Lab-Lib coalition responses (and some historic pedantry)

This is a round-up of some of the responses to my New Statesman piece this week arguing for a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Peter Hoskin of The Spectator says "there's plenty to be sceptical about. For starters, I think the chances of a Lib-Lab coalition are near-zero, and there have to be doubts over whether it would actually attract voters. But it's still striking how much the idea is popping up 'round Westminster".

John Rentoul chief political correspondent of the Independent on Sunday says "Coalition? Not yet" though thinks. He agrees that the LibDems and Tories are uncoalitionable, but can't see a pre-election Lab-Lib deal. After the election could be different, he argues, but only with change of Labour leadership.

IainDale kindly included the piece in his daley round-up with the caustic comment "Sunder Katwala puts the case for a Lib-Lab coalition. Worked really well last time, didn't it?". A pedant would point out that there has, of course, never been a Lib-Lab coalition. I take Dale to be referring to the parliamentary "Lib-Lab pact" of the 1970s, though he could alternatively mean the MacDonald-Gladstone electoral pact of 1903, or perhaps Labour's support of what became a minority Liberal government in the constitutional crisis of 1910, to successfully face down the Tory party's attempt to defend its hereditary privileges prevent the emergence of British democracy. Which did, in fact, work pretty well that time around.

There was a scathing response from Mike Smithson on politicalbetting, who would storm out of the LibDems were this to come to pass, and who offered the headline 'How daft an idea is this?' (though I am not sure his objection about LibDem national second preferences is centrally relevant to the scenario set out). While the thread was very sceptical, one or two may have been given pause for thought by the response from Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe and a regular politicalbetting commenter:

“For what it’s worth, I’d have few problems with the idea - the Lib-Lab coalition works well in Broxtowe most of the time ... As for how the LibDems would feel, I wonder if it’s an issue where some MPs and some activists might part company - if you’re a LD MPs in a marginal seat, the idea of Labour stepping down in your favour is quite attractive; if you’re an activist fighting Labour in Sheffield, less so.

I’d give 10-1 against it happening, but not 100-1″.

Richard Huzzey at LibDemVoice explains why he would have been for a deal in 1997, but now believes "it would be adverse to principle and pragmatism for us to enter a coalition with Labour - or the Tories - before or after an election" and argues the LibDems should take an issue-by-issue approach to a hung parliament.

There have been a few comments about the local difficulties this would cause on the ground. It would never be popular with either party in Islington, Rochdale or Sheffield. (Emily Thornberry, Islington South MP made a very successful bid from the floor to lower the tone of the Manchester Lab-Lib fringe, though she combines her animosity to the LibDems with being a liberal voice in Labour's debates on several of the issues mentioned in my piece). This point is made, in a highly moderate and considered tone, from an Islington Labour perspective by Captain Jako on frankowenspaintbrush.

Obviously I do not want to see the Conservative Party victorious at the next general election and any strategy which claims to make that event less likely to happen should be fairly considered. However, I would hope that it should be possible for Labour to rejuvenate itself without the assistance of the Liberal Democrats. That way lies (potential) madness!.

Tom Griffin on OurKingdom offers a short overview, and offers his own take:

Katwala is on the right track with ideas such as scrapping ID cards, reassessing Labour's stance on civil liberties and holding an Iraq inquiry. However, if Labour is to start winning over the doubters, it needs to take the initiative on these things, rather than indulge in wishful thinking about a front-loaded political deal. This is not 1997 and Labour is not negotiating from a position of strength. The task now is to ensure that this is not a re-run of 1979 in which progressive politics is eclipsed for a generation.

A similar view was expressed by James Graham, in the discussion kicked off by Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy. Graham, whose Quaequam blog is among the most respected and engaging in the LibDem blogosphere, wrote that "I feel Sunder’s pain, but the problem with this idea is that it could only happen if Labour was not Labour".

He went on to say "Absolutely, the LDs would be mad to pass up such an offer. And such an offer would be in Labour’s long term interests too. The question is, then, what is stopping it from being offered and how do we change it? Fundamentally, is it even possible to change?"

