit protection which came into force in April 2007.

But this has by no means guaranteed that every tenant rents a property which is fit to live in. According to the English House Condition Survey 2007, 45% of homes in the private rented sector in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Home Standard – that's defined as 'warm, weatherproof and [with] reasonably modern facilities'. So almost half the private tenants in England are cold, or exposed to the elements, or effectively living in the last century.

I see some of these tenants every day in the CAB – the family who despaired at the mould in their baby's bedroom; the students who went without hot water for weeks at a time; the woman whose landlord failed, despite repeated promises, to provide even the most basic furnishings, and sexually harassed her for good measure – and every time I see a case of sub-standard privately rented housing, my day gets a little bit worse, because I know how hard it is going to be for the tenants to do anything about it.

If the problems in their house constitute a health and safety hazard they can get the local authority to enforce standards. If they can afford the time and the expense, they can take their landlord to court. If not...in short, they can put up with it, or they can find somewhere else to live.

And if they do choose to use the courts or the council to try and make their house fit to live in, their friendly local CAB adviser will have to be sure to remind them how vulnerable they are. A combination of the demand for housing and landlords' powers of eviction renders some tenants so effectively at their landlords' mercy that it's no wonder 1.8 million families would rather queue up for social housing than brave the cruel world of private renting.

In 2007, Citizens Advice produced a report - 'The tenant's dilemma' – showing how landlords can use Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 to evict tenants for daring to complain about the state of their accommodation. The report recommended a mechanism for tenants to halt their eviction under Section 21 if they could show that it was a retaliatory eviction; it also suggested a longer term measure whereby the use of Section 21 could be restricted to landlords registered with a national accreditation scheme.

Something resembling this scheme is in the pipeline. In May, along with much-needed protection for the growing number of tenants whose landlords are repossessed, the government announced proposals to introduce a 'light-touch national register' of every private landlord in England. This is to work alongside an improved complaints procedure for tenants to register official complaints about sub-standard landlords, who could then in some circumstances be removed from the register.

I'm delighted at these proposals, but concerned about their reach. Studies have shown that tenants in the worst accommodation are often the most vulnerable: very young, very poor, disabled or with limited English. These are often people who have never heard of tenancy deposit protection: how do you enforce a right you don't know you have?

If the onus remains on tenants to report sub-standard housing – particularly if landlords retain powers of retaliatory eviction – then progress for those in the very worst housing will be slow. To protect the most vulnerable, the proposed national register must be backed up by a regulatory body to monitor and enforce housing standards and prevent the misuse of Section 21. While Building Britain's Future, we need to make sure it's a warm, safe, properly furnished future once it's built.

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

In this month's Prospect magazine, Gordon Brown will outline his beliefs about the future role of New Labour in meeting the requirements of modern governance - and say that Britain needs a written constitution to "embed all of the constitutional changes of the past decade, and the rights and obligations that apply to every citizen."

The PM's key passage on New Labour is:

"We now know that where markets fail and banks collapse, active government is essential to provide regulation, manage demand management and steer a new path. Without such action by governments across the world the recent economic crisis would have been a catastrophe. Similarly, without a strong role for public services and welfare provision the recession would have brought widespread misery. In these circumstances, the enthusiasm for cutting back the state, so visible in contemporary Conservative thought, is a recipe for economic crisis and social injustice.

"At the same time, this is not a Clause 4 moment in reverse. The economic crisis does not demand a return to nationalisation and central economic planning. Regulated markets and free trade remain the best means of stimulating enterprise, innovation and growth. The basic New Labour proposition — that economic dynamism and social justice go hand in hand, drawing the best of the public and private sectors into a partnership for prosperity and fairness — is sound."

Brown also writes abour the apparent crisis in our democracy:

"The expenses scandal shows us that those who enter public service with a view to pursuing the common good can become disconnected from those they serve, because they are insufficiently accountable to them. In the new century the mos  powerful determinant of change should not be the commands of the state, or the incentives of the market, but the values of the British people — better still, the virtues of fairness and responsibility found in their best instincts...Now our mission is to support the active citizen, the empowering community, and the enabling state: to forge a nation of powerful citizens, not a powerful state."

There's also good news for LabourList readers' New Ideas series, as Brown hints he might be open to some of the ideas brought on here:

"We need to strengthen family and community life. At the heart of this challenge is the rising need for care — of children and the elderly — in modern families, as society ages and employment rates rise. Good childcare provides a double win: it closes equality gaps and supports parents to balance work and family, helping to lift households out of poverty. Social care, on the other hand, is a risk for which collective insurance best applies: none of us can know whether we will need long-term care, so pooling that risk lowers costs and ensures decency and fairness."

The October edition of Prospect will be in the shops tomorrow.

By Warwick Sharp

The lure of a degree means universities are currently straining under the pressure of preparing for an unprecedented number of freshers. Single rooms are being fitted with bunk beds, lectures are being scheduled at night and student loans are becoming backlogged. None of this is particularly worrying as long as these extra degrees are worth it.

