Election 2015: consensus and challenges

In my latest Sutton Trust blog, I look at education in the general election and beyond.

Maybe they will surprise us. Perhaps in the weeks that remain before the voters cast their ballots on May 7 there will be something radical said on education, such as pledging for-profit schools or cutting tuition fees. But I wouldn’t count on it. And in one sense that’s no bad thing.

Underneath the often overblown rhetoric about unqualified teachers, local authority control or curriculum change, there is a far more consensus and continuity with the main political parties than you might think. Indeed there has been a strong degree of continuity in approach since Kenneth Baker’s reforms of 1988.

And this sense of commonality may explain why this week’s Comres poll for ITV showed that only 7% of the public saw ‘improving the education system’ as a big priority for government, ranking it last behind immigration, the economy, the NHS, welfare, housing and other issues. Other polling has suggested that the two main parties are fairly evenly matched as ‘best’ to deal with the issue.

All the main parties broadly support a strong degree of autonomy for schools and will continue with academies. Labour may not introduce new free schools, but will allow new academies which are pretty similar. All the parties recognise the need for greater regional management of an increasingly autonomous system, even if there are degrees of difference in what would be devolved.

With Nicky Morgan as a more consensual education secretary, there is more focus on teachers and teaching by the Government, echoing a theme that her shadow Tristram Hunt has been keen to put on the agenda. Although there are loud exchanges about ‘unqualified teachers’, their numbers are relatively small and their relevance to the system is less important than the rhetoric might suggest.

Both parties back a College of Teaching, rather more fervently than the profession if our polling last May is anything to go by, and both recognise that more needs to be done to improve professional development, a subject to which we will return next week.

So, this consensus may bring a degree of stability in schools. Big changes to the exam system have yet to filter through, and schools will have to tighten their belts further even if the overall national budget continues to be protected. They will welcome a breathing space.

Yet all this tacit agreement may mask the problems that an incoming secretary of state will face. And it is in their competence addressing those problems that they will be judged as much as on any exaggerated dividing lines drummed up for the purpose of election debates.

The most obvious is the need for many more school places, which requires considerable investment and strategic planning, as well as training the teachers to take the new classes.  This week’s Local Government Association survey put the need at 880,000 – a 12% increase nationally. There is also a real challenge addressing potential teacher shortages in key subjects if the balance between Schools Direct and university-based provision is not better planned.

But other deeper seated issues also need to be addressed.  The first is the attainment gap that still prevails in both primary and secondary schools. True, there have been some improvements in recent years, and the combination of extra money through the pupil premium and Ofsted rigour is at least getting schools to focus on their disadvantaged pupils much more than before.

But this may not be enough in itself. The prevailing mood against top down reform has meant that there is still too little pressure on schools that aren’t doing enough for their disadvantaged pupils. The new EEF Families of Schools tool reveals the starkness of the differences between schools with similar characteristics.

So, more needs to be done to get good teachers to underperforming schools outside the increasingly successful capital, as well as improving professional development generally. As we argue in our Mobility Manifesto, stronger incentives should build on the pupil premium awards to reward successful schools, and those that use evidence effectively. And there is a good case for revitalising leadership education by revitalising the National College of School Leadership, which many heads feel has lost its way as an amalgam with the old teacher training agency.

A second area ripe for change is in social mobility, which our research has consistently shown remains far too low in this country. In particular, we need to have fairer admissions in urban secondary schools, a revitalised national ‘gifted and talented’ programme for highly able students (our Sutton Scholars programme offers one model) and an opening up of the best independent day schools to talented children of all backgrounds.

This needs to be matched with a better co-ordinated approach to access to leading universities – where the gap remains nearly ten-fold between the poorest and richest families – that makes far more effective use of the £800m access funds now being spent. The new HEFCE networks are a start; using that funding wisely is the next step.

Ahead of all that, getting it right in the early years should pay dividends later on. All the parties are keen to promote their plans to improve childcare. That is a laudable labour market policy, helping family finances and improving employment opportunities particularly for women.

But it won’t necessarily support child development for disadvantaged children unless it is accompanied by a much more rigorous approach to the quality of education and care that they receive. With limited resources, as our Sound Foundations report argued last year, a government needs to balance the long-term economic benefits from getting that right against the more immediate benefits of a larger workforce.

If there is now a broader consensus on standards and structural issues in schools, whoever forms the government after May should have more room to move further on these issues. Hopefully, as they do so, they can develop a degree of cross-party agreement on lasting steps that will narrow attainment gaps and improve social mobility

Anti-immigrant protectionism is not the answer

Until now, it probably didn't matter a whole lot what Maurice Glasman had to say about anything. I quite happily allowed the chatter about Blue Labour to pass me by. Indeed, I probably thought there was something in the attempts to revive things like credit unions at a time of banking crises. His community projects offered a useful counterpoint to David Cameron's Big Society. But Ed Miliband was not in any position to challenge Cameron, and few cared what his 'gurus' had to say about policy. Not any more. Miliband's deft handling of the ever-widening hacking scandal has given him a new prominence, and the utterances of this guru start to matter.