Well, is it? Read more...

Lab-Lib coalition responses (and some historic pedantry)

This is a round-up of some of the responses to my New Statesman piece this week arguing for a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Peter Hoskin of The Spectator says "there's plenty to be sceptical about. For starters, I think the chances of a Lib-Lab coalition are near-zero, and there have to be doubts over whether it would actually attract voters. But it's still striking how much the idea is popping up 'round Westminster".

John Rentoul chief political correspondent of the Independent on Sunday says "Coalition? Not yet" though thinks. He agrees that the LibDems and Tories are uncoalitionable, but can't see a pre-election Lab-Lib deal. After the election could be different, he argues, but only with change of Labour leadership.

IainDale kindly included the piece in his daley round-up with the caustic comment "Sunder Katwala puts the case for a Lib-Lab coalition. Worked really well last time, didn't it?". A pedant would point out that there has, of course, never been a Lib-Lab coalition. I take Dale to be referring to the parliamentary "Lib-Lab pact" of the 1970s, though he could alternatively mean the MacDonald-Gladstone electoral pact of 1903, or perhaps Labour's support of what became a minority Liberal government in the constitutional crisis of 1910, to successfully face down the Tory party's attempt to defend its hereditary privileges prevent the emergence of British democracy. Which did, in fact, work pretty well that time around.

There was a scathing response from Mike Smithson on politicalbetting, who would storm out of the LibDems were this to come to pass, and who offered the headline 'How daft an idea is this?' (though I am not sure his objection about LibDem national second preferences is centrally relevant to the scenario set out). While the thread was very sceptical, one or two may have been given pause for thought by the response from Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe and a regular politicalbetting commenter:

“For what it’s worth, I’d have few problems with the idea - the Lib-Lab coalition works well in Broxtowe most of the time ... As for how the LibDems would feel, I wonder if it’s an issue where some MPs and some activists might part company - if you’re a LD MPs in a marginal seat, the idea of Labour stepping down in your favour is quite attractive; if you’re an activist fighting Labour in Sheffield, less so.

I’d give 10-1 against it happening, but not 100-1″.

Richard Huzzey at LibDemVoice explains why he would have been for a deal in 1997, but now believes "it would be adverse to principle and pragmatism for us to enter a coalition with Labour - or the Tories - before or after an election" and argues the LibDems should take an issue-by-issue approach to a hung parliament.

There have been a few comments about the local difficulties this would cause on the ground. It would never be popular with either party in Islington, Rochdale or Sheffield. (Emily Thornberry, Islington South MP made a very successful bid from the floor to lower the tone of the Manchester Lab-Lib fringe, though she combines her animosity to the LibDems with being a liberal voice in Labour's debates on several of the issues mentioned in my piece). This point is made, in a highly moderate and considered tone, from an Islington Labour perspective by Captain Jako on frankowenspaintbrush.

Obviously I do not want to see the Conservative Party victorious at the next general election and any strategy which claims to make that event less likely to happen should be fairly considered. However, I would hope that it should be possible for Labour to rejuvenate itself without the assistance of the Liberal Democrats. That way lies (potential) madness!.

Tom Griffin on OurKingdom offers a short overview, and offers his own take:

Katwala is on the right track with ideas such as scrapping ID cards, reassessing Labour's stance on civil liberties and holding an Iraq inquiry. However, if Labour is to start winning over the doubters, it needs to take the initiative on these things, rather than indulge in wishful thinking about a front-loaded political deal. This is not 1997 and Labour is not negotiating from a position of strength. The task now is to ensure that this is not a re-run of 1979 in which progressive politics is eclipsed for a generation.

A similar view was expressed by James Graham, in the discussion kicked off by Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy. Graham, whose Quaequam blog is among the most respected and engaging in the LibDem blogosphere, wrote that "I feel Sunder’s pain, but the problem with this idea is that it could only happen if Labour was not Labour".