The arguments for university are strong, particularly in a recession - and this year there will be 513,000 places. Research shows that graduates are likely to be wealthier and healthier, and of greater value to their economies. Spillover benefits for society are potentially huge too.

I have huge respect for British universities and believe we have some of the best in the world. However, the benefits mentioned are based on a minority of school leavers going to university. Would those benefits decline significantly if more people enrolled? Is there a limit to the number of graduates Britain needs and can support? If developed well enough, would apprenticeships and other on-the-job training schemes give school leavers as big an advantage as a university degree?

In the past 50 years, the UK economy has shifted ever more towards knowledge based activities and therefore the UK has needed more people with higher level skills. As a result there has been a huge increase in the numbers going to university. As this shift towards knowledge based activities continues over the coming decades there will be pressure to keep increasing numbers going to university even more. But can we afford to keep relying on universities more and more?

Some facts suggest that we cannot. The number of jobless graduates is expected to double this year to 40,000. A survey suggests this year’s Freshers can expect to leave university with an average debt of £23,500. What is more, thousands leave university each year with absolutely no idea of what they want to do.

Perhaps universities have now reached their limit in terms of student numbers. Benefits may decline even more if we attempt to push more students through them. We can focus on other options instead to help young people achieve higher level skills and succeed in the world of work.

In a wide range of professions, school leavers can successfully go straight into training schemes and learn impressive higher level skills. Professions from plumbing to accountancy require extremely tailored skills that are often best taught on the job. Big businesses are getting on board; Sainsburys, for example, has introduced a national trainee scheme for 18-year-olds with three A levels to become department managers after 12 months on the job, with a starting salary of £17,500.

In addition, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Britain to fund university places. The CBI has just announced that current levels of funding are unsustainable. Focusing on alternative options could also put a great deal less strain on public finances.

So why are we pushing the university system to breaking point when there are better options for many young people which could be developed and expanded on?

I strongly support British universities - they do a great job of transforming a wide pool of talent. However, there are other pools of talent that can be equally well transformed through a multitude of other options.

Britain can, and should, produce a world-class labour force by focusing on the range of options to equip all school leavers with the right skills for the future.

By Lewis Goodall

I apologise in advance but I have to say, Vince was spot on. I assure you, the ‘Cult of Vince’ hasn’t got to me, but I do have to take my hat off to ‘the great sage’ on this occasion; when Cable announced his proposal to raise the threshold at which people start paying tax to £10,000 in Bournemouth this week, I couldn’t help but think that it was about time.

There could not be a cleaner, fairer, more equitable proposal available to any would-be government than this one. By increasing the threshold to £10,000 from the current £6,475, the next government would take four million of our poorest citizens out of paying tax altogether, one of the biggest tax cuts in recent history.

Our current system is an aberration from the historical principle of British taxation; the whole basis of the income tax system, since its inception, was that you would only pay if you were in a position to afford it. When income tax was first introduced, by William Pitt the Younger in 1798, it began at a levy of 2d in the pound on incomes over £60, or in today’s money a massive £47,000. Even until relatively recently, you had to be earning a decent wage to even enter the threshold.

Today, by contrast, we must bear the shame that after twelve years of a Labour government, the poor pay more of their income in tax than the rich do. In 2008, the bottom fifth of earners paid 38.7% of their gross income in total tax, compared to the richest fifth who paid 34.9%. This situation will only get worse when the highly regressive VAT increases to 20% next year.

This is the shocking legacy bequeathed to us by a string of governments of both colours, who have seldom paid sufficient regard to the plight of our poorest. As a result of their inaction and sorry pandering to the now discredited neo-liberal agenda, 13.2 million Britons live in poverty.

Though the moral argument for doing this is overwhelming, it makes great sense economically too. When we talk about cutting tax, far too often we get trapped into thinking about ‘trickle down’ economics; the idea that if you cut taxes for the rich that the economy will be stimulated more than if you cut taxes for any other income group. In fact, all economists would point out that the marginal propensity to spend (i.e. the proportion of money spent for every extra pound earned) is far higher for the poor than for the rich. Many of these people are on the breadline as it is; the last thing they’re likely to do with the extra £50 a week is go put it in an ISA (something the rich by contrast, are far more likely to do with a far higher marginal propensity to save.) Rather, they spend the extra cash in the shops, on essential goods and services that they could otherwise ill-afford. Thus, by cutting taxes by a relatively small amount for the poorest, much needed sectors of our economy receive long-term stimulus.

We’re the sixth biggest economy in the world. Poverty is not inevitable for any member of our society, and yet we blithely condemn millions of our fellow citizens to an existence of dire want. The UK government defines poverty as having an income of 60% or less of the median: by that measure that equates to 22% of the population. Moreover, a 2006 ONS survey showed that in 2005-06 62% of pensioner couples had less than £10,000 in pension income.

