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.

As predicted, Pennsylvania went to Clinton by between 9 and 10 points last night, which leaves the democratic race, well, exactly where it was.

Obama has missed his third opportunity to knock Clinton out of the race (New Hampshire was the first, Ohio or Texas the second), but Clinton has yet again failed to significantly close the delegate (or, indeed, popular vote) deficit. Her campaign is in debt. Even if she secures 60-40 wins in all the remaining contests AND 60-40 wins in Michigan and Florida reruns which won't happen, Clinton would still go to the convention with fewer delegates than Obama. She can't win; he can't finish her off.

Obama will go to the convention having won more votes, more delegates, and more states. Although superdelegates may have concerns about Obama, Clinton's negatives have also significantly increased over the past few weeks of negative campaigning. And while Obama may no longer be putting together the impressive coalitions he built in winning states like Virginia in the heady days of February, he nonetheless did better among white men and low income voters than he did in Ohio.

Questions about Obama's ability to win among white working classes can be equally put against Clinton - why is she persistantly unable to win among black and upscale liberal voters - equally critical parts of the democratic coalition? The bottom line is that even if the superdelegates have concerns about Obama's electability, those concerns ought to be outweighed by the damage a coup by superdelegate would do to the party. This article has the best analysis. In the absence of a scandal which blows apart the Obama campaign, I see no scenario by which Clinton gets the nomination.

Anyway, the contest now moves on to May 6th, when more delegates than were at stake in Pennsylvania will be up for grabs. Obama is almost certain to win in North Carolina, but Indiana is perhaps the last interesting state - one that could go either way. Clinton has the support of the popular democratic senator, former governor and presidential candidate, Evan Bayh, but polls show the two candidates are neck and neck, and Obama has a lot more money to spend. Should be interesting...

How the tax and benefits system should be structured has been a hotly contested issue in liberal circles over recent years. The IFS today released a study commissioned by the Mirrlees review of the British tax and benefit system.  The FT picked up on one aspect of the story - that a higher tax band of £100,000 plus is unlikely to raise much, if any, revenue ('Targeting rich will not work, says study').  However, the study is much broader and a better summary can be read in the IFS's own press release.

We're still going through the detail in the report , but its interesting how much the ideas seem to dovetail with our own work on welfare issues which can be read in 'Working on Welfare' on the CentreForum website.

Also in today's news

If you thought the Labour party might be in crisis, read Jackie Ashley in The Guardian today who will confirm all your suspicions. In her article, 'If the rebels prevail, Brown could be ousted in days', she maps out the terrible consequences for Gordon Brown of the 10p Income Tax rebellion.

"The Tories, it seems, will line up with an amendment from Labour's Frank Field to insist on a compensation package for those who will be worse off under the new tax rates. If Labour lost that vote, it would be all up for the prime minister."

The whole piece is well worth reading.  It seems amazing that one of Brown's strongest supporters should be so negative.  The likely explanation comes towards the end of the piece:

I am 100% against the official government view and, with every instinct, on the side of the Labour rebels. But disaster is looming and the real parliamentarians have carefully to weigh in the balance what they now do, and ask how much likelier it will make a Tory landslide a year hence.

So in actual fact the whole piece is really a message directed at troublesome MPs, and those that goad them on, to be loyal.  However, the fact that a commentator has to paint such a lurid picture of destruction in order to pull them back from the edge shows just how bad things are at the moment.

With the first primary for six weeks tomorrow, it's time for Freethink to return to the US of A and consider the implications of the various possible scenarios and make some predictions.

In a sense, we already know what will happen. Barack Obama will win in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and Hillary Clinton will win the vast majority of what is between. John Kerry managed to pull out a victory in 2004 by winning the two cities at either end of the state and nothing in between, but Obama will find it harder.

Although many polls are showing there are 5 or less points in it, I'm sceptical that it will be that close. I anticipate a Clinton win of between 8-12 points for a couple of reasons. 

Firstly, in recent polls Barack Obama has hit 45% on only two occasions, suggesting a consistent ceiling of support. Second, polls thus far have not added up to 100% because of the 10% or so of primary voters who remain undecided. Critically, those who make up their mind close to the election have tended to break for Clinton in the contests so far. When added to the fact that undecideds seem to be located disproportionately in the rural areas, this suggests that Clinton will get the bigger boost from current poll numbers than Obama will.

A result of between 5-10 points will allow Clinton to carry on, but should she lose in both North Carolina (which she will lose by a significant margin) and Indiana (where she has surrendered a double digit lead and which could go either way) the end will be nigh. A win by anything less than 5 points and her position is unviable. She may decide to fight on, but Obama will be the nominee. A win by over 10 points will allow her to fight on, but the delegate maths remains formidably against her. Given that Howard Dean is clearly keen to wrap things up well before the convention, a Clinton nomination still looks a fairly remote possibility.

On leaving the tube station on Thursday morning, I was confronted with a billboard boldly declaring “Suicide bomb backer runs Ken’s campaign.”