He went on to say "Absolutely, the LDs would be mad to pass up such an offer. And such an offer would be in Labour’s long term interests too. The question is, then, what is stopping it from being offered and how do we change it? Fundamentally, is it even possible to change?"

Well, is it? Read more...

Was it meant to be 'British workers for British jobs'?

And would it matter if it was?

The 'British jobs for British workers' soundbite was always a high risk, unforced political error, as Andrew Grice detailed in his Independent column at the weekend. If it might not have rebounded quite as strongly as it has, politicians risk fuelling rejectionist politics of the left and right if they seem to promise things they can not deliver.

Gordon Brown should never have used the phrase. The reason went beyond the risk of appearing to pander to far right sentiment. The idea that Brown would advocate economic protectionism was still more unlikely.

Which reminds me that some of us who were suspicious of the phrase back in 2007 were told that the phrase was meant to be "British workers for British jobs". Indeed, that it is how it began, as the GMB conference in the Spring of 2007 (before being reversed by the party conference once Brown was premier in the Autumn), as The Telegraph reported at the time.

It is time to train British workers for the British jobs that will be available over the coming few years and to make sure that people who are inactive and unemployed are able to get the new jobs on offer in our country," Mr Brown told the GMB union.

John Kampfner has said that the reversed version may have arisen from misreading an autocue: that seems implausible to me. In any event, it was used more than once.

Of course, the etymological distinction is rather too subtle to make any political difference. Even Kampfner says he is "not sure I understand the difference". But, to the extent that anybody would notice, 'British workers for British jobs' could indeed have signalled a rather more Brownite and New Labour supply-side approach: the skills agenda to make sure workers are labour market ready, as the GMB speech itself made clear.

It was, in this sense, simply one reworking of how Bill Clinton first addressed the globalisation debate for the New Democrats: investment in skills is a very important policy, though insufficient in itself. Yet the political courage of Clinton's position at the start of the 1990s was that he would address head-on with blue-collar and union audiences the issue of what he was not going to promise, and why, in trying to reframe the debate and provide a different approach to either 'save the jobs' or 'let them drown'.

Now, there are certainly many difficulties in making a comprehensible public case for the essentially protective and supportive role of the enabling state in the global age. Seeking to cut through with misleading populist slogans will always make this dilemma worse. Read more...

Was it meant to be 'British workers for British jobs'?

And would it matter if it was?

The 'British jobs for British workers' soundbite was always a high risk, unforced political error, as Andrew Grice detailed in his Independent column at the weekend. If it might not have rebounded quite as strongly as it has, politicians risk fuelling rejectionist politics of the left and right if they seem to promise things they can not deliver.

Gordon Brown should never have used the phrase. The reason went beyond the risk of appearing to pander to far right sentiment. The idea that Brown would advocate economic protectionism was still more unlikely.

Which reminds me that some of us who were suspicious of the phrase back in 2007 were told that the phrase was meant to be "British workers for British jobs". Indeed, that it is how it began, as the GMB conference in the Spring of 2007 (before being reversed by the party conference once Brown was premier in the Autumn), as The Telegraph reported at the time.

It is time to train British workers for the British jobs that will be available over the coming few years and to make sure that people who are inactive and unemployed are able to get the new jobs on offer in our country," Mr Brown told the GMB union.

John Kampfner has said that the reversed version may have arisen from misreading an autocue: that seems implausible to me. In any event, it was used more than once.

Of course, the etymological distinction is rather too subtle to make any political difference. Even Kampfner says he is "not sure I understand the difference". But, to the extent that anybody would notice, 'British workers for British jobs' could indeed have signalled a rather more Brownite and New Labour supply-side approach: the skills agenda to make sure workers are labour market ready, as the GMB speech itself made clear.

It was, in this sense, simply one reworking of how Bill Clinton first addressed the globalisation debate for the New Democrats: investment in skills is a very important policy, though insufficient in itself. Yet the political courage of Clinton's position at the start of the 1990s was that he would address head-on with blue-collar and union audiences the issue of what he was not going to promise, and why, in trying to reframe the debate and provide a different approach to either 'save the jobs' or 'let them drown'.

