In the aftermath of the stunning SNP victory in the Glasgow East by-election, it was inevitable that the pressure on Gordon Brown would become even heavier than was already the case. Labour are approximately 20 points behind the Conservatives in the polls. However, in the few days since the by-election result, a consensus seems to have emerged in the press. Going through the various commentators in Monday's papers we find:

• Jackie Ashley, writing in the Guardian, calls for a leadership contest (Labour needs a new leader - even if that means a coup). In spite of professing herself to be "his family aside...maybe the last person in the country to admire and like" the Prime Minister. Even acknowledging the dangers which this presents - such as a possible bloody battle over who the leader should be - Ashley says that Labour is heading not for a normal election defeat, but for a full-scale meltdown meaning that precisely this sort of debate over the future of the party is long overdue.

• Ashley's article bears unlikely similarities with one written by Daily Telegraph columnist Janet Daley (Gordon Brown's demise may be a Tory nightmare).. Both columnists recognise that an unelected consensus leader is unfeasible, given the nature of Gordon Brown's leadership 'contest'; something which would seem to weigh against Jack Straw's chances of becoming Prime Minister. However, Daley sees a possible opportunity for Labour to revive interest in its programme by a leadership contest which revives its activists, followed by an election. Citing the fact that the Conservatives have arguably failed to truly differentiate themselves from Labour in terms of concrete policies, Daley fears the prospect of a "neo-Blairite" Labour party outflanking the Conservatives on offering radical reforms.
  

• Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail takes a similar line in noting the fact that the Tories "are still following rather than leading", but disagrees about Labour's chances of surviving in government, regardless of a change in the leadership (Labour is finished, whoever is leader. So isn't it time the Tories set out what they really stand for).
• Bruce Anderson's column in the Independent is the one voice of relative comfort for Gordon Brown - which says something as its opening sentence is the blunt declaration that "Gordon Brown is finished" (It is almost impossible for Mr Brown to cling on. And it is almost impossible to replace him). Focusing on the Labour Party's rules for selecting a new leader, he notes that it would take months to replace Brown - allowing the Conservatives to portray themselves as a party ready for government while Labour are obsessed with political infighting. Anderson's conclusion is that Labour will still be talking about whether to try to remove Brown into 2009; a prediction which would almost certainly be disastrous for Labour if it came true.
  
• Finally, Harriet Harman will be dismayed to read that William Rees-Mogg makes the case for her to replace Brown as Prime Minister. As we have said before, Rees-Mogg's predictions have been a bit off-target for the last 20 years (Labour should choose Hillary, not Obama).
  

Although opinion is divided on whether Gordon Brown should be removed, and who could replace him, the worst news for the Prime Minister from today's newspapers is the consensus among columnists that his position is not sustainable. Even those arguing for Brown to be left in place are doing so from the position that a leadership contest is unimaginable even in the face of Labour meltdown, given the infighting which would inevitably arise. Such an argument, while possibly the prevailing opinion within the Labour party, will do little to strengthen Brown's position.

There are three men in the centre of developing stories today.  If we're meant to be in the silly season, then someone should tell Max Mosely, Barak Obama or Gordon Brown - none of whom are allowing the newspapers to get distracted by the trivial traditional summer fayre.

The ramifications from Mosely's High Court case, Obama's Berlin speech and Brown's electoral loss are barely yet being played out in the papers. These are stories that will continue to play out next week and beyond.

For the sake of brevity though here are a few of the immediate reactions to the Glasgow result:

• Graham Stringer MP wants Brown to go ('Labour MP calls for Brown to quit after by-election humiliation')
• Tony Woodley wants the Blairites to go ('Expel the Blairites now')
• Martin Kettle suggests the whole government is set to go ('Glasgow East, it doesn't get worse than this')
• Iain Macwhirter thinks the Union is in danger of going ('Earthquake in Glasgow East')
  
• Philip Johnston says if anyone's going to go - they need to do it quickly ('How bad was Glasgow East defeat')

Conservative and Liberal Democrat party members will look at the predicament that Labour MP's find themselves in with a knowing smile.  Both opposition parties have in recent years prevaricated whilst the writing on the wall suggested that all was over for the leader of the day.  And, because neither had suitable leaders-in-waiting poised to take over, and few beleived that changing leader would stop the rot, the fatally wounded leaders were allowed to limp on beyond their sell by date. Indeed the Conservative party have spent most of the last decade in such a predicament - including this time last year when Cameron finished the parliamentary term looking washed up.

The current Labour leadership might take comfort from that - but if the legacy of Major, Hague, Howard, Duncan-Smith, Kennedy and Campbell shows anything it is that Cameron has been the exception rather than the rule in being able to turn things around.

The Times has received a letter signed by 80 academics (and a few high-profile authors) criticising the government's proposals for an Early Years Foundation Stage - labelled, not inaccurately, as a toddlers curriculum.

They report it in an article, Authors unite against drive for toddler literacy, and the letter itself can be read here.  They also make the issue the main subject of their leader column today making the entirely sensible point that:

"The EYFS should be made voluntary, not mandatory, leaving the most important decisions about young children to those who know them best."

CentreForum believe that the government should concern themselves with getting the provision of high quality early years education right before trying to impose a curriculum on very young children.  For more see The surest route: early years education and life chances, published by us last year.

• If you've been following the coverage of CentreForum's latest pamphlet, Earned amnesty: bringing illegal workers out of the shadows, you will be interested our article UK in denial over half million illegal migrants on Open Democracy
  

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.