We have saved the banks, slavishly followed the neo-liberal hegemony and bailed out the very people who got us into this recession in the first place. Now it’s time to do something for those who need our help more than any of them. The poor didn’t create the housing-market bubble and nor did they create cheap credit. It’s unthinkable that they should continue to pay the price for these things in the form of a greater burden of tax than the richest pay. If they do, Labour doesn’t deserve a single vote come the next election.

In the last parliament, we saw a government who often seemed more interested in peddling the Tory trash of inheritance tax cuts for the richest, coupled with having the indignity to abolish the 10p rate without so much as a thought for its effects on the poorest. What is the point of this party if we continue to sing to this tune of inequality and shameless greed?

Let’s be Labour again, and help those in most need: our old, our young, and our most vulnerable, and make a start by the cessation of tax on their meagre incomes, which in meaningful terms, barely exist.

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Heydon Prowse, the man responsible for the video which ended Alan Duncan's career on the opposition frontbenches and who made the film exposing Conservative Future, has written a brilliantly cutting open letter to David Cameron, below.

Prowse runs the culture website Don't Panic, and has gained notoriety as a troublemaker amongst Tories. He also apparently asked Young Labour if he could make a mockumentary about them too - but was turned down when members realised who he was.

Dear David,

Well done for demoting Alan. As head of the Tory PR machine - sorry I mean party – you have demonstrated real leadership. Because you can’t just have MPs going around speaking their real minds all the time, can you Dave, or the Tories would never get elected.

Of course Alan was not the person to lead expenses reform in the Tory party, but you knew his views. Much more importantly, the man lacks the basic credential needed to be a member of your inner circle – sufficient guile to successfully deceive people. Perhaps his PR people should go too. After all, it was their idea to say to the press that Alan would like to have a drink with me to show that he really was a jolly good sport after he had initially threatened to set the police on us for the free gardening we gave him. Backfired that one eh?

Much better to have experienced lobbyists and public relations executives ‘representing’ the people, like George Eustice, your former press secretary who’ll be standing in Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall at the next election, or Priti Patel, director of PR firm Weber Shandwick, which represents hedge funds and investment banks, who is standing in the constituency of Witham. Eh wot?!

Thank god you didn’t fire Alan ages ago when it emerged that while shadow business secretary with responsibility for energy policy, his private office was funded by the decidedly dodgy oil company Vitol, or people might have thought you were actually serious about reform. I for one feel completely reassured of your inclination to represent the interests of a tiny financial elite, rather than the hard working people of Britain.

Yes - with tycoons and financiers flocking to you with their totally expectation free donations and your shadow ministers hobnobbing around the Med on the yachts of Russian oligarchs, you’re fast becoming Blair mark II, which is exactly what the country needs. Here’s hoping you win the next election so that you can disappoint us all as profoundly as he did. Hurrah!

Hope you feel rested enough after your three month summer holiday for your return to parliament in October. Understandably

All the best going forward,

Heydon Prowse

By Salome Zourabichvili

Back in the 1920s, Labour’s leader Ramsay MacDonald spoke up against the Russian invasion of Georgia and the overthrow of its moderate social democratic government.

Sadly, by the time he came to power MacDonald was too concerned with trading with Soviet Russia to be bothered any more by Georgia. Our people were abandoned by outsiders and our fiercely held independence was crushed.

But if the west forgot Georgia’s brief time as a democracy from 1918 to 1922, Georgians did not. Georgia was the first country to declare its independence from the Soviet Union in the Spring of 1991.

Sadly, since then, our democracy has faltered again. The current president, Mikheil Saakashvili, took power in January 2004 as a crusader against corruption and for human rights. For a while he made real progress, but there was something rotten in the heart of his government and gradually the canker of authoritarianism spread. Ordinary Georgians are suffering as a result.

Cutting crime became an excuse for the interior ministry’s special forces to go on the rampage with automatic weapons. Reuniting the country became an opportunity to indulge in provocative rhetoric and eventually fall into a Russian war trap last year. Building a modern market economy turned into fleecing business for political donations and democratic debate degenerated into the riot police clubbing peaceful protestors, troops smashing up independent TV stations and rigged presidential and parliamentary elections.

A diverse and unlikely coalition of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US State Department have all reported on these egregious crimes.

When Vice President Biden visited Tbilisi this summer, President Saakashvili promised a “new wave of democracy”, not for the first time. But the reality of his rhetoric is that in the last month he has released politically-connected murderers from prison after just three years in jail; has appointed a man branded a “criminal” by our human rights ombudsman as defence minister; and has authorised a campaign to smear the patriarch of the Georgian church – easily the most respected citizen of Georgia, which is why Saakashvili fears him.