As someone who has played my part in taming, if not slaying, a few sacred cows, I suppose I shouldn't really object if this 'guru' wants to start a bovine bloodbath. But when what he proposes is a troubling combination of protectionism and a view of immigration that would be seen as daringly brave in the Monday Club, it is surely time to question Miliband's wisdom in listening too closely to his views.

To be fair, there is always a bit of Maurice Glasman that is worth listening to: his wish to revive crafts and community has much merit. But it is his corollary of those ideas that can be worrying.

In an interview published in today's Daily Telegraph, apparently conducted for the Fabian Review, Glasman has plenty to say about previous Labour leaders, regarding Tony Blair, who won three general elections, as having a 'slightly demented' view of modernisation. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion. So I trust he will forgive me if I raise an eyebrow at his view of the role of migration in a modern economy, though I will leave any psychiatric analysis to professionals. Here's how Mary Riddell reported him:

[He would] renegotiate the rules on European workers and freeze inward migration for EU and non-EU citizens, except where employers or universities make a case for a specific, skilled individual. "We've got to reinterrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour. The EU has gone from being a sort of pig farm subsidised bloc... to the free movement of labour and capital. It's legalistic, it's administrative, and it's no good. So I think we've got to renegotiate with the EU. His call is to restrict immigration to necessary entrants such as highly skilled leaders, especially in vocational skills. "We might, for example, bring in German masters, as we did in the 15th and 16th centuries to renew guilds."
But exemptions should be made on a case-by-case basis? "Yes. We should absolutely do that... Britain is not an outpost of the UN. We have to put the people in this country first." Even if that means stopping immigration completely for a period? "Yes. I would add that we should be more generous and friendly in receiving those [few] who are needed. To be more generous, we have to draw the line."

Let's just get this straight. We need to stop migration, regardless of the contribution migrants make to the economy. That means losing billions from university students who pay to study in the UK. It means forcing industry to employ only British workers, unless they are German meisters, though quite why they might wish to come here now with their own economy doing so well is not clear. It means that the economy should be allowed to take a nose-dive while we test the theory that those who are currently out of work are ready to take on the jobs that are currently filled by EU migrant labour, in turn surely increasing unemployment in the short term and making it impossible for British workers to work overseas. It means reducing our opportunities to export into international markets. Businesses facing real difficulties can go whistle if they need to recruit abroad to survive.

And, of course, it means leaving the European Union and defying our international asylum obligations to retreat into bucolic splendid isolation. Of course, the whole thing is not just isolationist, it is economically suspect, simply ignoring the realities of globalisation in favour of workerist nostalgia that would even have stretched crudulity in the 1950s Soviet Union. There was a reason that New Labour was an electoral success: it was in tune with the realities both of people's lives and of the world they lived in. David Cameron had to make similar adjustments with his party. The last thing Ed Miliband - and Labour - needs is an attempt to turn the party into an isolationist, anti-immigrant, protectionist force: that is hopefully not where the centre ground of British politics really lies. 

We need a leader who shows Labour is back in business

It may come as no surprise that I am backing David Miliband when I cast my vote in Labour's leadership election. I have known and worked with him at various times over the last fifteen years, and while not always agreeing with him, have no doubt that he is the only one of the five candidates with the range of qualities needed not only to lead the Labour Party but to be Prime Minister. His speeches including that at the King Solomon Academy recently reflect an understanding of why we lost and how we should respond to the coalition that is frankly absent from any of his rivals.

Ed Miliband has been the surprise of this campaign, at least to me: his bizarre decision to tack leftwards reflects a lack of seriousness about the role that he seeks and a misunderstanding of how to reconnect with the voters we lost in droves in the 2010 election in constituencies like mine and across the South and South West. I have no doubt that he is often the better speaker at engaging seminar audiences than his brother, but that is not in itself a qualification for the top job. He may have attracted union endorsements and the support of the New Statesman in the process, but he has also made it far harder to win back lost voters.

Yet this has been a campaign that - fratricidal elements aside - has largely failed to ignite the attention of the public. On the one hand, that may be to the good: our support has held up well in the polls and council by-elections. But once the result is declared it is vital that the energy displayed by Tony Blair after 1994 is on display from our new leader. There must be boldness, renewal and new policy. Rather than re-running the 2005 election on Iraq, we need to prepare for an election in 2015 (or before) with a cunning and a maturity that gives people the confdidence to vote Labour again. On the evidence of recent months, David Miliband is readier to strike that balance than his opponents. But if - and, hopefully, when - he wins, he needs to redouble his efforts to show that Labour is once again back in business.

