The one thing the commentators agree on in reacting to James Purnell's proposals to shake up the welfare system  is that few people are being honest.

Polly Toynbee writing yesterday ('Labour's sin-eater and now neutralised welfare reform') doesn't like James Purnell's Janus-faced pitch:

They were headlines to die for, everything that James Purnell had planned. "Labour blitz on dole scroungers" said the Sun, with "Get clean or lose your benefits, junkies told" from the Daily Mail. His prominent article in the Mail on Sunday was headlined: "There is nothing leftwing about expecting everyone else to pay for people who simply don't want to work." My, it was tough, tough, tough. But for bleeding-heart liberals he wrote an entirely different comment in these pages yesterday - "Only we can help the poor" - challenging Cameron on poverty while emphasising the caring elements in his welfare reform green paper.

Actually, although she doesn't like the presentation, Toynbee is generally supportive of the details of the policy.

Deborah Orr in The Independent has more fundamental concerns.  She feels that policy makers aren't being honest about the deeply entrenched roots of the problem - and invokes a Joseph Rowntree Foundation report to illustrate the intractability of the problems - Radical welfare reform? I don't think so

Alice Miles has the more interesting piece - 'Who'll be the first to offer disabled people a job?'.  She says we're all being dishonest if we think that getting many more disabled people into work will be simple.takes

We all cheer the principle, but who is going to put it into practice? When people demand that the disabled - and I'm talking about the genuinely incapacitated here, not the malingerers - should work, they generally mean that they should do rubbish jobs for rubbish money. Fill the call centres with cripples. Dogsbody jobs for the deaf; boring ones for the blind, they can't see anyway. But where are the decent job offers?

She concludes:

...most of all we need a shift in culture and attitude, among the disabled and among those who could employ them: sticks and carrots for everyone. At the moment, the disabled seem to be taking a hell of a lot of stick.

CentreForum launched its latest pamphlet today - 'Earned amnesty: bringing illegal workers out of the shadows.'

Unfortunately, this week's launch hasn't received as much coverage as did last week's launch of Academies and the future of state education (see previous blog entry).

PA carries the story here.  Whislt politics.co.uk has a useful summary on its site.  The Daily Express also carries the story - though the web version is merely the PA story repeated.

You can judge your own reaction by reading the whole piece from the CentreForum website.

Yesterday, we asked whether the launch of Nick Clegg's new policy document, 'Make it Happen', would get good coverage ('Can Clegg make it happen in the papers?'.)

There is certainly a raft of coverage and comment across the papers - and the vast majority of it is favourable:

The FT, Independent, Telegraph and Guardian, have coverage in the news sections. Interestingly, its The Daily Mail that gives most coverage to the detail of the measures ('Lib Dems vow to slash taxes for poorer people by cutting billions in Whitehall waste').  The sketchwriters also give the launch a fair amount of attention.  Both Simon Hoggart in The Guardian and Ann Treneman in The Times obsess amusingly about the dishwasher that tried its best to derail the launch.

Firstly, two tories give opposing views.  Michael Brown in The Independent thinks that the bold move is actually chasing votes in marginal Lib Dem/Tory constituencies and is likely to be seen as such ('Lib Dems can try and turn themselves into Tories, but I fear they'll still be squeezed out') Whereas Iain Dale in The Telegraph is far more effusive - suggesting that the policy agenda will give a brave Clegg an advantage over a timid Cameron ('What a shame the only tax cutter is Lib Dems leader Nick Clegg')

The Times leader gives consideration to who will benefit from the proposals.  It welcome the move but says that the positive message of cuts for lower income people will be overwhelmed by worries of tax rises for the better off ('Liberal Freedom'). 

Many pieces raise doubts as to whether the Lib Dem grass roots will support the measures.  However, on The Guardian Blog Helene Mulholland shows that the messages from the grassroots so far have also been overwhelmingly positive. ('Cutting taxes, can Clegg make it happen?')

Finally, Alf Young's piece in The Herald might be a pointer to the way things will play out in the papers over the next few months.  The column isn't about the Lib Dem per se - it concentrates on the tax battles between Brown and Cameron ('Mr Brown tries not to blink in the tax spotlight').  A similar piece written at the beginning of the week wouldn't have mentioned the third party at all. But by having a distinctive position the Lib Dems muscle into an issue where they were previously ignored. Commentators will find it much harder to ignore Clegg's line in similar articles in the future. If that is the case, Nick Clegg has not only got good coverage today - but is better placed to receive it in the weeks and months ahead.