Ramsay MacDonald was an early member of the Fabian Society, so perhaps it is appropriate that the Young Fabians will host an event with the Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia, Giorgi Baramidze tonight. In Georgia, people as young as 15 are beaten up because they go to peaceful political gatherings.

I hope that, when he meets ministers, Young Fabians or Labour members, no one repeats the mistake of Ramsay MacDonald and thinks human rights can wait for another time.

We need your help in Georgia now.

For more details of events in Georgia, please visit www.georgiamediacentre.com.

By Toby Flux / @labourmatters

Channel 4 News aired a piece after George Osborne’s recent speech in which he claimed that to understand how a Conservative government would behave you need only to look at Councils like Hammersmith and Fulham.

It’s therefore very odd that the Tories advanced the new Westfield shopping centre and the new Shepherds Bush library (delivered at no cost to the taxpayer) as the two things that best demonstrated why Osborne is right to pick Hammersmith and Fulham.

Because both of those achievements were negotiated by the last Labour administration!

You’d think the Tories could have come up with something that they’d actually done - and so presumably did Channel 4 News, who were seemingly hoodwinked into broadcasting these examples as proof of Tory efficiency and their commitment to value.

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

I've just received the email below from the PM ahead of the G20 in Pittsburgh, which he is flying to today. To receive these emails, click here.

Dear Alex,

Later today I will be flying to America to represent you at the Pittsburgh G20 and the United Nations.

I’m going to be fighting for a lot of causes close to our hearts – collective action on the global economy to save jobs, a deal to protect our planet as we prepare for Copenhagen and a new plan to provide free health care – modelled on our beloved NHS – to people in Africa.

Making the world a better place was the focus of my remarks at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference earlier this year:

A commitment to progressive internationalism was one of the things that first brought me in to politics, and I’m proud of Labour’s record:

* The world's first Climate Change Act.

* Cancelling the debts of the world’s poorest people.

* Setting a timetable for 0.7% on aid.

* Banning cluster bombs.

* Signing Britain up to the social chapter.

We’ve done so much together – but it would all be put at risk by the Conservatives. When they were last in office they slashed aid and left our country isolated and irrelevant in Europe.

If you want to see Labour’s work for global justice continue, I hope you’ll share the TED talk with your friends and encourage them to sign up to our Labour movement.

We will change the world the only way people have ever changed it - together.

Best wishes

Gordon

Photo: Downing Street, Flickr

By Rosie Hucklesby / @rosiehucklesby

In the current recession, the housing market has taken a severe blow. It's predicted that up to 65,000 homes have faced repossession and somewhere between 2 million and 5 million people are awaiting social housing in England. 220,000 borrowers were more than three months behind with mortgage payments by the end of December last year, up 72 per cent, and many homeowners are finding that they can no longer afford to meet mortgage payments through no fault of their own. People are increasingly turning to the rental market out of need, rather than choice. Some are lucky, and can find quality homes for themselves. However, exploitation and unprecedented rent increases are rife in the market, particularly in the unregulated area of the ‘buy to let’ speculative market which is crippling many families and individuals.

The idea of an open housing market is a falsehood - except for an increasingly tiny minority. For too long now, housing has been promoted as an investment opportunity. Home-owners are now customers, even letting agents, and housing as commodity has become a means by which to guarantee a pension or a supplementary income.

When the Tory Government released social housing stock onto the open market, they had assumed that this would further empower consumer choice – but it has had the very opposite effect. Many on low and middle incomes are increasingly unable to find homes they can afford within their own communities. Coupled with unemployment, this breeds fear, resentment and discontent. Social housing has become something to compete for, rather than fulfilling a need.

We must also readdress our own attitudes towards housing – which is everyone’s basic right to shelter and stability – as well as looking to strengthening of communities. If we are serious about our progressivism, we must address the crisis with both short and long term solutions. The solution to the housing crisis is clearly not a simple matter of increasing stock – that is only a short term answer.

The Empty Homes Agency reports that in 2008, 697,055 empty homes existed in England alone – 83,785 of these are owned by local authority, housing associations and other public bodies, in particular in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, London and the South East.

The immediate solution to this problem is not simply to release empty homes onto the open market for development – this is out of reach for those on lower incomes. However, available stock could be increased by encouraging local authorities to improve existing empty buildings to make them habitable, and also by demolishing redundant buildings and rebuilding. This would also have a postitive knock-on effect for the local economy.

The longer-term aspirations of housing policy should be to strengthen community spirit with a sense of place, identity and the ability to develop and grow. In addition to this, the culture of the housing market also needs to change. Home ownership should not be a means by which to make a profitable investment but a means to providing social justice via the strength of community.

The core of housing policy in the 21st century is a key lesson of the recession – the need for stability. The housing market is a captive one, because it is based on need more than aspiration.

All bubbles burst and markets are no exception – but society cannot afford to let future generations be compromised by chasing after profit in an area that is essential and not just desirable.