David Miliband's manifesto

David Miliband has today launched his bid to be Labour leader with an excellent speech that shows he understands why we lost and some of what we need to do to win again (my emphases):

We need to begin with why we lost. The essential problem was simple. In a change election we were perceived to be defending the old order. Future is the most important word in politics; but we looked out of time. Understand this, and we can rebuild. Be brutally honest about it: for too many people, we were not the people’s party that was created 100 years ago, but the politicians’ party. We were perceived by too many voters, our people, as out of touch.

So why did it happen? Because our challenge after three terms in government was renewal. We all agreed on that. Renewal in policy, renewal in culture, renewal in organisation. But we did not manage to make it real. We needed a renaissance of progressive thinking; people thought we had tried to reboot New Labour.

- On policy, we were neither proud enough of our record, humble enough about our mistakes, clear enough about our offer. We saved the NHS but it was not an issue at the election. We lost focus on education and anti social behaviour. We were playing catch up on political reform, immigration and housing. We had many policies which made sense, but they did not convince the electorate we had a coherent vision for the future of the country.

- Let’s be honest about culture too and organisation too. We did not symbolise today’s requirement for openness, participation and dialogue. We talked about new politics, late in the day admittedly, but we did not escape the image of politics as a game not a calling. We drew on our deepest strengths come the election. But an electoral machine is only replenished when it is a genuine social and political movement in the community, able to affect change. That is what many of our MPs have taught us. That is what the whole party needs to be geared to achieve.

The result is that our conversation with the public broke down. We need to restart it with our most precious asset: our idealism for a better future. Idealism is the lifeblood of our party. Not that we think we will build heaven on earth; but that we should try. And that when we create the NHS or legislate for a minimum wage or deliver free nursery education or triple overseas aid we live out our commitments to the brotherhood of man.

The beating heart of progressive values in Britain has not been stilled. In fact the other two main parties spent most of the election trying to steal them from us. What we lost was the sense that the Labour Party could be the vehicle for the implementation of those values.

So we have to put that right. Starting with this contest. Starting with one vow more important than any other: we renounce today re-fighting the battles of the past. The Blair/Brown era is over. I am not interested in politics defined as Blairite or Brownite. New Labour isn’t new any more. We learn from it; we benefit from it; we seek to emulate its successes but not repeat its mantras.

We need new ideas, and new ways of doing politics. New Labour did fantastic things for the country. But now we are out of power, what counts is next Labour. Listening, idealistic, open, engaged, thoughtful, radical, decisive, Labour. We have four tasks that we must address together.

First, we must reconnect our party, its aims, our policies, with our values and our voters. For the mum who works hard and gets tax credits but is fearful about the needles that she finds at her kids’ playground. For the dad who wants to work but whose job went when manufacturing left town. For the teenager who wants to do the right thing but has nowhere safe to go in the evening. I remember the day we committed in government to that inspiring and audacious goal of ending child poverty. It required a massive moral crusade like the Jubilee Debt campaign. Yet what should have been a pulsating movement in every community came to be seen as a technocratic exercise in Whitehall. Politics without values is not just barren; it is unsuccessful.

Second, we must renew our ideology and ideas. The best of the last 13 years is transformative. That new parents expect free nursery places and modern schools; that no political party dares to stand against tackling climate change or raising overseas aid or championing gay rights; that the NHS has been saved for future generations. The mistakes have included flinching from political reform; the lack of responsibility at the top of society; the late realisation that the green agenda is not “environmental” but in fact about economics, culture, security. I stand for individual freedom and social justice. The two traditions of progressive politics in Britain. We succeed when we make them partners, as with the National Minimum Wage or legislation on civil partnerships. We must make them partners again.

Third, we must renew our party. We won an election on May 1st 1997. Party reform stopped on May 2nd 1997. We did not become a movement in our communities rather than just an electoral machine. There is no one way to do that, but it must be done; we must try all of them. Engaging far far better with those three million trade unionists who choose to pay the political levy in what I believe is a positive act of democratic participation; trying what socialist parties around the world have done with experiments like free party membership to become mass networks; building up the connections with civic society that new media make possible. Movement not just machine should be our watchword.

And we must finally be a strong opposition. We are in a unique situation. The Conservatives spent the whole election campaign running against a hung Parliament and they are now in coalition with the people who depend on a hung Parliament for power. Meanwhile the Lib Dems told people to vote for them to keep the Tories out, and ended up bringing the Tories in. So much for new politics. We need to be an opposition which is constructive where possible, and determined, raucus, passionate, obstinate where necessary.

These are big tasks. And we may not have much time to do them. So we need to start in this leadership campaign. We say we believe in new politics. Let’s show it.