Now, there are certainly many difficulties in making a comprehensible public case for the essentially protective and supportive role of the enabling state in the global age. Seeking to cut through with misleading populist slogans will always make this dilemma worse. Read more...

Cameronism: the politics of a Tory court

This morning's Observer makes much of "an extraordinary email exchange" between David Cameron and Will Hutton across a double-page spread. I am less sure. So, perhaps, is Hutton. While Cameron has enjoyed the "frank exchange", Hutton complains, with some justice, finds that Cameron often retreats to his "comfort zone - a litany of prearranged policies". The willingness to take part in the exchange reveals more than its content.

Hutton found Cameron's Davos speech more interesting. James Crabtree at Prospect's first drafts blog finds more than an echo of Phillip Blond's Red Tory thesis in it. My take on this - in a long piece on Red Toryism for Liberal Conspiracy - was that Prospect's striking Maggie as Che cover captures that the barrier to a Red Tory revolution is the Thatcher legacy: Blond on blonde, perhaps.

That is undecided. The Observer reports the Hutton exchange in a page 2 news story as 'Cameron moves on from Thatcher era', as against Friday's Guardian headline that Cameron hailed Thatcher's call for a truly popular capitalism in the same Davos speech. And anybody who re-reads Thatcher's 1987 interview with Woman's Own from which the 'no such thing as society' soundbite came, will find it as plausible to claim that Cameron's doctrine of 'social responsibility' is seeking to rehabilitate Thatcherism in softer hues rather than to repudiate it.

But that need not make Cameron an unreconstructed Thatcherite, as Labour likes to suggest. I would suggest that the most significant line in this exchange comes when Hutton presses Cameron on the merits of Keynesianism. Cameron offers a characteristic tactical swerve, into which rather more can be read;

As a Conservative, I'm naturally sceptical of embracing anyone's theory or ideology; [although I agree that Keynes had many good ideas].

There has been a confused search for the real David Cameron. But here is the real David Cameron: a pragmatic Tory.

This leaves the content of his Toryism open. Phillip Blond tells us that Cameron will prove more Red and progressive than any of us anticipate; Zac Goldsmith believes the green Tories have the ear of their bicycling leader; David Marquand suggested that he inherits the pragmatic Whig tradition of Macmillan, just before Cameron's re-embracing of fiscal conservatism; Andy Coulson has been brought in to balance Steve Hilton, much to the relief of ConservativeHome. Dan Hannan MEP is confident that Cameron will prove much more Eurosceptic than anybody realises while Ken Clarke has a place at the top table. The leader has much more interest in adding to the layers of ambiguity than in clarifying any of this: he describes himself as a liberal Conservative and high Tory, and as a liberal idealist and conservative realist in foreign policy.

He may be all of these things, though only up to a point. This is not simply to observe that opposition leaders can be all things to all people. For this is likely to be Cameron's strategy for government too.

I suggest that the emerging strategy of Cameron's Conservatism is to run a Tory court. All will have his ear, and none his full allegiance. He will embrace the many contradictions by stating that Toryism at its best is never doctrinaire, seeking to recognise the merits of all of these arguments while noting too the value of other arguments that they conflict with.

(Some may say this is simply the Blairite big tent revisited. But, beyond the different balance of voices around the table, there is I think one crucial difference. New Labour argued that different interests could always be synthesised: this provided its certainty and modernising mission. Part of the point of a Tory court politics might be to admit that they can not be).

Of course, finally, to govern is to choose. What this model leaves open the balance of interests and ideas at court - and how these would determine the politics and decisions of Cameronism.

