Homes4People

New Labour dogma pervades Tony Blair’s biography. Bringing it into the leadership race is a depressing mistake

Nearly over now, then – so let us count the cliches used to decry the Labour leadership contest. “Interminable,” claims the Daily Telegraph. “The least inspiring contest ever,” says a columnist in the Independent. “A bunch of clueless clodhoppers,” reckons the characteristically emollient Mail. Now, the hysterically received Blair memoirs add another commonplace to the noise: that beneath the alleged tedium lurks grave danger – and if it isn’t careful, Labour will stray from the New Labour path, and lurch into irrelevance.

I dutifully bought my copy of A Journey today, and eventually reached the postscript, in which Blair sets out his vision of the future. What awaited was a mess of suggestions, most of which seemed to favour a model of debate that would effectively be meaningless. For Labour, the ideal path entails “remaining flexible enough to attack the government from left and right”. Even as the welfare state is hacked down and our few remaining social democratic institutions put under threat, “defining where you stand by reference to the opposite of where the other person stands is not just childish, but completely out of touch with where politics is today”. The “statist, so-called Keynesian response to the economic crisis” is a busted flush; even starting to rein in pay at the top would do “more harm than good”. Labour, as he sees it, “should criticise the composition but not the thrust of the Tory deficit reductions”.

Behind all this there is a mindset that is closer to a pathology than thought-through politics. Even after the crash, all that is contemporary, sensible and electorally advantageous is reduced to what Blair calls “liberal economic policies, market reforms in welfare and public services, and” – note the graceful use of language here – “engagement and intervention abroad”.

Anyone who questions this is is in danger of slipping back into the disgraced past. Under every bed, there lurks an “old Labour” red; even in the highest circles (witness an early reference in the book to Alastair Campbell: “much more old Labour” than some people, apparently) there is a constant danger of a return to a nightmare world of picket lines, nationalised everything, and serial Labour losses. In Blair’s rather paranoid account, even Lib Dems have “old Labour” instincts: and the coalition will prosper only if it squashes them.

Some salient facts. Between 1997 and 2010, Labour lost 5 million votes, of which 4 million went under his watch. In the eight years up to 2005 the party also mislaid over half its membership (often maligned as a rabble of unrepresentative anoraks – but still the chief means by which Labour actually wins elections). At his last general election, moreover, Blair led the party to a truly hollow victory: the support of 22% of the electorate, an outcome sufficiently chastening that he stood outside Downing Street and claimed to have “listened and learned”. In both the noise surrounding publication or the text itself, almost none of this has been mentioned.

A typical leader in one of today’s papers paid tribute to his three “emphatic” victories, and in his Andrew Marr interview Blair looked back on the 2010 defeat with the same black-and-white analysis. “If we departed a millimetre from New Labour, we were in trouble,” he said, as if he bore none of the blame. Far from what the memoirs call “an approach based on reason, on the abstinence from ideological dogma”, this is its complete reverse: the thinking of the zealot, as full of dogmatic stupidity as the hard-left politics Blair still sees round every corner.

Of late – as evidenced by warnings from Blair, Mandelson and those voices who share their view of things – this has resulted in one of the more depressing aspects of the Labour leadership contest: claims that “Red” Ed Miliband is a dangerous old Labour throwback. No matter that his handful of policy proposals – for the tentative roll-out of a living wage, or a graduate tax, or the high pay commission also supported by his brother – are modest and somewhat cautious. In the wake of an editorial claiming that even his brother was in danger of drifting too far to the left, one Times columnist – the venerable David Aaronovitch – compared him to Michael Foot.

On Monday, I turned on the Today programme to hear another pundit say: “He is properly leftwing. Really leftwing. He wouldn’t admit this now, but if you’d asked him a few years ago who his political hero was, he’d have said Tony Benn. And I don’t mean cuddly, modern Tony Benn, I mean Tony Benn in his pomp, in the 1960s and 1970s.”

The Labour party, I would imagine, has the sense to understand that this is the stuff of fear, voiced by people with no real understanding of either the real world, or the problems Labour has to address, and soon. At least twice in his book, Blair parrots a rollcall of English towns – “Hastings, Crawley, Worcester, Basildon, Harrow” – whose people, he seems to imagine, have experienced no downside of his beloved “liberal economic policies”, and even as the cuts bite, will not want anything significantly different. One is reminded of a priceless sentence, uttered circa 2008 by an unnamed Labour minister, seemingly convinced that the stockbroker belt ran far wider than once thought. “£150,000 isn’t much money in Reading,” he reckoned. Just to set the record straight, half the people who work in that town earn less than £21,000 a year.