The country will not be looking at us carefully in the next few months, but they will notice us; they will be quietly judging our character; they will not follow the details of what we say but they will notice how we behave. So this campaign needs to be a credit to the party. I propose to run my campaign in the following ways, to bring credit to the party: there will be no negative briefing about other candidates; it’s not my way and I won’t be starting now; the people who work for me will be chosen because they don’t do it either; we will tackle unattributable briefing through my named spokeswoman Lisa Tremble; we will listen to every MP and candidate, whether or not they support me, for their ideas about what the country needs and the public want; they’ve just spent weeks on the doorstep and we need to make the most of that knowledge; we will listen to the country as well as campaign in the party; we will take the party and its ideas out into the constituencies we have lost as well as those we have won; and we will raise money for the party; lets face it – the financial disadvantage we faced at the election was made by error not nature; I will start as I mean to go on, giving at least one third of the funds I raise for this campaign into a fighting fund for the next general election.

This leadership election is the beginning not the end. Ideas without organisation is futile; and organisation without ideas is sterile. We know the battleground of politics – not within the party but with the government; the politics of power: we never nailed the Tories on the vacuousness of the Big Society because we did not demonstrate our belief in the empowering state not the big state; the Labour Party was created in part to empower people, and we must never lose sight of that mission

- the politics of protection: what we need to provide ourselves, what the state needs to provide, and what needs to be done together; it’s about rights and responsibilities together, in welfare, in social care, in respect of crime and anti social behaviour
- the politics of belonging: what the world looks like out of your front window, in the semi detached house or the tower block; how much migration, how much change in housing, the local environment, local amenities.

I know the sort of Britain I want to live in. A country where power is redistributed, merit rewarded as well as needs met, global connections celebrated. And I know what sort of Labour Party we need to deliver that Britain: a living breathing movement not just a machine.

Labour must now offer clever opposition

Gordon Brown has resigned with dignity. The progressive coalition was not to be. Soon we will have the details of the LibTory government deal. But for Labour, if it is to rebuild for the next election, now is a time for clever opposition not knee-jerk oppositionism. John Prescott may be relishing a fight. Those who find themselves leading the party in the months ahead need to worry more about the voters' real concerns.

The biggest failure of the Brown years was the way in which some of his lieutenants undermined Labour's reform agenda, purely because it had been developed by Tony Blair. The result is that on education, particularly, the Tories adopted our policies and added a bit of extra radicalism to them. They were ably helped in the process of pretending otherwise by the decision to ditch an education department, sideline academies independence and focus on bureaucratic safeguarding procedures ahead of school reform. This approach not only undermined Labour's education record, it blunted Labour's continued radicalism on the NHS and its successes in fighting crime.

It is vital that Labour regains the initiative for policy radicalism in opposition. That should mean a wholesale policy review to develop approaches for a more economically constrained age and for tomorrow's Britain, including political and democratic reform. It also means that there should be a clever approach to opposition, strategically opposing on issues where it is right to do so but regaining a reputation for forward thinking in the process and supporting the new government where it is right to do so.

When it comes to selecting Labour's next leader, these must be foremost in the mind of the candidates and those of us who vote for them. We need a leader who can craft an approach to opposition and a plan for government that moves beyond New Labour but which doesn't ignore its lessons that allowed us to have 13 years in government. The person most likely to offer that balance is David Miliband.

The new leader does start with a better base than might be expected. We are stronger in London and other cities in local government than for some time. We still have a healthy 258 MPs. We have much new blood and a stronger group of women and ethnic minority members. This is an opportunity for Labour to renew itself. But it is also a moment of real danger, when some may feel we can afford to relax into eighties comfort zones. Which direction we take will determine how long we are out of power this time.

This posting also appears at Public Finance.

The next year for Labour

The leadership crisis seems to be settled. Gordon Brown has reasserted his authority on the parliamentary party. He now faces the bigger challenge of reconnecting with erstwhile Labour supporters who deserted the party in droves last week.

Today's announcements on constitutional reform are a start, and the Tories are being churlish to argue that electoral reform shouldn't be debated. But we need more than debate at this stage: we need action. So, Brown should pledge a referendum on the alternative vote - which would ensure that MPs enjoyed at least the partial support of 50% of their constituents - or a variation which provided some proportional top-up. That referendum should take place on the same day as the next general election, or it is meaningless. At the same time, the Government needs to ensure that all the expenses issues are quickly resolved.

And Brown is right to say that his other two priorities are the economy and public services. On the economy, there are signs that the measures which he and Alastair Darling took last year are starting to pay off. The UK economy is in much better shape than the German one. Banks are starting to pay back their Government loans. Manufacturing output is improving. Sterling is back up to over $1.60. Whether the government gets any credit for this will depend on unemployment starting to level off and fall, and the extent to which public service cuts are needed in the future. And on the latter point, we need some candour about the tightness of the public finances and their likely impact.