Yet, paradoxically, a leadership which sees merit in having no firmly fixed view about the ideological direction of the party can not take a laissez-faire view about the party's internal debates. For it is impossible to run a Tory court politics without there being different and competing views in the party. The Tory wets had no successor generation, while the Eurosceptic right has organised effectively at constituency level and in parliamentary selections. To the extent that the party has been thinking, it mainly thinks one thing: that less state equals more freedom. Many on the party's right see this as a good thing: ideological unity. But it means the leadership is pressured in only one direction, with an echo of 'no compromise with the electorate' in it.

This, I suspect, is what lies behind the Tory leadership's intriguing sponsorship of Red Toryism. Not, as Blond suggests, because this is where Cameron's true instincts lie. There is, to say the least, no substantive evidence for that. I would be pretty sure the Tory government is not going to break-up Tesco or pursue the protectionism implicit in the localisation model. How marvellous it would be if recapitalising the poor - ensuring assets and wealth to those who have none - were embraced as the party's defining mission. But Conservatives have rarely been more cheered in recent years than by an inheritance tax policy which points in the opposite direction.

What is going on? The easy answer is brand decontamination. But Cameron's attention to the environmental agenda, seeking visible diversity on gender and ethnicity, and perhaps now on market capitalism have another consequence too: they begin to make a 'Tory court politics' in the post-Thatcher Conservative party possible. (In doing so, this animates in miniature the core unresolved tension of any substantive Cameron agenda: he has had to take a "top down" approach to creating voices and pressures which would not otherwise exist, yet an allergy to state action currently leaves Cameronism articulating ends without means).

This would be a rational response to Cameron having had a front row seat as a special adviser in the slow death, at the hands of a Thatcherite and Eurosceptic party. It is striking too that, in the three years since Cameron became leader, every high profile political debate (grammar schools; spending plans; taxation) has seen the right make major gains.

Court politics makes events more important, as they famously were for pre-Thatcher Conservatives. But events do not determine the response taken to them. The financial crisis has seen a sharp shift rightwards towards fiscal conservatism, yet has also forced a more moral critique of capitalism's excesses than would have been articulated before it.

A pluralist balance of courtiers demonstrates open-mindedness and creates strong cross-pressures for inertia, ensuring that no argument is pursued towards a logical conclusion. If the mood music will remain much more progressive than the right would like, those anticipating a revolution in the welfare state or the education system, on the small state right, or a Tory redistributionist revolution, from its fledgling 'left', are likely to be disappointed.

Notice how little Margaret Thatcher shrunk the state, when she got up every morning with that ideological objective in mind. It would surely be prudentially sensible to anticipate that Cameron's Toryism could well leave many things pretty much as it found them.

That outcome would be pretty conservative. But that, after all, may well be the point. Read more...

Cameronism: the politics of a Tory court

This morning's Observer makes much of "an extraordinary email exchange" between David Cameron and Will Hutton across a double-page spread. I am less sure. So, perhaps, is Hutton. While Cameron has enjoyed the "frank exchange", Hutton complains, with some justice, finds that Cameron often retreats to his "comfort zone - a litany of prearranged policies". The willingness to take part in the exchange reveals more than its content.

Hutton found Cameron's Davos speech more interesting. James Crabtree at Prospect's first drafts blog finds more than an echo of Phillip Blond's Red Tory thesis in it. My take on this - in a long piece on Red Toryism for Liberal Conspiracy - was that Prospect's striking Maggie as Che cover captures that the barrier to a Red Tory revolution is the Thatcher legacy: Blond on blonde, perhaps.

That is undecided. The Observer reports the Hutton exchange in a page 2 news story as 'Cameron moves on from Thatcher era', as against Friday's Guardian headline that Cameron hailed Thatcher's call for a truly popular capitalism in the same Davos speech. And anybody who re-reads Thatcher's 1987 interview with Woman's Own from which the 'no such thing as society' soundbite came, will find it as plausible to claim that Cameron's doctrine of 'social responsibility' is seeking to rehabilitate Thatcherism in softer hues rather than to repudiate it.