Today Nick Clegg launched 'Make it happen' described as a "a statement of the party’s vision and values."

Reaction is so far slow - with only The Independent giving any serious comment to it in the shape of a leader column.  Its verdict is favourable:

"Mr Clegg has a mandate from his party and he deserves an upturn in his party's fortunes, which has eluded him all these months. Perhaps today will see the start of it."

Whether other papers are staying quiet over lack of interest, or because they weren't given advanced copies, we don't know - but we'll be watching tomorrow's papers in order to find out.

CentreForum is launching its latest work today - Academies and the future of state education.  Schools minister, Lord Adonis will be joined by both Children Schools and Families shadow ministers - David Laws and Michael Gove to discuss its implications at an event this lunchtime. (A recording of the event will be made available on our website as soon as possible)

The launch is trailed today in The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph - each picking up on different aspects of the collection:

• The Guardian concentrates on the recommendation to expand the academies model into the primary sector - 'Expand academy model into the primary sector'.
• The Telegraph picks up on the proposal to allow businesses to make profits from the schools they sponsor 'Businesses should profit from academies'
• Whilst The Times uses its main leader to support the proposal to expand the academies model from working mainly with failing schools to working across the board.

At the heart of the book is a collection of 7 different academy headmasters talking about different aspects of their work.  The text can be downloaded from the CentreForum website.

Three separate items of interest today.

Firstly, David Aaronovitch cuts through the knives debate to reminds us how little we know about the statistics. (We are all stabbing blindly at knife crime)

Secondly, anyone who has read CentreForum's work on population (see 'From boom to bust? fertility, aging and demographic change' or 'Does Britain need a population policy') will enjoy Dominic Lawson's piece in The Independent today - 'The hypocrisy of the population zealots'.  Lawson's stimulus is a report from the Optimum Population Trust, a group that says the Government should set targets to reduce UK population to less than half of today.   of procreation and the work it is based on:

[The author] argues: "If the intrinsic value of procreating is the self-fulfilment of the procreator ... then we can presume this experiential value, this fulfilment, is achieved after the first birth – and merely replicated thereafter." I suppose the same argument could be used at the other end of the process. Wife to husband, after consummation of marriage: "That's the last time we're doing that." Husband: "Why?" Wife: "This experiential value, this fulfilment, has now been achieved. To do it again would be mere replication."

Finally, regular readers who follow the ups and downs of the commentariat will find Gideon Rachman's piece in today's FT a stimulating read.  His main argument, that American journalists treat their role more seriously than the UK, is summed up in the title to the piece 'American journalism, still a model'.

He concludes with an interesting observation about the UK opinion writers:

British journalists are often curiously unwilling to acknowledge their power. A recent Reuters Institute report on the “Power of the Commentariat” is in no doubt that opinion writers shape politics. But the authors, John Lloyd of this newspaper and Julia Hobsbawm, note that: “No commentator to whom we spoke said s/he was powerful. It doesn’t figure on the permissible responses of British commentators.”

Despite the growth of the blogosphere, and the decline of newspaper sales, one only has to look at recent Guardian debates about Gordon Brown's premiership to understand that commentators are still exerting a powerful influence on the political world.

David Cameron certainly captured the imaginations of the newspaper scribblers with his speech on Monday launching the Conservative campaign for the Glasgow East by-election.

The speech can be read in full from the Conservative's website. A concise summary of it is offered in The Times - and the headline captures a reasonable caricature of what he said - 'David Cameron tells the fat and the poor: take responsibility'

There are the usual suspects that love the message (see the Leader column in The Daily Mail, Simon Heffer in The Telegraph) and other more surprising supporters (see the Leader in The Independent). There are also those that are not amused (see Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, Arrabella Weir in The Independent or a outraged Alice Miles in The Times.)

However much they agree or disagree with Cameron, the commentators are united that the speech represents an important moment in the development of his narrative.  Where they differ is whether his message will resonate with the electorate.

Freedland thinks Cameron is on shaky ground:

"This was the kind of man-in-the-pub talk that sank William Hague, and the early model Cameron would have gone nowhere near it. That he now has, and with such gusto, suggests he really does believe the Conservative brand has been sufficiently decontaminated that the party leader can now move on to the turf of the populist right without anxiety."

