Meanwhile in the Labour party we continue to celebrate the many Councillors that will control numerous major cities for the next 4 to 5 years, including many in the south such as Southampton, Reading, Plymouth and Exeter.

They are focusing on Livingstone because they can't attack Miliband, a Livingstone loss coupled with the loss of Glasgow council and no gains in the South is what they wanted to push at Miliband. Two things then happened the Budget coupled with the dogdy dinner donnors changed the mood, fuel panic then destroyed the competency and finally we re-entered a recession (Something Labour Uncut and others were predicting wasn't going happen). The chance of outing Miliband has gone (And to be honest it's gone til after the next election at least).

So what do they do, they focus on Labour London because that is all they know, that is all they will ever know and to be honest it's very little on a night of much bigger things for Labour

Had it not been London, it would have been somewhere else with some bollocks political anorak symbolic significance.

How about Worcester? Lab gain 3 seats but Tories still largest party.

"Tony Blair understood that you can't adopt a heartlands strategy. He won over Worcester Woman, whereas Ed Milliband hasn't yet grasped this point..."

And Thurrock, Hastings, Norwich, Harlow, Great Yarmouth...

More than a hint of wishful thinking in this post from Atul Hatwal. This consistently high Labour poll lead appears to be sticking in his craw.

Is Labour’s poll lead actually 3% not 10%?



Desperate. UKPR's Anthony Wells has already dismantled this argument (not that much dismantling is required) here.

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Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

And what's the answer to this allegedly small lead....?

I think John Rentoul knows...
He was retweeting this earlier.

So even though Ed Miliband has a double digit lead they still want to snipe at him because they reckon he hasn't. Without Anthony Wells my sanity would die when in reference to amateurs try and do polling.

Labour Uncut has a bad record when it comes to stats. I sent them a critique of some 'work' they'd done on the effectiveness of assorted members of the Labour National Executive Committe, which was about as good as spreadsheet work I used to get from Year 7 (seriously). They ignored it. I really can't work out what is going on in their heads.

They are still sore from 2010, they take the faction thing seriously and then accuse those left of themselves as the ones rocking the boat. I don't think they forgive Gordon Brown for "ousting" Tony and they saw David as that second coming, they know his time has probably gone.

The next leader if Ed wins the next election will probably come from the new batch elected in 2010, if Ed was to win the next election it would be 2020 before he was replaced and if the Tories do exactly what they did in 1997 it could be much longer. Even in 2020 David would be 55 not old at all but the fresher faces would look much more palpable to the party faithful which of course will be younger themselves and we already have Councillors in Swansea (3 in fact) that don't remember 1997. As that event becomes longer in time, it all becomes yesterday.

Also if Ed Miliband was to win an election it would completely ruin the "We can only win elections with the Blair book" argument. Of course for members who just want to see Labour govern this country because they see the opposition as the current government that is hard to comprehend but hey ho they are cnuts.

As far as I could see, David was all about "momentum". There was no ministerial record to speak about, and I didn't get much sense of him having much of a record as an adviser/wonk.

If he could put in a decent shift listening, being a backbencher, he could be a leadership challenger post 2015.

On the other hand he'd have to acquire some clear politics.

He was good at Education, did some serious listening, but never really made anything of it to enhance his rep.
The best thing about him is still the story of him and Mandy in the chip shop.

I got him a Lemsip once...

Wasn't he an academies vanguarder?

Yup, the Labour version.

Still a bad policy though, wasn't it?

I thought so. Andrew Adonis™ and Tony Blair were after some things in education which went firmly against Labour Party (and sensible) thinking, such as faith schools, grammar schools, assorted 'risk-taking' ventures. But in the early years it was an experiment which led on from the Excellence in Cities initiative and was about increased funding for schools in poor areas, taking over from Grant Maintained and foundation schools. By 2003/4 the system had been patched so many times since Major that it was looking quite ramshackle. Of course, Gove has kicked it about even more. The people running it at the DfES had been heavily involved in EiC and Gifted and Talented, well versed in the individualised learning concept, they knew what worked.