No housing shortages in “middle England”, surely; no insecurity at work, or time poverty, or fretting about the debt that people’s children now rack up in pursuit of an education; come to think of it, none of the bundle of worries that always sit under all those concerns about immigration. Even with the application of work and imagination, Blair and his cheerleaders allege, modern social democracy has no hope in these places; and by implication, it has no realistic chance at all. This is not just a counsel of despair, but a desertion of Labour’s most basic mission. In A Journey, the basics of the party’s fate are summed up with the unbending simplicity of a dalek: “Labour won when it was New Labour. It lost because it stopped being New Labour.”

Towards the end of the book, its author says he has come back to the fray to find politics in disarray, and feels more motivated to impart his gospel than ever. “I find my old world in a state of despair and feel shocked and galvanised by this,” he says. “Perhaps that is because I am removed from it and so think I see it more clearly.”

The next bit is in parentheses, but it’s among the most telling sentences he writes: “This could be an illusion.”

It is, of course. It probably always was.

Originally published here

Comments seen as signal to voters not to choose left-leaning Ed Miliband as new leader

The Labour party risks getting stuck in an “electoral cul-de-sac” if it takes a “pre-New Labour” direction under its new leader, Lord Mandelson warned today.

His comments were seen as a warning against the election of Ed Miliband, who has positioned himself to the left of his brother David as the pair have emerged as front-runners to succeed Gordon Brown.

The former business secretary – and architect of New Labour – warned that the party risked a long period in opposition if it swung to the left and failed to recreate the wide-ranging coalition which took Tony Blair to power in 1997.

Mandelson’s intervention could give a boost to David Miliband’s campaign at the start of the week when MPs, MEPs, party activists and members of affiliated organisations will start voting in the postal ballot to elect a new leader on 25 September.

The shadow foreign secretary will today seek to build momentum with a call to turn Labour into a “living, breathing movement for change” when he addresses supporters at a Westminster rally.

David Miliband will dismiss David Cameron’s “big society”, insisting what is needed is the “good society” typified by the community organisers he has been fostering with cash raised for his campaign.

Meanwhile, Ed Milliband has called for Labour to end its caution over tax, telling the Independent newspaper that the balance between public spending cuts and tax increases for the rich should be shifted in favour of public services.

The shadow energy secretary said New Labour had become “ideologically beached” because it was haunted by old ghosts from the past, when the party was viewed as tax-raising and anti-American. Its desire to hide the views of some of its members from voters had led to a damaging “control freak” mentality.

“What always happens in politics is that a generation is shaped by particular events,” he said. “Then the danger is that you get stuck in a particular period. What happened to New Labour is that we got stuck – defending flexible labour markets and not understanding the limits to markets at a time when the world had moved on.

“If you don’t move with it, we end up being ideologically beached – defending bankers’ bonuses, saying you can’t have a top rate of tax on earnings above £150,000 and a living wage. You end up being out of touch with the public … We became overly cautious. Government does that to you.”

But speaking to the Times, Mandelson said anyone who tried to take Labour back to the era before Blair’s election as leader in 1994 would wreck the party’s chances of a swift return to power.

Addressing Ed Miliband’s criticisms, the peer said: “I think that if he or anyone else wants to create a pre-New Labour future for the party then he and the rest of them will quickly find that that is an electoral cul-de-sac.”

He said Lord Kinnock and Lord Hattersley – the former leader and deputy leader, who have both voiced support for Ed Miliband – wanted to “hark back to a previous age”.

“We’re a political party, not a church, and we require the support of voters actively to embrace us, and if we stop recognising that, then we’re going to be taken back into those long years of opposition that served us and the country so ill.

“If you shut the door on New Labour you’re effectively slamming the door in the faces of millions of voters who voted for our party.”

Ed Miliband suggested Labour could raise £5bn from the banks by making the one-off tax on bonuses permanent and introducing a levy on the industry and a tax on financial transactions. But he insisted any tax changes should not hit ordinary families.

David Miliband is today expected to use his speech to brand Cameron’s vision of a big society as no more than a recipe for a “do-it-yourself society”.

“Thanks to a Labour government, people in this country have come to expect more. Cameron is offering them less. I don’t want a big society, I want a good society,” the shadow foreign secretary will say.

That means “good schools, good hospitals, good policing, good estates, good Sure Start programmes, good housing, good childcare”.

“But most of all, the good society is built on people, decent people, inspiring people, like all of you in this hall today – good people doing good deeds.

“I want the Labour party to be a living, breathing movement for change in every community up and down the country.”

David Miliband will criticise the previous Labour leadership for failing to pay enough attention to grassroots organisation, calling on it to adopt the community organising spirit harnessed by Barack Obama in his successful run for the US presidency.

“Let us say to the government: this is the real coalition in Britain today – a coalition of the people, not a coalition of cuts and convenience, not a coalition without principle or morality, but a coalition of people fighting for fairness, fighting for dignity, fighting for safety, fighting to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few, fighting for the good society.”