Miles believes that Cameron is becoming more judgemental than the public will stand:

"Beware the politician who reaches for religious phraseology. It is “our mission”, Mr Cameron said, “to heal the wounds”... It sounded like Mr Blair but it was far more condemnatory than he would ever have been. Hell, it was more condemnatory than Michael Portillo or Peter Lilley in their most ill-judged moments.

Its easy to think that Miles is overstating her case - but when you read the harrumphs from Heffer, one begins to see her point. Cameron might have been hoping for his message to act as a dog whistle, but Heffer's turns it into a foghorn. Comparing Cameron's new found right wing edge with George Osbourne's lily-livered plan to match Labour's spending plans he says:

"Does Mr Osborne really think it is socially beneficial to pay the dirt poor, such as are found in abundance in the by-election seat of Glasgow East, to remain dirt poor? Haven't these people been indulged long enough, to their and to society's detriment?"

Should Cameron's message be portrayed in Heffer's terms, he will likely lose support.  However, as the backing from The Independent's leader shows, Cameron has put enough ambiguity into the message to allow for different interpretations. This is reminiscent of Tony Blair's ability to play to several different audiences at once.  A feeling only compounded by the one other thing that the commentators agree on: that so far, Cameron has very little policy substance in this area to show how his new rhetoric might be turned into practical policy.

As we've remarked before, The Guardianistas have been at the forefront of the 'Brown is doing terribly' movement.  Without the fierce judgements of Polly Toynbee, Jonathan Freedland et al it might be easier to paper over the cracks of Labour's recent difficulties.

Jackie Ashley, ups the ante again today - 'Labour must decide.  Sack him or back him. Autumn deadline'.  A couple of months ago she has raised the prospect of Labour losing the next election; she has since moved on to being out of power for a generation.  Today she goes further again:

"The next generation of Labour MPs and future ministers won't be available, at least not at the quality required. Like the money, they will note what is happening, and drift away. To think that parties cannot die is unhistorical. They have done and will do. Tories can always rely on big money to take them through the bad times, even during the zenith of the Blair years. Labour is different, more vulnerable by far."

This is hyperbole, of course. The Tories clearly weren't on the verge of extinction if they have been able to come back to their current position so quickly.

The reason Ashley raises this prospect is that she wants Labour ministers to take her main point seriously:

"...unless Brown gets the united and determined support of ministers and leading backbenchers, he and the Labour party are finished for a long time to come... Drift is not an option. Look in the mirror. Sack him. Or back him."

Its the annual CentreForum summer party tonight and more Labour MPs and ministers are expected than ever before. (Prominent Conservatives have always been keen to be seen at our events.)  So hopefully we will ask them whether they intend to do Jackie's bidding - "Sack him. Or back him' - and if so, which one.

Barack Obama yesterday released his first general election advert: 'The country I love'. It is a rightward facing ad that attempts to insulate him from attacks about his values and patriotism - touting his love of country, his belief in self-reliance and hard work, his support for veterans, tax cuts, and welfare to work programmes, and prominently displaying his white mother and grandparents. It is also biographical - an acknowledgement that Obama remains something of an unknown quantity to many people and is an effort to define him before the McCain campaign is able to.

More interesting than the content of the ad is where it is being run. At a cost of around $3 million - a massive opening salvo - the ad is running across the country in 18 states: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

All the swing states from 2004 are there: Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire (of which the first four went to George Bush, the latter four to John Kerry). Also included are those states which have been trending blue since 2004 and have been on most people's swing state list for 2008: North Carolina, Virginia, and Colorado (in all of which democrats are also hoping to pick up senate seats in November).

But Obama is also going on offence in solid Republican territory: notably Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, Georgia and Indiana. Alaska, Montana and North Dakota are all relatively cheap states to run adverts in because of their small populations. Georgia - with african americans making up 30% of the population - is a dark horse for a swing state that Obama is sensible to put some resources into early to see if he can make it competitive.

There are also some interesting omissions. The fact that the ad is not running in Washington or Oregon suggests the Obama campaign is unconcerned about the McCain camp's suggestions that those two states might prove competitive in November.

With Obama's decision yesterday to opt out of public financing it is clear that his biggest comparative advantage over McCain will be in money. This ad buy shows that Obama is ready and willing to press home this advantage - forcing McCain to spend money defending states he has to win in order to be competitive, and depleting his ability to spend money on states he has to win in order to get to the White House.