By Sam Tarry / @SamTarry

Labour has done more to change the way Britain is governed than any government since 1911. It has delivered devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and introduced a form of PR for European elections. In Scotland in local government a refreshed and renewed local political culture is growing now that STV is used for local elections there. And of course it almost abolished hereditary peers from the House of Lords.

That’s it though – almost! It simply beggars belief that we have unelected legislators in any form, let alone that there are still remaining hereditary peers in the Upper House of our Parliament.  t was supposed to be one of the cornerstones of the reforming manifesto of 1997, and in 1999 Tony Blair even evicted all but 92 hereditary peers. But despite the ‘loans for Lordships’ scandal in 2006 and even the disgraceful ‘cash for amendments’ scandal, progress continues to be slow and is highly unlikely to happen before the next election.

Jack Straw at the recent Unlock Democracy and The Guardian seminar said himself:

“Our 1999 reforms dramatically changed the Lords for the better. But this remains unfinished business. The constitutional reform and governance bill, which will receive its second reading in October, sets out our plans to phase out hereditary peers from the second chamber. It is an outdated concept in a society where influence and power should be based on merit rather than on the family into which one is born. The current situation where 90 hereditary peers retained their seats in the Lords was only ever intended as an interim step.

We aim for an elected second chamber which could become wholly elected, but would be substantially so. Our proposals stem from the outcome of free votes on Lords reform which took place in 2007. The House of Commons voted in favour of reforms leading to a 100% or 80% elected second chamber and against all other options.”

Although election systems and retirement packages are areas that need to be worked out, it simply isn’t good enough that we have allowed these to block the process of reform. We need to be bold, we need to push the envelope – after all there are four simple key ideas underpinning the case for Lords Reform:

1 - Party Patronage devalues politics
The perception that people can buy or connive a seat in the legislature has been a source of controversy for over a century. The public perception of politicians is at an all time low – the Lords, though, have paved the way with numerous dodgy and corrupt exploits in the last few years, well before the ‘expenses scandal’ broke.

2 - An unelected House lacks legitimacy
While the House of Lords often does a good job at improving legislation, it is constantly hampered by the fact that it has no claim to be representing the will of the people. The Government constantly cites the Lords' illegitimacy as a reason for ignoring what it says. An elected second chamber would have more authority. Lord Mandelson may be landing the blows on the policy-lite Cameron media machine and could even be as some argue the most powerful man in Government – but the fact is he has absolutely no democratic legitimacy or accountability.

3 - An elected second chamber would be more representative
Elections would allow for members from smaller parties and independents to sit in the second chamber as working peers. (Or senators, depending on the semantic option we choose).

4 - The public want it
Opinion polls consistently suggest that around two-thirds of the public want a majority or wholly elected second chamber. More than 55% of the public voted for a party committed to an at least substantially elected second chamber in 2005.

Re-building trust in our massively damaged legislative institutions is paramount – Jack Straw and the Labour party must discover that historic reforming zeal. No more fudges, no more compromises, no putting things off to find ‘consensus’ - we need full and radical reform which must be in our manifesto for 2010 - just one year short of an entire century since the 1911 Parliament Act that first laid down the beginnings of Lords reform. We must ‘clear the way’ because our broken democracy cannot wait another four years, let alone another century.

Sam Tarry is a fomer campaigns officer for Unlock Democracy.

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Tony Blair has released a report with The Climate Group showing the benefits of collective action in reaching emissions reduction targets. In the video below, he also says that an ambitious deal at Copenhagen like the one Ed Miliband wrote about recently would be good for economic growth and employment, with up to 10 million new jobs created.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has said he is willing to attend the Copenhagen summit and is calling on world leaders to join him and climate change ministers at the event in December.

The new report finds that, under a global deal involving all countries, ambitious efforts to cut emissions can:

* Create as many as 10 million new jobs around the world by 2020.

* Generate additional economic growth worth as much as the green stimulus packages recently adopted by major governments.

* Enable a 15-fold reduction in carbon price from 65 dollars per tonne of CO2 to 4 dollars per tonne of CO2.

By Tom Miller

UPDATE: Hadleigh Roberts has responded to this post here.

A lot has been made over the last two weeks of the prospect of Labour’s politicians abandoning the ‘No Platform’ policy of refusing to debate the BNP. While some politicians appear to be gearing up to appear alongside the BNP on the BBC’s Question Time program, others such as the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, have laudably opted not to speak alongside them.

We should consider this decision praiseworthy, because we have a few reasons for doing so.

Those on the left and more widely know that the bulk of those who have recently begun to vote for the BNP don’t do so because they are committed hardcore racists. These people have material concerns, and, given New Labour’s longstanding practice of a narrow concentration on the middle 5% of the electorate as applied since 2001, an electorate which we must remember is on average richer and more comfortable than the population as a whole, a whole stratum of the working class feels profoundly disillusioned.

Yet we on the left continue to be convinced that racism is not the solution.