On the public services, he needs to renew the reform agenda. Health policy remains strong, and Andy Burnham should continue to deliver it. He must also sell what the Government is doing much better, and explain the importance of lower waiting times and what the Tory abandonment of them would really mean. On education, the government has a good story to tell on schools which it has obscured since Andrew Adonis was moved to transport. The new schools minister Vernon Coaker has a chance to make the academies programme and other aspects of school diversity, including the specialist schools lauded in a PwC analysis yesterday, a central part of the government's story, and stop ceding ground to the Tories. A major rethink is also needed on the bureaucracy surrounding Every Child Matters, with a focus on common sense solutions rather than the endless meetings forced on the system. And in both cases, Labour must show clearly how it is on the side of patients and parents (and children or pupils) once again.

Whether it is too late for all this to have any impact remains to be seen. Despite the dismal results, there are two reasons to think that it might. The first is that the voters are very volatile, and have not yet fallen for the charms of Cameron, such as they are. 28% for the Tories in the Euro poll is hardly landslide territory. The second is that the Tories' policies are remarkably poorly thought through, as BMA/Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley's bluster on Today this morning demonstrated, and once the media finally starts to scrutinise them, their lack of preparation may start to show.

But above all, the public needs to see a much more straight-talking group of ministers who are ready to level with them and to engage with them in a very different way. That is the biggest challenge facing Gordon Brown and the true test of whether MPs were right to give him the reprieve that he has won.

A bad day for mainstream democratic politics, but especially for Labour

The UK European election results are undoubtedly dire for Labour, especially those in Wales and the South of England. But they are not a good day for any of the three mainstream political parties either. For the Tories to get just 28% and the Lib Dems to do even worse than Labour at a time of such unprecedented unpopularity for Labour suggests a real anti-politics mood among the people. If David Cameron thinks his party were the 'clear winners' last night, he needs his head examined.

That the odious BNP now have two seats is bad. That the only slightly less extreme UKIP have increased their representation to come second is almost as bad. A quarter of people voted for far right wing anti-immigrant parties in Britain. The anti-politics fostered by the expenses saga has made this nearly as much a crisis for mainstream politics as it is for Labour. All the main parties have a duty to win these people back.

That said, Labour are undoubtedly the biggest losers and must find a way to reconnect. After all, the economy is starting to recover thanks to the measures taken by Alastair Darling and Gordon Brown. And Brown is right to say that any reconnection depends on the economy, democratic reform and the public services. But the party must realise that the shambolic disunity that has gripped Labour in recent weeks is as much a cause of decline as a product of it.

That is why Barry Sheerman is right to suggest that the leadership issue needs to be settled one way or another in the next week or so. And a secret ballot of the entire PLP is the best way to do it, given that no cabinet member is prepared to put themselves forward for a contest. Once that vote has been taken, there should either be a leadership election involving the whole party if the PM does not enjoy strong support among MPs or an end to the clamour for leadership change if he does. If he wins, Brown must have an absolutely clear strategy for the next year - based on the principles he set out at his Friday press conference - and get on with delivering it with the full support of the parliamentary party.

If we don't get a grip now, Labour will be the agents of our own destruction.

Vote Labour today

Gordon was very good, but is it too late?

The Gordon Brown we saw on this morning's Andrew Marr programme was the leader we have long been promised by his supporters, but the one we too seldom see. He was concise, passionate and forceful in setting out what needs to be done on expenses and what he believes needs to happen on democratic reform. By contrast, David Cameron delivered a below par performance on Sky minutes later.

But with polls variously putting Labour on 16% in the European elections and 22% in national rankings, it all has a bit of a feel of too little, too late. Obviously, I hope Labour does better than the polls suggest on Thursday, and on Europe the expenses saga has utterly obscured the extremism of the Tories (in their plans to hop into bed with Europe's looniest parties rather than the moderate Christian Democrats) and the utter barminess of UKIP, a party which knows a thing or two about fiddling expenses. But the truth on Friday is that the party will be facing a huge electoral headache.

At that stage, Labour will need to decide what it does next. I am sceptical of a reshuffle whose central feature is installing Ed Balls as Chancellor, though I tend to believe little of what I read on the front page of the Sunday Times. But Brown's hint of a more bipartisan approach to government in this morning's Marr interview was more promising and is much more the direction people want after the last few weeks. He should be braver on electoral as well as democratic reform too: Cameron's cretinous suggestion that putting a new electoral system to the voters in a referendum is somehow anti-democratic exposes his plans (to cut the number of Labour MPs)in all their partisan vacuousness; Brown should be braver and openly less partisan.

It is a shame we have seen so little of the Gordon Brown we saw this morning over the last two years. But if it is a signal of a new way of doing things, it may offer a chance of some recovery after Thursday. Otherwise, there may well need to be bigger and tougher decisions made about the future leadership of the party. But it would be best for Labour and for the stability of the economy as we try to recover from the recession if we didn't need to reach that point ahead of the next election.