CentreForum takes a keen interest in social mobility.  We've written about it several times - most notably in 'Climbing the ladder: how can Britain become more socially mobile'.

It is therefore no surprise that our collective eye was caught by a piece by Jenni Russell in The Guardian today, entitled 'The mirage of meritocracy has sold our children short'.

In it, she reports on of the lack of social mobility amongst her children's peers.  She bemoans the fact that Labour have done so little to improve social mobility.

This might well a little harsh.  Any accurate assessment of social mobility will measure the standing of a fully grown adult against his/her parents.  However, even after 11 years of government, Labour's child poverty measures haven't been in place long enough to impact on intergenerational social mobility. The real answer Labour's impact on social mobility might be that its just too early to tell.

However, her anecdotal evidence is powerful. She goes on to say that:

'The government is exasperated by what it calls the "poverty of aspiration" and exhorts people to have more ambition. It talks as if the only obstacle that lies between talent and success is an absence of will. But that isn't true.'

Unfortunately, she doesn't back up her claim that a lack of ambition isn't causing low social mobility.  She merely says that young people in today's Britain know that the UK's fabled meritocracy is just a myth and give up.

It might well be true that there is a vicious circle where low social mobility fuels lack of aspiration.

However, I couldn't help recalling an comparison made by the former US ambassador to the UK Raymond Seitz between out-of-work coal miners in America and the UK.  They were very similar except in the field of aspiration.  The American workers said "It's a tough and gruelling job that destroys your health, but I want my job back so that I can give my children a decent education and so that they can have a better life.'

By contrast, the British said "It's a tough and gruelling job that destroys your health, but I want my job back so that our children will have a similar trade they can pass on to their children.'

Aspiration is very difficult to measure but, Seitz concluded that certain parts of British society had very low levels.

There's an interesting story lurking around the bottom of the political pages (see 'Phil Collins bows out' in The Standard, 'Labour put on the path to tragedy, says Blair ally' in The Guardian and  'A tragedy is unfolding under Gordon Brown, says Labour adviser' in The Telegraph). Phil Collins, a speechwriter for James Purnell, has been told his services will no longer be required following an article he wrote for this month's Prospect magazine called 'Liberalise or die'.

The article contained two elements that might have been cause for dismissal.  Firstly, it was a little rude about Brown and his most loyal acolyte, Ed Balls.  Secondly, and more interestingly, it said that Labour needed to become more liberal.

"For New Labour to survive, it must become new liberal. The key dividing line in politics is no longer between left and right, but, increasingly, between liberal and authoritarian. The Labour government too often finds itself on the wrong side of this divide. One of the lessons Labour ought to have learned from 11 years in charge of the state is to be humble about the limits of that power. Another lesson is that the demands of individuals for more say in how public services are provided and delivered are growing stronger."

The article is quite succinct and well worth reading in full. 

It also makes an interesting companion piece to CentreForum's 'Lib-Lab' paper from October last year, which looked at the prospects of coperation between the two parties.  That concluded:

"Should Gordon Brown succeed in drawing the poison of the Iraq war from the British political debate, relations between the parties would inevitably improve.  If, at the same time, he was to display real leadership on the environment and a genuine willingness to disperse and decentralise power, the prospect of meaningful Lib Lab co-operation would again become real."

If Collins was dismissed because he was a little rude - the story doesn't mean much (apart from the fact that Labour can't take a joke at the moment).  If, however, he was dismissed because the people in Number 10 fundamentally disagree with the argument for decentralisation that Collins makes, the prospects for Lib Lab co-operation seem more remote now than they did last October.

It is extraordinary how much the political mood has changed in recent weeks.

Until fairly recently the winner of the next General Election was a hotly debated issue.  Now people are treating a Conservative victory as a foregone conclusion.  People have forgotten how unclear things seemed just a few months ago.  In today's Guardian Peter Wilby's premise is not only that Labour will lose - but that they were always going to:

"a Conservative victory at an election in 2009 or 2010 was always likely as part of the cycle of democratic politics." (Peter Wilby - Labour has much more to lose than just the next election)

As the title suggests, he not only sees the next election as a loss for Labour - but has doubts whether they can win the one after that.

What are the Lib Dems to make of this this climate?

With a recent by-election in mind some will wonder whether Clegg will be subject to a Crewe-like squeeze across the country.