We must therefore question how discontent and disillusion are converted by the BNP into the votes which win them MEPs. Understanding this process in deciding what strategies to use against them is crucial.

Mark Steele is a funny man, but he is also a man who has demonstrated some understanding of this debate. His first paragraph in his recent article for the Independent is a very accurate characterisation of the situation as it stands. Though it rests on a comedic logic, there is a serious point to be understood:

“There’s something touchingly innocent about the argument put forward by many people that the BNP should be allowed space in the mainstream media as this will “expose their ignorant ideas”. Because history doesn’t necessarily prove this to be the case. I don’t suppose that, in 1941, many people thought: “You see, this is all working to plan. Now he’s invaded Russia everyone will see just what an idiot this Hitler really is.”

We have to think about the actual point of politically opposing the BNP on a day to day level. What are politicians of the left trying to achieve?

Labour politicians want to win elections, yes. But there is a far deeper and more historically resonant logic behind Labour’s anti-fascism. Fascists need to be opposed full stop, because of what they believe. At the moment, the main fascist party is the BNP, and it concentrates on election campaigns in their context as what the far left term ‘propaganda candidacies’.

They are only on Question Time because they hold office, and their immediate goal is to hold office. More of it. If we concentrate only on fighting the effects of this, a spilling over and legitimisation of racism in public discourse, and the social discord which goes with that, then we are lost.

The BNP’s ability to use the BBC as a propaganda platform also needs to be tackled at the root cause; the lack of representation for the people who have added to their vote, and further to that, the fact that they are winning any elections full stop.

In other words, while it is satisfying for politicians to look forward to ‘winning the argument’ against people who are already seen even by many of those who vote for them (let alone Labour MPs) as profoundly illogical, that means very little if it boosts their vote.

Labour should not want to beat them in arguments if a necessary side effect is that their vote increases.

During the MPs expenses scandal Question Time saw record viewing figures of 3.8 Million. Polly Toynbee believes with some justification that General Elections are won under the First Past The Post system on the back of just a few thousand votes. While more proportionate, European elections typically see very low turnout and are seldom ever about the policies of the European Parliament; those with the most extreme views are far better represented.

Bearing in mind that many of those who vote for the BNP, particularly as a protest against the other parties, often know little of their policies full stop, imagine how many people would see the BNP for the first time in their life on such a TV performance? Even if the BNP are roundly defeated in debate, this number will be such a large one that the percentage of people who find themselves agreeing with them will almost definitely outstrip the number who would support them without having seen question time. It then facilitates their building on the ground by putting their names and personalities into public debate.

In any event, they have and will without exception continue to produce utterly false figures and examples to justify their beliefs which, because they are false, no politician can have counter-figures or examples to rebut. Subject matters on which there are real material disagreements between the main parties will be racialised, whether this is an accurate description, or indeed a relevant solution, or not.

Such debates make race a completely unnecessary but nevertheless ubiquitous prism. Given the sensitive and deeply personal nature of the subject and the violent emotions it disturbs, it is a topic that while in itself is sometimes worthwhile debating, is not worth implementing on wider public debate through an extremist lens, with a widely respected haven in programs like Question Time. At the absolute least, from a purely party-political point of view, the espousal of these views on such popular television programs will give space to the more moderate element of the hard right to become less moderate without risking such a large backlash.

For all of these reasons and more Labour should avoid providing a motivation the BBC and other broadcasters along with organisers of public events more generally to invite the BNP and involve their warped and necessarily violent views more deeply in the space of public debate.

The BNP have a right to free speech, but nobody is under any obligation to provide them the means to use it effectively. In fact, we have a moral obligation to refuse to help them gain exposure, win voters who would not previously have voted for them, and open debating space for others who are slightly more credible.

The argument that the No Platform policy has failed has been fashionable lately. But it has been treated lazily and accepted with little question. The fact is that with regards to the BNP, it is one of the only parts of mainstream politics which still works.

If you agree, then you can help to fight for No Platform here.

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

In a shocking, but not wholly unsurprising poll for the Guardian today, it's revealed that only 14% of people think Labour is telling the truth on the state of the public finances. Even our own supporters do not fully believe Labour, with only 36%, and 26% of Labour voters in 2005, saying they trust the party to tell the truth.

If that's not bad enough, the topline results of the poll show and increase in support for the Tories over Labour to 17%. See the full results of the Guardian/ICM poll here:

Conservatives: 43% (+2)

Labour: 26% (+1)

Lib Dems: 19% (nc)

Others: 12% (-2)

I've already received an email from a supporter saying:

"...that the electorate do not trust Labour on finances is a just point. Why? Due to the contempt shown to the electorate by the "elite" Cabinet and associates. In my view the blatant and clumsy lies used have totally wiped out the credibility of them. That is why I cannot conceive of a fourth term unless we have a personality shake up."