Wise counsel from Peter Mandelson

My dealings with Peter Mandelson may go back a little further than Matthew Taylor - I worked as a temporary Labour press officer during the 1987 election with a desk just outside his office in the smoky Walworth Road complex then occupied by the People's Party - but I entirely share his analysis of the business secretary's speech in New York. It is just the sort of speech we need from Labour ministers at this time.

Advance billing for his speech to the Council of Foreign Relations suggests that he will say that governments in a recession

"have to be right, even if it means more time before we are seen to deliver.....As nations, we must keep a steady nerve and cool judgement, constantly refining our policies as necessary."

According to a briefing to the Guardian, he will say Labour is in a tough place politically as he urges his cabinet colleagues against daily initiatives to combat the recession, as they only raise false media and public expectations of instant results, while the end of the recession simply cannot be forecast. There are no manuals, blueprints or precedents to dictate what to do.

With today's Mori poll putting the Tories in a 20-point lead, this is wise counsel. The public wants to see results from the big injections of funding and VAT cuts already made rather than new ideas each day. It wants the banks to lend again and more job security. The government needs to show how it has made a difference - and, given that Germany and Japan are clearly also very badly affected by the recession, there is still a case to be made for explaining the international aspects of the recession without underplaying what is happening here.

Mandelson recognises the need for honesty from the government both about the scale of the problem, what we know, what is being done and the chances of success. I don't share the Cameron desire for a full-scale mea culpa from Gordon Brown, but an acknowledgement that politicians of all colours - including the Tory front bench - supported the deregulated environment that led to the City boom and bankers' irresponsibility would not go amiss.

As Matthew says, there is a sense that the Mandelson speech supports his view that the government needs to focus on governing rather than actively maneouvering over the next election (or worse, a post-election leadership contest), when the latter is not only pointless, but self-defeating (indeed taking a more stately position would show a marked contrast with Cameron's petty point-scoring).

And in a timely warning to colleagues about avoiding populist panic measures, Mandelson also calls for some restraint there too.

"Governments must neither ignore the public's anger and impatience, for example on bank bonuses, nor be pushed into hurried judgments because we fear accusations of indecision."

We need to hear more along these lines.

Labour is back in business

Last night's stunningly good by-election victory in Glenrothes shows that Labour is back in business. It was not just the narrow win that might have been hoped for but one where the party increased its share of the vote. This is a personal triumph for a rejuvenated Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah, who spent a lot of time in the constituency. It encouragingly suggests that the party has regained the ability to get out the vote. But it is also a big setback for Alex Salmond and the SNP, with voters rejecting his party's leadership in the local council and Holyrood. And it is a big defeat for the pundits: last night, Michael Crick on Newsnight was repeating the line featured in yesterday's papers that the SNP would win with a 1,000 majority.

After Manchester

The polls are certainly better. However, despite Luke's optimism and plea for silence, there is a danger that their post-conference boost may not outlast the Tories' Birmingham conference.

However, for a good analysis of where Gordon Brown is now and the obstacles he faces - internal as much as external - Martin Bright's piece in this week's New Statesman takes some beating (national government aside!).

The manner of Ruth Kelly's premature resignation

Ruth Kelly has always been a far more impressive minister than her public persona or reputation suggested. When I worked with her when she was education secretary, her knowledge and interest in the detail and consequences of policy was always abundantly clear; I am sure she brought the same commitment and grasp of detail to her transport job, and her departure is a loss for a government in which delivery matters. Moreover, her lunchtime interview on the World At One and conference speech today showed that, when she spoke from the heart, her sincerity shone through, despite a not wholly unfair reputation for poor public performances.

But I do think both Ben Brogan and Daniel Finkelstein are right when they suggest that the manner in which this resignation was 'announced' stinks. Someone who presumably thinks they are doing Gordon Brown a favour has undone a lot of the good he achieved in his powerful speech yesterday by leaking the story. It reflects an approach seen with David Cairns last week and it suggests that the people around Brown simply don't understand the extent to which they are damaging him and precipitating further revolts. Whoever thought it a good idea to feed this story to Newsnight should be in possession of their marching orders pronto.

A respite for Gordon

MANCHESTER - I've been up to the Labour conference for a night to speak at an SMF fringe meeting on higher education last night. There is still the sort of buzz to conference that one has experienced over many years, despite the dismal opinion polls. And there is no doubt that Gordon has had a respite as a result of this week's economic crisis. But there is also a real sense that the Prime Minister is on probation, with many MPs awaiting the results of the Glenrothes by-election, likely to be held in early November. One side-effect of last week's events has been the loss of David Cairns and Frank Roy to running the by-election campaign; by common consent Cairns ran a good campaign in the last by-election, though there was an inevitability to the SNP victory. Fellow Labour blogger Tom Watson now seems set to be the de-facto campaign manager in Glenrothes; a lot hangs on the result there. The likelihood is that if Labour loses in Glenrothes, the pressure will be on the Prime Minister again, and that it will be far more challenging then. But for now he has a temporary reprieve and a chance to show his mettle, not only in tomorrow's speech but in his activities over the next month.