In 1997, on the back of a massive national swing to Labour, the Lib Dems gained nearly 30 seats from the Conservatives. But Labour's sweep was so strong that the Lib Dems lost some held held seats like Rochdale to Labour.  Blair was also able to win several seats from third, leapfrogging the Lib Dems in places like Conwy, Falmouth and Cambourne, Hastings and Rye and St Albans.

At the next election there's every reason to expect Lib Dem seats fighting Labour will benefit from a big Conservative swing.  But the Conservatives will also be challenging hard in Lib Dem held seats. The electoral arithmetic shows that there are a third fewer seats that the Lib Dems are in second place to Labour now (103) than they had against the Conservatives in 1997 (158).

The Crewe results don't mean that the Lib Dems can't make gains.  But the ability to defend held seats will be crucial in ensuring that gains from Labour won't be offset by losses to the Conservatives.

George Bridges has unfortunate timing.  The former Senior Conservative staffer writes in The Telegraph today criticising the Lib Dem leader for failing to make an impression on the press in his piece 'Nick Clegg is about to get squeezed out'.

Unfortunately, that piece has appeared on the same day that Clegg has managed to get a raft of stories across a range of papers.

Firstly, The Guardian, Telegraph and Sun cover his Afghanistan visit - mostly because of the rocket fire that came his way whilst there.

Secondly, there's a poll in The Guardian that puts the gap separating Labour and the Lib Dems at just 5% (Con 41% [+2], Lab 27% [-7], Lib Dem 22% [+3], Other 9%[+/-0]).

Thirdly, Clegg has a long article in The Independent about modernising the political system ('Democracy, what a great idea!')

Fourthly, The Telegraph picked up a story yesterday about the Lib Dems being prepared to see a minority Conservative Government if that's what the electoral arithmetic produces ('Nick Clegg will back Tories in hung parliament').

Finally, a speech Clegg is due to make later today is already attracting attention. Not least notable praise from The Guardian leader:

"Both opposition parties would rightly scrap ID cards, but unlike the Conservatives - who would squander the savings on building more jails - the Lib Dems would distribute the money through carefully targeted tax cuts. Other Clegg economies are more controversial, such as cuts to tax credits for those on middling incomes and the scrapping of Labour's popular baby bonds scheme, which gives every child a nest egg. But delivering tax cuts inevitably involves making tough choices. Mr Clegg is showing commendable courage in making plain where the axe would fall."

That piece is certainly worth reading in full. It notes that Clegg's current call for tax cuts on low and middle income earners mirrors the message of the Lib Dems in the 1990s for more spending on public services.  In both cases the Lib Dems out-flanked the main opposition parties: and in both cases the opposition leaders were happy to be out-flanked.

That's not to say that that George Bridges can be ignored. His central point still holds:

"With every poll that shows the Conservatives heading for a possible working majority, the Lib Dems risk becoming irrelevant. Mr Clegg, praying for a hung parliament, is still trying to play footsie with Mr Cameron, saying at the weekend that he would support a minority Conservative administration so long as he could "vet" the Queen's Speech. He can expect to be ignored."

Lots of Londoners liked Brian Paddick and were prepared to support his with their second vote - but in a tight race that was perceived to be a clash of two titans, they wanted to express their view on that clash with their first.

Many people have said that Labour will be looking at its performance in Crewe this week to see if their "Tory Toff" message will play to a wider audience. But surely the Lib Dems will also be looking to see how their Crewe messages have helped them resist the squeeze to put them ahead of Labour.

Anatole Kaletsky does a good job summing up the Government's current difficulties in his piece in The Times today ("It all looks like Enron Government")

In it he not only gives reasons why Gordon Brown is in the position that he is - but also suggests that things are likely to get worse rather than better:

"...if Mr Brown's fiscal rules could be ignored so easily this year to accommodate a £2.7 billion tax cut... why shouldn't they also be ignored to satisfy fuel-tax protesters and pensioners and underpaid public sector workers and bankers demanding bailouts and homeowners struggling with their mortgages and multinational companies threatening to pull out of Britain and farmers complaining about the weather and indeed you and me, since we would all prefer to pay less tax and get more out of government? In short, this week's U-turn could presage a summer of discontent in which every possible claimant and lobby demands its extra share of taxpayer funds."

He also gives a useful summation on what other commentators have been saying about the Draft Queen's Speech and addresses why, having been a good Chancellor, he's having so many problems as PM.