In a separate poll, taken for LabourList and IPPR, 77% of Labour supporters said that fighting an election on the basis of Labour investment over Tory cuts would fail.

Frankly, I'm not surprised at either set of results. Maybe it says more about my cynicism than anything else, but I and others on LabourList have long said that the election would be lost if it is a battle of investment over cuts - whatever the timing or severity or ideological arguments - because the premise has already been discredited. Reframing the argument time and again to suit Labour's needs just looks like more spin and manipulation.

Every time I pick up a newspaper, my heart sighs at the thought of what I am about to read - because I don't always trust the government to tell the truth on my behalf either.

It's a sorry, humiliating, state of affairs and it's getting sorrier and more humiliating every day.

On a more positive note, I do believe in free school meals for local children - so I'm off out for a while to canvass up the road.

By Lewis Goodall

"We're choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America…We are not a collection of blue states and red states, we are the United States."

Dream on, Mr. President. This is Obama as he wants to be; the unifier, the healer, a latter day Washington, transcending partisanship, geography, race and class. But this Obama cannot and will never be - not while there exists in America a significant but powerful minority that is determined to utterly destroy his presidency, just because it exists.

This right-wing media monster haunts modern American politics. It's a monster with regard for neither right nor reason nor truth, a monster that makes serious political conversation impossible and that feeds on the fears of Americans who scream openly that they ‘want their America back’. It knows not what it believes in, but knows what it opposes, and that is all encapsulated in Obama.

The monster goes way beyond healthcare, quite beyond policy and philosophy and entirely beyond party. Many Americans, of course, quite legitimately oppose the President out of genuine political differences, but maintain their respect for him and the office he holds. The others simply hold him in contempt. They are afraid, afraid of precisely the thing that excites his own liberal base: that this president is the first truly liberal chief executive since FDR, and represents the biggest threat to the cosy conservative hegemony that has for so longed ruled the American roost.

The fact that he is black adds fuel to the fire, and provides an opening that the Fox news demagogues exploit mercilessly. They exploit the fear that the older, whiter, more right wing America has seen its day; that they know, as all must know, that they are behind the curve of history and Obama is the future. And they’re afraid.

Consequently, the right wing media and radio talk show hosts peddle the politics of that fear, playing on their audience’s most base instincts with a relentless, sustained campaign of lies and misinformation. They cannot accept that somehow the Democrats won so conclusively in November, that somehow, just somehow, they might not speak for the average Joe on Main St. anymore. Worse, the man who seems to do so is black. Worse still, he’s a black liberal (or maybe a socialist, or communist, or was that fascist?) and he’s taking your America from you. You, they say, must stop him, whatever the cost.

Working in a Congressional office, as I’ve been lucky enough to do over the last few months, has given me a ringside seat on the young Obama presidency, and his first meaningful stab at bringing about the ‘change’ on which he ran. Over that time, I’ve seen a rabid and feckless right wing media mutilate and distort a healthcare bill that has the potential to help tens of millions of Americans and I've learned that meaningful political discourse in America has become nigh-on impossible with a media machine virtually intent on destroying the Obama presidency.

A line constantly trotted out by Fox News is that the President and his allies are blinded by ideology. The irony of such a statement would be literally hilarious if it were not so utterly depressing. The likes of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck (Fox’s pin-up of the month, famous for gems like the one below) in fact possess an ideology that goes beyond conservatism: it's nothing more than a crass anti-Obamaism.

So blinded are they by the fear that this President poses to their agenda that they hold little to no regard for the truth, clearly believing that a little (or a lot of) mendacity is a price worth paying if it damages the President.

The truth becomes whatever most suits their message; that Obama wants to destroy your America. That he wants to take away your freedom, your money, even your Grandma.
 
This opposition to all Obama, great and small, is not discriminate and goes beyond anything any previous President has ever had to endure. It manifests itself in whatever the President does and every move he makes: healthcare, the Stimulus, Cash for Clunkers, Justice Sotomayor, Afghanistan and heaven help Obama if he wants to try and talk to the kids. When Obama had the audacity to try and speak to America’s school children about getting decent grades, Fox News and top Republican law-makers urged families to take their kids out of school lest they be brainwashed by the President’s ‘socialism’. Of course, no-one uttered so much as a peep when George W.Bush addressed schoolchildren in 2001, but of course, he was a Republican. He couldn’t possibly have been trying to brainwash children.

And Bush never had to put up with ‘Birthers’, either. Anyone who denies that the criticism directed at Obama does not possess a racial element need only look at this absurd ‘birther movement’, an idea seriously reported on and even encouraged by various media outlets, including CNN.

So toxic have some attacks on Obama become that so-called ‘patriots’ refuse to even accept their President’s own legitimacy as Commander-in-Chief by questioning his very birthplace. Obama was, of course, born in Hawaii, but it’s interesting to consider whether any such movement would have existed if John McCain had been elected. McCain was born at Coco Solo Naval Station in Panama, but of course, had McCain won, no such issue would ever have come about; I mean, come on, just look at McCain, he’s white! Of course he’s an American, silly.

