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.