Also in today's news

For our take on John Edwards backing Barak Obama - see our today's other blog entry.

My bold prediction that Hillary Clinton would be gone by the weekend proved sadly incorrect. She continues to fight on despite the impossible odds she now faces - at least until Kentucky and Oregon next tuesday.

Despite Hillary's overwhelming and entirely predictable win in West Virginia, John Edwards' endorsement of Barack Obama is dominating the current news cycle. And rightly so - although the impact and leverage of an Edwards endorsement has been reduced by holding out for so long, it is still important in a few key ways.

1) It moves the news away from West Virginia and gives Obama a solid news cycle of positive coverage which would otherwise have been spent discussing his failure to win white votes in West Virginia.

2) Edwards has somewhere in the region of 20 delegates, in virtue of his 2nd and 3rd placings in the early contests before he dropped out. Those delegates are allowed to vote for whoever they want - most will likely now go to Barack Obama - with some already announcing that they will do so.

3) Edwards will be very helpful to Obama in Kentucky, and with white working class voters in general - among whom he has credibility. Bear in mind that Edwards got 7% of the vote in West Virginia despite having dropped out of the race 4 months ago. Obama is expected to lose in Kentucky by a West Virginia-esque margin, and Edwards campaigning there with him could help him narrow the gap.

Lastly comes the question of what job Edwards could take in an Obama administration. VP ought to be a non-starter - he failed to fulfil the 'attack dog' duty of a VP candidate in 2004 and failed to bring a single southern state (or even his home state) with him. But his endorsement makes him the current favourite to take up the position of Attorney General in an Obama cabinet - which would fit with his legal background, his desire to help the poorest, and allow him to follow in the footsteps of his hero Robert Kennedy.

Lots of liberals don't like their politics being placed on the traditional left-right axis. Most Liberal Democrat front-bench spokesperson reject the terms when asked where they are by journalists.  How refreshing therefore to see a similar line being used by Ken Livingstone in today's Guardian:

"Following May 1 some people are posing the choice as between moving "to the left" or "to the right". This is not the right question. Labour must place itself at the centre of a progressive alliance that can solve the problems facing the country." Yes, I lost.  But still Labour must learn from London

His argument is quite interesting - not least as it comes from the man that used to be synonymous with trying to drag Labour leftwards.

There have been scores of articles this week seeking to give a steer to the Government.  Now that Labour have reached historical lows in the polls (See The Sun or Political Betting) there will no doubt continue to be much more where that came from.

CentreForum's latest publication on special educational needs is published today (read it here): arguing that parental empowerment and choice should drive SEN provision - rather than the opinions of bureaucrats or the artificial 'inclusion' debate. It gets trailed in today's Guardian ('Minister seeks more help for dyslexic pupils'); keep an eye out for more press coverage coming soon...

On to the US, where the democrats can now definitively be said to have a nominee. Hillary Clinton went into the night needing a big  win in Indiana and a narrow loss in North Carolina to solidify the doubts about Obama's electability in the minds of undecided superdelegates. It didn't happen. She got pummelled by 14 points in North Carolina and won Indiana by just 2. Obama won more delegates, more votes, and the larger state (and the one which is more likely to be competitive in November). The night's events blew a massive hole in Clinton's claim to be the more electable candidate.

Crucially, the media is also beginning to conclude that this race is over. Tim Russert declared on MSNBC that Obama has won the nomination. The opinion forming Drudge Report headlined with a photo of Obama and the words 'the nominee', while Obama's victory speech moved him firmly into general election mode. Rumours are circulating that Wes Clark - an important Clinton surrogate and long-time member of the inner circle - called her to tell her to withdraw. Fundraising is likely to dry up, and advisors are conceding that the campaign is effectively broke. If she wants to continue, she will likely have to put more of her own money into the race.

She needs to ask whether such an investment is likely to reap dividends. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that she will have withdrawn from the race by the weekend.

As the fallout from last week's elections continues to be assessed, attention turning to the role of policy in the results.

First off is Anthony Browne, director of Policy Exchange, who writes in today's Telegraph - 'Time to examine Conservative policies'. He sees policy as being crucial to David Cameron's continued pitch forward momentum:

"Cameron and his team need to "seal the deal" with the voters, not just relying on discontent with the Government, but setting out positive reasons to vote for them. That means concentrating on core themes - mending Britain's broken society, delivering real public-service reform, less Government interference in people's lives and more social responsibility."