But that need not make Cameron an unreconstructed Thatcherite, as Labour likes to suggest. I would suggest that the most significant line in this exchange comes when Hutton presses Cameron on the merits of Keynesianism. Cameron offers a characteristic tactical swerve, into which rather more can be read;

As a Conservative, I'm naturally sceptical of embracing anyone's theory or ideology; [although I agree that Keynes had many good ideas].

There has been a confused search for the real David Cameron. But here is the real David Cameron: a pragmatic Tory.

This leaves the content of his Toryism open. Phillip Blond tells us that Cameron will prove more Red and progressive than any of us anticipate; Zac Goldsmith believes the green Tories have the ear of their bicycling leader; David Marquand suggested that he inherits the pragmatic Whig tradition of Macmillan, just before Cameron's re-embracing of fiscal conservatism; Andy Coulson has been brought in to balance Steve Hilton, much to the relief of ConservativeHome. Dan Hannan MEP is confident that Cameron will prove much more Eurosceptic than anybody realises while Ken Clarke has a place at the top table. The leader has much more interest in adding to the layers of ambiguity than in clarifying any of this: he describes himself as a liberal Conservative and high Tory, and as a liberal idealist and conservative realist in foreign policy.

He may be all of these things, though only up to a point. This is not simply to observe that opposition leaders can be all things to all people. For this is likely to be Cameron's strategy for government too.

I suggest that the emerging strategy of Cameron's Conservatism is to run a Tory court. All will have his ear, and none his full allegiance. He will embrace the many contradictions by stating that Toryism at its best is never doctrinaire, seeking to recognise the merits of all of these arguments while noting too the value of other arguments that they conflict with.

(Some may say this is simply the Blairite big tent revisited. But, beyond the different balance of voices around the table, there is I think one crucial difference. New Labour argued that different interests could always be synthesised: this provided its certainty and modernising mission. Part of the point of a Tory court politics might be to admit that they can not be).

Of course, finally, to govern is to choose. What this model leaves open the balance of interests and ideas at court - and how these would determine the politics and decisions of Cameronism.

Yet, paradoxically, a leadership which sees merit in having no firmly fixed view about the ideological direction of the party can not take a laissez-faire view about the party's internal debates. For it is impossible to run a Tory court politics without there being different and competing views in the party. The Tory wets had no successor generation, while the Eurosceptic right has organised effectively at constituency level and in parliamentary selections. To the extent that the party has been thinking, it mainly thinks one thing: that less state equals more freedom. Many on the party's right see this as a good thing: ideological unity. But it means the leadership is pressured in only one direction, with an echo of 'no compromise with the electorate' in it.

This, I suspect, is what lies behind the Tory leadership's intriguing sponsorship of Red Toryism. Not, as Blond suggests, because this is where Cameron's true instincts lie. There is, to say the least, no substantive evidence for that. I would be pretty sure the Tory government is not going to break-up Tesco or pursue the protectionism implicit in the localisation model. How marvellous it would be if recapitalising the poor - ensuring assets and wealth to those who have none - were embraced as the party's defining mission. But Conservatives have rarely been more cheered in recent years than by an inheritance tax policy which points in the opposite direction.

What is going on? The easy answer is brand decontamination. But Cameron's attention to the environmental agenda, seeking visible diversity on gender and ethnicity, and perhaps now on market capitalism have another consequence too: they begin to make a 'Tory court politics' in the post-Thatcher Conservative party possible. (In doing so, this animates in miniature the core unresolved tension of any substantive Cameron agenda: he has had to take a "top down" approach to creating voices and pressures which would not otherwise exist, yet an allergy to state action currently leaves Cameronism articulating ends without means).

This would be a rational response to Cameron having had a front row seat as a special adviser in the slow death, at the hands of a Thatcherite and Eurosceptic party. It is striking too that, in the three years since Cameron became leader, every high profile political debate (grammar schools; spending plans; taxation) has seen the right make major gains.

Court politics makes events more important, as they famously were for pre-Thatcher Conservatives. But events do not determine the response taken to them. The financial crisis has seen a sharp shift rightwards towards fiscal conservatism, yet has also forced a more moral critique of capitalism's excesses than would have been articulated before it.