Lessons for Gordon

Bernard Donoughue has some very sound advice for the Prime Minister. Despite the New Statesman's attempt to present it as 'lessons from Jim Callaghan', his article contains some excellent suggestions.

First, he should strengthen his cabinet by persuading some big beasts back inside in senior positions - one of them at the Treasury. Labour needs him to try sincerely, and them to agree. Second, he should overtly try to create trust within his government by giving genuinely full support to his chosen ministers and making it clear that the days of cabals are over (he might wish to acknowledge the past sins of his own entourage in this area and the so-called Blairites could do the same). Third, and above all, he should abandon micro-tinkering with a wide range of policies and focus on two or three major policy areas where he means to make progress in ways that matter to the mass of ordinary people. He should realise that Labour's legislative programmes in recent years have contained little political potency. I have read the Queen's Speeches in dismay and wondered, "Where are the votes in this?" They are usually full of administrative management and politically correct claptrap.

Brown needs to change his way of operating

Gordon Brown may seem on probation, with many ministers waiting to see what happens at the truncated party conference and in the Glenrothes by-election before deciding his fate. There is quite a lot that remains within the Prime Minister's powers during that time.

For a start, Brown has generally given good rousing conference speeches. The question this time is more than ever whether what resonates in the hall in Manchester touches people worried about their household budgets at home. Or, rather, whether the soundbites do so, as we don't have the equivalent of the 38m people who watched McCain, Obama and Palin for leaders' conference speeches here.

After the conference, Brown will need to manage any reshuffle wisely and ensure that any further policy announcements exceed expectations ahead of the Glenrothes by-election. Because expectations are now so low for that poll, if Brown were able to pull off a narrow win, he would probably change the political weather and his fortunes considerably.

But one thing has become clear in recent weeks. It was obvious in the reaction to David Miliband's Guardian article in July, and it was apparent in David Cairns's thoughtful and heartfelt letter of resignation yesterday. Brown needs to reign in those who spend their time badmouthing colleagues ostensibly on his behalf to other MPs and to the press. Their actions are making things far worse for their boss. Today's sour Daily Mail profile of Cairns has all the hallmarks of such a briefing in a paper still personally loyal to Brown (even as its pro-Brown leader confidently tells us he has lost the next election).

If Brown is to survive until a 2010 election - and it seems a bigger 'if' as the days pass - he needs to change the way he operates, the way people operate on his behalf and the way that Downing Street is run. The old ways of doing things may have worked for an all-powerful Chancellor; they are steadily weakening him as Prime Minister.

What Gordon does next

I have an opinion column in this week's Public Finance about Gordon Brown and what he should do in September:

There may be an August lull in speculation over Gordon Brown’s future. But Brown faces a testing September, as he seeks to relaunch his government. After a summer marked by David Miliband’s veiled leadership bid, and some unions backing Alan Johnson as an alternative, Brown will need to do much more than produce a strong economic plan or a cracking conference speech to survive.

This is not just about communications. The PM fares badly against the former public relations professional, David Cameron. But with a far clearer sense of where he and his government are heading, he could overcome that weakness and regain credibility for his government, while exposing the paucity of Conservative thinking. This means having the right policies and the right team to deliver them.

Brown’s problems owe much to a combination of confused messages on key policies and a tendency to substitute micromanagement for strategic focus. The recently leaked memo, supposedly written by Tony Blair last year, complained that Brown had “dissed” New Labour's own record, warning that this was “a fatal mistake if we do not correct it."

To be fair, since January, Brown has started to change tack. There has been more clarity in the government’s education, health, energy and welfare reform policies.

But this has been ignored by a media that has viewed the government as past its sell-by date - a process that has been exacerbated by the earlier ‘dissing’ of reforms. Both the public and the commentariat believe that Labour is playing second fiddle to the Tories in the battle of ideas.

Education is a good example. Tinkering with the independence of academies, an attack on church school admissions and confusion over the future of A levels have enabled the Conservatives’ astute spokesman, Michael Gove, to win an intellectual advantage over the schools secretary Ed Balls. This at a time when Gove has been ditching support for new grammar schools and embracing Labour’s academies alternative.

In fact, Brown has expanded academies faster than was planned by Blair. Balls has targeted 638 low-attaining secondary schools in the inner cities for rapid improvement and Brown has been keen to use academies as an instrument for school reform. But the prime minister’s early reluctance to sing their praises for fear of upsetting backbenchers has given Gove an advantage on a subject that was Labour’s own.

Across several policy areas, stealthy radicalism has meant that Brown has been denied any credit as a reformer. In part, this is the result of a wish to avoid confronting ‘Old Labour’ backbenchers who supported him while he was leader-in-waiting. But it is also a reflection of his own voracious appetite for detail, which means that he can too often become obsessed with minutiae while missing the big picture.