Rather bleakly, Peter Riddell feels that policy will have little to do with recovery Labour's potential recovery ('Gordon Brown is a leader left with very few options'):

"I doubt whether the publication of the draft legislative programme for 2008-09 – with its proposals on housing, health, education and constitutional renewal – will reverse Labour’s unpopularity."

Labour's recovery, Riddell beleives, hinges entirely on the economy.

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian has an interesting variation on this theme ('Labour has nothing to say and no territory of its own').  She thinks Labour are boxed in on policy and will have difficulty attacking the Conservatives:

"[Labour] can hardly castigate Tory "reforms" out-sourcing more of education and the NHS. Labour did that too. Or rebut Tory promises to be even tougher on crime, sentencing and filling up more prisons, because Labour did that too. Favouring business and the hyper-rich? Labour did it too. Ungenerous to the poor? Labour will trip over its 10p tax debacle... That is where triangulation has led: Labour has nothing to say and no territory to call its own."

She is putting her hope in the ideas being espoused in a speech by James Purnell today.  CentreForum will be going along to hear what is being said - so more about this in the future.

There's an array of interesting articles in the papers today with no particular (or even contrived) links:

• Demographics and inequality are two issues that CentreForum has shown a strong interest over the last two years (See 'Does Britain need a population policy', 'From boom to bust: fertility, ageing and demographic change' and 'Climbing the ladder: how can Britain become more socially mobile') Today, the FT publishes an interesting piece by Christopher Caldwell that brings the two together with the concept of 'mortality inequality'.  See 'More mortal than some'. 
  

• Jackie Ashley tries back-peddling a bit from her more interesting piece of 7 days ago where she suggested that Brown was on the brink of collapse.  In this week's offering ('Brown's retreat to his tribal comfort zone is suicidal') she suggests Brown has "retreated again to his personal comfort zone of macho, tribal men who love to tussle and hate to listen." Her verdict is clear: "This is suicidal."
  I wonder if Tim Hames in The Times would agree.  His prescription today in 'How to stop Labour's self destruction' is that Brown needs an "explicitly political fixer". He describes this as "the person who instinctively understands what will calm or upset Labour MPs and can peer ahead, spot the controversies that might transpire, and damp them down." I read this description as an alpha-male figure - where Jackie Ashley seems to think that the alpha-males are causing the problems.
• The Telegraph's decries the poor state of Britain's local government ('Local council elections? What elections').  "The underlying problem won't be tackled until... local authorities are given meaningful fiscal and legislative autonomy." It is a topic that the paper has spoken about clearly and lucidly for several years now.
  

• If you're bored of Ken, Boris, Brian and Sian and the London Mayoral elections - The Times has an interesting, if rather light, piece looking at various other high profile Mayor's from around the world.  Rather inapropriately titled as 'Beyond our Ken (or Boris)' it gives a pen portait of the Mayors of Berlin, New York and Paris.
  

This week started with Jackie Ashley's suggestion that a Labour rebellion could lead to Gordon Brown's resignation.  We end it with a slew of articles wondering if the U-turn will result in the same thing - but on a more drawn out time scale..

As it happens, even the most hostile commentators don't suggest the effect of doing a u-turn will be as imminently disastrous as Ashley was suggesting.  But its progressive commentators who are most interesting.

Polly Toynbee in The Guardian gets to grips with the detail ('Stop tinkering, Gordon.  Be bold, and show whose side you are really on') - but ignores the implications of the IFS study earlier this week that taxing the rich won't necessarily bring in more revenue.

Nick Clegg has sparked an intense round of comments and reactions with his article 'A clunking climbdown', also in The Guardian.

Thirdly and, for the sake of brevity, finally The Economist looks to what the fallout will mean for the Labour party with an eye to next week's elections ('Beleaguered Mr Brown').

It concludes:

"Labour has been similarly keen to downplay hopes for May 1st. A modest set of results—Mr Livingstone scraping home in London and a slight improvement on last year's share of the popular vote elsewhere—may end up being seen as a spectacular double-whammy. Mr Brown's underlying problems—a declining economy, his shortcomings as a communicator—would remain; but even a short respite from them would be welcomed."

With a 21 year high poll result from a YouGov poll in today's Telegraph - Labour will do well to achieve even that.