Join the club

Harriet Harman, the interim Labour leader, says a new breed of young political activist, committed to opposing the coalition government and the Liberal Democrats in particular, is joining Labour at a rate of 1,000 a week. She said the unprecedented growth in membership, albeit from a historic low base, represents a huge challenge to the party as it tries to make sure the activism has an effective outlet in opposing the government. She said the party’s research shows that half the 30,000 new recruits are previous Labour supporters but regard voting as not enough to change things. A third are former Liberal Democrat supporters angry with the way in which Nick Clegg formed a coalition government. – The Guardian

The Campaign

After a opening few weeks that were, frankly, as dull as watching people watching paint dry, the campaign for leadership seems to have sprung to something resembling lively as the candidates appear to have realised that just as ‘I agree with Nick’ didn’t work for Gordon, ‘I didn’t agree with Gordon’ wasn’t a particularly great line for them to each spew out. Suddenly policy has become the subject of the leadership race, each contender sharing their core ideas across a variety of subject areas. – Political Promise

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Cuts

The Labour party and the unions seized on the 40 per cent figure as proof the Tory-Liberal coalition was about to wage an ideologically-driven war on the public sector. Ed Balls, the Labour leadership contender, said: “These reports will send a chill down the spines of millions of public sector workers and millions of people who rely on our vital public services.” And RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “With cuts of up to 40 per cent in the transport budget we are looking at thousands of job losses amongst the staff who operate and maintain services with dire consequences for passenger safety.” – City AM

Shadow education secretary Ed Balls said the first blow of the axe could fall as early as today with the review of the government’s building schools for the future programme. He claimed rebuilding projects at 750 schools, approved under the former Labour government, were set to be cancelled. Mr Balls, a contender for the Labour leadership, described the government plans for tackling the deficit as “economically unwise and socially deeply, deeply unfair”. “We know from the 1980s and from the 1930s, when we had the Great Depression, that if you try to cut spending and public services really hard and assume that the private sector is going to come along and create lots of new jobs, it doesn’t work out that way,” he said. – Irish Times

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