A pluralist balance of courtiers demonstrates open-mindedness and creates strong cross-pressures for inertia, ensuring that no argument is pursued towards a logical conclusion. If the mood music will remain much more progressive than the right would like, those anticipating a revolution in the welfare state or the education system, on the small state right, or a Tory redistributionist revolution, from its fledgling 'left', are likely to be disappointed.

Notice how little Margaret Thatcher shrunk the state, when she got up every morning with that ideological objective in mind. It would surely be prudentially sensible to anticipate that Cameron's Toryism could well leave many things pretty much as it found them.

That outcome would be pretty conservative. But that, after all, may well be the point. Read more...

Weekly round-up: From peers under pressure to wildcat strikes

Here’s a selection of articles from the political blogosphere and Fleet Street commentariat that have caught my eye over the last seven days. It’s the merest sliver of what’s out there – please post any other links you’d like to share with NextLeft readers in the comments below.

Lord Toby Harris was the fifth Labour peer approached by undercover Sunday Times journalists setting up the splash that sent shockwaves around Westminster - although he declined to meet the “lobbyists” and was not named in the paper’s story. Over on his blog he describes the “unpleasant” experience of being targeted by the sting – which he nevertheless accepts was in the public interest, at least in light of hopeful reform initiated by Lords Leader Jan Royall in response to the story. Meanwhile, BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson cites “informed sources” dismissing the prospect of a police investigation into the peers’ conduct, at least on the back of what the Sunday Times has printed so far. That seems to have got a few of his readers’ backs up….

“Is this the week that Labour lost the election?” poses the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour, in a report depicting growing gloom within the ranks of the PLP; the Observer’s Toby Helm took his own pessimistic soundings after a round of PMQs dominated by increasingly entrenched positions over responding to the recession. Earlier off-the-record chatter – this time from within No 10 – found its way into Rachel Sylvester’s column in the Times, and went on to form part of Cameron’s attack. As ever, Prezza is there to urge a stiffening of Labour spines – and he’s had both Jon Cruddas and Matthew Taylor in his sights…

The battle over the UK fiscal stimulus continues to rage within the fourth estate. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman tells Johann Hari that the Tory approach is “pure Herbert Hoover”, while the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson continues to make the case against the Government’s economic policy. In the week of Lord Mandelson’s announcement of aid for the British car industry, Will Hutton urges more state help for employers fighting to avert redundancies. Robert Peston was on the spot in Davos – see his account of how the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, both “reassured and humiliated the western bankers” with an economic model he predicts to deliver 8% growth this year. But at openDemocracy Paul Rogers points to the IMF’s lower growth forecast of 6.7% for the Chinese economy and includes the Communist-run country among a list of those experiencing threatened or real social unrest amid the global economic turmoil. With its unhappy prognosis for Britain in mind, Labour blogger Hopi Sen urges a note of caution over the IMF’s record of prediction. Meanwhile, Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas sees the wildcat strikes that started at the Total refinery in Lincolnshire as a kicking out against the manifestation of an EU-facilitated “race to the bottom” over workers’ rights, not xenophobia...

Fabian General Secretary Sunder Katwala has already blogged here with the case for forging a Lib-Lab coalition in advance of the next general election. In case you’ve missed the reaction on Liberal Democrat Voice, it’s here – generating in the comments some historical soul searching about the genesis of the Lib Dems in the SDP/Liberal Alliance. At Labourlist, Lucy Powell, Labour PPC for the Lib Dem-held marginal of Manchester Withington re-states Labour’s commitment to targeting such seats, in the face of Nick Clegg's threats of a campaign to inflict 'northern discomfort' on Labour...

Briefly elsewhere, Middle East analyst Marc Lynch suggests Obama hit a home run with his al-Arabiya interview, but argues that “without some form of Hamas buy-in Obama's peace initiative will fall back into the same Clinton and Bush traps”... Read more...