So, if the refreshed Brown is to remake his mark, he needs to become a strategic leader who uses his formidable intellect – and the brainpower of his policy, strategy and delivery specialists in No 10 – to focus on the issues that matter most, leaving ministers and their departments to work on the rest. And he needs to be very clear to the public about those priorities and their radicalism.

A sharper focus could start to turn Labour fortunes around. Aside from any housing and economic stimuli, this might mean polyclinics in health, turning around failing schools and cutting violent crime. Brown would be regularly briefed on progress, and could insist on action where it was not being taken, while using his ministers to ensure that these policies were far better communicated.

That means having the right people in place. In schools and health, much of the leg-work is already being done by Lord Adonis and Lord Darzi. If Ed Balls gets his expected promotion, a strong pro-reform schools secretary, like John Hutton or Hazel Blears, would be vital. Alan Johnson should stay at health, but might also provide stronger communications of the government’s message, possibly as deputy PM; Jacqui Smith has the right down-to-earth instincts for the Home Office, but has suffered from a rival Home Secretary in Jack Straw at Justice.

If Smith is to stay, it would be wise to move Straw, perhaps back to the Foreign Office, while making David Miliband Chancellor, moves that would show both boldness and self-confidence. Brown may also want to bring back strong ex-ministers like John Reid, Alan Milburn or David Blunkett, though mischievous speculation about Milburn as Miliband’s likely Chancellor may reduce his chances.

But the reshuffle will be a one day wonder unless it is accompanied by a much more strategic approach from Downing Street. If Brown is ready radically to change the way he does business he could turn Labour’s fortunes around, as well as his own.

What is David Miliband up to?

In any leadership election, David Miliband would undoubtedly be the front-runner. But he has always played a cautious game until now. He declined to spark a leadership contest against Gordon Brown last year, rightly calculating that he would lose and that it would diminish his standing in the future. Now, his excellent article in today's Guardian has created suspicions in a media anxious to pretend that an empty Westminster is riven with plots, that he is planning to challenge Gordon imminently. Michael White has a good take on it all on his blog (and a reminder that like most politicians, Miliband is heading off on his holidays). I think the most we can say is that Miliband is putting down a marker; but the thesis that he advances in his article is one that sets the minimum parameters for the Prime Minister in September for his conference speech, as much as it is the start of the Miliband leadership manifesto.

Jacqui for leader?

Daniel Finkelstein and Nick Robinson report a flurry of interest in Jacqui Smith following her splendid performance at the PLP last night. Of course, any speculation that one is set to be leader can be the kiss of death, not least with Team Brown. But it is good the media are now starting to see the Jacqui Smith that those of us who worked with her down the years already know: a woman who combines the down-to-earth experience of a former schoolteacher and a mum with a steely determination and excellent political antennae. Her promotion to the cabinet was later than it deserved to be, but owed much to her work on the 2005 schools bill, which gave her great kudos in no.10 and saw her becoming chief whip. But before then, she had built considerable experience in a host of Whitehall departments. Her steel was on show recently when she calmly dealt with the rude reception she received from the police trade union. Don't forget too that in the last general election, she managed to ensure that there was no swing to the Conservatives in her Redditch seat, though her share of the vote fell by just under 1% (although it is now target no 42 for the Tories). This at a time when 'safer' seats than hers were falling. And although the commentariat have been slow to recognise it - not least because of an unseemly turf war with Jack Straw - this blog has long recognised her strength. But I'm not going to join those saying that Jacqui should be the next leader of the Labour Party. Only because I don't want to scupper her chances.

A clear focus will bring renewed purpose to Labour

Gordon Brown has no shortage of advice on what he should do next. Denis McShane wants tax cuts. Simon Jenkins wants him to be brave and do everything that Simon Jenkins has been advocating in his columns. Alice Miles (and lefties in the PLP) want the 2p fuel tax rise delayed again. Truckers want to be made a special case.

Brown must avoid being seen as a soft touch by every special interest group and grumbling backbencher that comes along. The 10p tax bungle was a particular problem that needed addressing. It must not become a precedent. Instead, the government needs to identify half a dozen significant issues where it can promise - and make - real progress between now and 2010.
By all means make some of them areas where the Conservatives have a different view - polyclinics are an excellent example - but also find areas where Labour can deliver while the opposition talk - such as failing schools, where the number of low-attaining secondaries can be halved by 2010. Doing so will also expose the vacuousness of most Tory policy.

The government must focus as relentlessly as possible on these issues, maximising the times that ministers allude to them and organising activities around them. And Brown should use his authority and that of No 10 to drive these policies - and their delivery - through. Of course, Brown also needs the economy to recover sufficiently too. But without such a clear focus, the government will not recover its sense of purpose. And it needs to do so urgently.