The headline refers to comments made in 2004 by Azzam Tamimi who is part of a campaign encouraging young Muslims to vote for Ken. In a BBC interview, Tamimi revealed that he would be prepared to perform a suicide bomb attack in Palestine. Another headline, “Embracing Islam gives Ken new election hope”, links pro Ken Islamic leaders and groups with Islamic extremism. The following question is asked:

“Ken appears to want the Muslims to help him with a historic victory of his own. The question many will ask is: what is he giving in return?” 

A close association with someone making remarks such as those made by Tamimi could be damaging for Ken. However, the extent to which the stories have attacked Ken’s association with Islam in general could prove to be more damaging for Boris.

These two articles attack Ken’s association with Muslim leaders and groups, and express concern about a deal being struck between Ken and the Muslim community. This is likely to be perceived as Islamaphobic by the Muslim community, and with the Evening Standard being staunch and declared allies of Boris, could damage Boris by association among these communities. Given Boris’ history of inadvisable comments about Islam, his support from the BNP, and with other more moderate friends such as David Cameron keeping their distance, could these articles play into a narrative which actually harms Boris more than Ken?

Yesterday an open letter from the Fawcett Society was presented to the Home Office, pleading for immediate action to be taken in delivering better support and recourse to justice for women who have been the victims of rape.

Britain’s rape statistics are tragic. Figures from 2005-6 suggest that of the 14,443 rape cases that were reported that year, there were only 796 convictions. Shamefully, Britain has the lowest rape conviction rate of any leading European country, David Cameron told the Conservative Women’s Organisation in November 2007, with conviction rates at 50% in Italy but just 5.7% here. This also represents a massive decline since 1977 when Britain’s conviction rate stood at 33%.  

Not only is the conviction rate for rape cases unacceptably low but the process is inefficient and slow, with most women waiting for days before receiving medical attention and months before their investigation is taken forward. A leading article in today’s the Independent suggests that the quality of evidence collection is low and that victims who come to the police are routinely disbelieved. And the cases themselves can often last for months. Moreover, it is feared that as many as 75% of all cases are never even reported. Appallingly, this means that only 15 victims in every 1000 ever see justice.

The support systems in Britain are also failing miserably. There are only 45 rape crisis support centres in the country (down from 68 in 1984) and those that still remain are threatened with imminent closure. This is the result of a badly designed funding system which allows centres to struggle as a result of the total inadequacy of sums available and by denying the centres any financial security whatsoever. Many rape crisis centres survive on a year-by-year basis, unsure of whether funding will be granted in forthcoming years and uncertain of the amount they can expect to receive.  The centres are also overloaded, as women come from up to 100 miles away to use rape crisis services, and desperately under-resourced. The Croydon rape crisis centre was reported in 2007 to have had 67 women trying to get through on just two phone lines.  

The government needs to take radical action now. It is feared that as many as one in four women have been victim to rape or attempted rape. There is a dire need to change the way society understands this crime and to reform the way our government offers support and justice to victims. The number of reported cases that go to court must rise dramatically, and Britain’s conviction rates have to improve. The delivery of aid and support to victims needs widespread reform, and large-scale public information campaigns need to communicate the severity of the crime and its devastating consequences, in co-ordination with the press and non-governmental organisations. It is time to challenge society’s tolerance of this unacceptable situation and bring our justice system up to standard.

CentreForum's recent publication on Liberal Democrat-Conservative relationships continues to get press coverage - this time in an article by John Rentoul on Tory preparations for a potential hung parliament...

Read the article here, and find the publication here.

This weekend saw a PR blitz by Jacqui Smith as she continued to push the 42-day detention bill through parliament despite a distinct lack of evidence to support yet another smash and grab on our civil liberties.

In support of the proposal, Smith has drawn on a speech that the MI5 chief Jonathan Evans made back in November. In this speech Evans made clear the severity of the terrorist threat and explained the changing nature of terrorist organisations. Smith has taken this intelligence on the terrorist threat and presented it as proof of the need for 42 day detention. This is an inference that Evans himself certainly did not make and it is with this jump that many experts in the field are taking issue.

There continues to be a derth of evidence that allowing detention without charge for 42 days is the best way to tackle the terrorist threat we undoubtedly face. Smith herself acknowledges that there has not yet been a situation in which the police would have wanted more than the 28 days they currently have. And no-one has answered why the threat in this country demands that police be able to detain suspects for 42 days when two days is sufficient in the US and 12 is adequate in Australia?

There has, however, been much opposition from people well placed to judge the potential effects of the law. Keith MacDonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions has denounced its usefulness whilst the Government’s own Terrorism Minister has called for further evidence. The former Attorney Lord General, Lord Goldsmith goes further:

"Not only is it wrong in principle but it also is counter-productive because it can lead to the risk that part of our community, particularly the Muslim community, sort of sees this as an attack on them and some misguided young men therefore decide to join what they see as a cause to fight us."

Goldsmith is not alone in his concerns about alienating the Muslim community. Labour MPs and even cabinet ministers that represent urban areas in the North and work with these communities, have expressed their concerns about the possible effects of such measures. Keith Vaz says the government does not have the support to push the measure through. The stakes for Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith remain high. He may be forced to choose – as Tony Blair did – between the embarassment of a parliamentary defeat and the embarassment of compromising on a bill he has clearly supported.  In the current political climate, with the media narrative firmly against him, neither option is likely to engender much positive coverage for the embattled prime minister.