Worst of all; all of this isn’t even confined to the fringes or the worst elements of the media. Republican lawmakers constantly pander to this contemptuous drivel.

Sarah Palin scared millions with her irresponsible talk of death panels, a Congressman advocated domestic terrorism and Rep. Joe Wilson thought nothing of shouting ‘You Lie’ at his Commander-in-Chief at a Joint-Session of Congress. Even Bush never had to endure anything like this.

‘Death panels’, Birthers, taking guns to presidential rallies, calling for the Confederate flag to be lifted on Southern federal buildings and a blind devotion to the Fox News agenda, these are the hallmarks of much of the Grand Old Party today. When traditional Republicans, like Senator Olympia Snowe, speak out against this agenda of destruction and try and work constructively with the president, she gets called out for being a DINO (Democrat In All But Name). Lincoln must be spinning in his grave.

To call these people ‘conservatives’ does a disservice to the American conservatives of old. These people are the radicals and they are the monster of modern American politics. President Carter was right when he spoke of a racial element to some of Obama’s opposition. It has been fused with a refusal by some on the American right to acknowledge any liberal’s right to be President. 

Anyone who honestly spoke of a post-racial America was always living in cloud cuckoo land, but what could perhaps not have been anticipated is the extent to which some have so brazenly questioned the President’s legitimacy. No-one talked of ‘Taking Back America’ in Clinton’s time, nor in Carter’s. It is for this President, this liberal black President, that that particular honour is reserved. It is to those people that propagate all this garbage and despicable misinformation that John Dean (former Nixon White House staffer) referred when he spoke of ‘conservatives without conscience’, and it is for these people that all Americans should hold outright contempt.

By Jessica Asato / @Jessica_Asato

The Jesuit saying “give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man” has much basis in truth - what happens in the early years of a child’s life determines their later outcomes. Research shows that even by the age of 22 months, a child born to professional parents will have a higher cognitive ability than a child born to working class parents from a poorer background. By the second year in primary school, a bright poor child will be overtaken by a less talented child from a middle class family. A child’s physical, emotional and cognitive development depends crucially on the support they receive from family and society in the early years. This led Labour to introduce subsidised nursery places for 3 and 4 year olds and Sure Start centres in disadvantaged neighbourhoods while free childcare places for 15% of the most disadvantaged two-year olds was announced earlier this year in the ‘New Opportunities’ White Paper.

But this will not be enough if we genuinely wish to see a break between parental inheritance and a child’s future life course. The UK still invests three times as much per child in higher education as it does for children under five, yet investment in the early years reaps financial rewards too by reducing child poverty costs, remedial education costs and even the costs of crime, which can often be linked to neglect in the early years.

One major policy shift to remedy this would be to introduce high quality free universal pre-school childcare.

There are three reasons why this is desirable: current provision is often patchy and low quality which impacts on child development; lack of affordable childcare restricts particularly mothers’ choices to go back to work; and Labour’s welfare to work plans depend on there being affordable childcare which parents trust to look after their child.

So why is current provision not adequate for the needs of parents in the UK? Most studies show that there is a failure in market provision because of high fees, which many parents – not just those from very poor backgrounds –  cannot afford. For example, in a recent Daycare Trust report, over half of the parents interviewed said they struggled with childcare costs and 21% said that upfront fees affected their decision to go back to work. There is also a lack of flexibility in the availability of care and poor information for parents about provision. By making childcare available to all, the government would reduce the need for means-testing which, as most research shows, will lead to a take-up of childcare amongst the poorest parents. It would also engender a sense of solidarity among parents of all classes.  

The second reason why it would be a desirable policy is so that women are given a genuine choice about whether they can return to work or not after their child turns one or two. Given that women are still the main carers for children, the lack of affordable childcare hits them more unequally and damages their earning potential leading to both an income and pension pay gap. This is exacerbated for lone parents where being out of work often spells high rates of child poverty.

Finally, Labour’s welfare to work plans rely on encouraging mostly single mothers to find work when their child reaches the age of two. The major stumbling block to this is that most mothers would be hard pressed to find 8 hours provision of affordable childcare to be able to take up offers of work. Universal childcare would remedy this problem and allow mothers to get off benefits and into work which is not only better for the household income, but often for a mum’s mental health too.

While it is true that the introduction of free pre-school childcare would be highly costly, another report for the Daycare Trust predicted that in the best case scenario, the "value of the benefits generated by enabling more parents to work and boosting the long-term productivity of children would exceed the costs of the additional childcare provision by around £40 billion over a 65-year period."

It may not be the best time to introduce universal provision of childcare given the recession, but as a medium-term aim, the Labour party couldn’t do better if ending child poverty, female empowerment and greater equality of outcomes are its goals.