Originally published here

Former National Union of Miners president one of several people to have received letters saying they no longer qualify for membership

Arthur Scargill, one of the most controversial union leaders of the 20th century, was today told he is being expelled from the National Union of Miners.

The former NUM president, who led the miners during their year-long strike in the 1980s, is one of several people to have received letters saying they no longer qualify for membership.

He has been in dispute with the union over the perks he has continued to receive since he left office, with the union contesting his right to certain payments relating to housing and fuel.

Scargill, who stood down as the union’s president in 2002, has told friends he intends to fight the move to oust him.

He retained an honorary position within the NUM after standing down as a full-time official and has been engaged in work for the union.

Ken Capstick, who has worked for the NUM for 30 years and currently edits its Miner magazine, has also been told he is being expelled.

“We have been told that the reason we are being expelled is that we don’t qualify under the union’s rules,” Capstick told the Press Association.

“A number of us have been raising claims of financial irregularity in the union, and I believe we are now being subjected to a witch-hunt because of this.

“We will definitely challenge this decision, which has been made on extremely spurious grounds.”

Scargill was seen as one of the most powerful union leaders in Britain when the miners called a strike in 1984.

It was the most bitter industrial dispute of the Thatcher era, but Scargill was criticised for not balloting the NUM’s members and the miners eventually went back to work having failed to halt the government’s pit closure programme.

Although once idolised by his members, Scargill has been criticised for continuing to claim a union subsidy for his flat in the Barbican, in London.

He has insisted that all former leaders have been entitled to keep their union accommodation after their retirement.

Originally published here

• Durable and capital goods orders come in well below forecast
• FTSE 100 losses deepen as US double-dip fears continue
• Dow Jones drops 0.3% for fifth session of losses in a row

Financial markets were spooked again today by US double-dip fears as orders for durable goods were weaker than expected and American companies appeared to cut back investment sharply.

Stocks opened lower on Wall Street, the FTSE 100 extended its losses, oil prices fell and the dollar weakened as the US government said new orders for durable goods such as cars, machinery and household appliances rose a meagre 0.3% last month. This was much lower than the 2.8% rise forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.

Excluding equipment for the transport sector – seen as particularly volatile – orders fell 3.8%, the biggest drop for 18 months, and confounded expectations for a modest 0.5% rise.

The weak readings bode ill for US manufacturers and will intensify fears that the American economy as a whole is headed for a double-dip recession .

Economists homed in on worrying signs for investment trends as capital goods orders unexpectedly slumped 8%, excluding the defence sector and aircraft.

Rob Carnell at ING Financial Markets said the durable goods numbers “throw more doubt on the resilience of the US recovery” and that business investment growth was likely to slow in the third quarter, “which will cost around 1 percentage point of GDP growth, and keep fears of a double dip and more quantitative easing on investors minds”.

Aneta Markowska at Société Générale painted a similar outlook: “After strong business investment figures in the second quarter which look on track to be revised up, we are likely to see a significant loss of momentum in the second half of the year. Durable data reaffirms the recent weakness in regional manufacturing surveys and suggests that the resiliency in industrial production figures is unlikely to last.”

The data follows news yesterday that US home sales slumped twice as fast as expected last month, to hit a 15-year low. Those figures rattled stock markets in the US and Europe, and government bonds rallied as investors sought out safe-haven investments.

The US is being closely watched for signs of trouble to come in the UK and the rest of Europe, as it typically leads other economies by several months. Recent downbeat news from the US has ranged from signs that unemployment remains stubbornly high to weak activity across most business sectors.

Today the FTSE 100 was down more than 1.2%, or 64 points, at 5091.5, extending losses of about 50 points before the durable goods data. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped about 30 points, or 0.3%, to 10009 at the opening bell on Wall Street, putting it on track for the fifth straight session of losses.

On UK government bond markets, yields on 10-year gilts set a fresh record low of 2.79%.

Traders will have more to go on at 3pm in the UK when US new home sales data is published.

Originally published here

Deputy prime minister hits out at Institute of Fiscal Studies, which said budget was ‘clearly regressive’

Nick Clegg today accused Britain’s leading independent tax experts of being “partial” in their analysis of the coalition’s emergency budget after they claimed it would hit the poor hardest.

The deputy prime minister said the Institute of Fiscal Studies – which described the budget as “clearly regressive” – did not account for the government’s efforts to get people off benefits and into work or future plans to make the tax system fairer.

The IFS study found the poorest six-tenths of households lost more in cash terms as a result of the budget’s tax and welfare changes than wealthier households in all but the richest 10%.

Its verdict contradicted the chancellor, George Osborne, who told MPs his cost-cutting measures were “progressive” and that the rich would pay the most, both in real terms and as a proportion of their income.

The issue is crucial to the coalition because the Liberal Democrats have staked their credibility on the claim that they have guaranteed fairness in the government’s programme.

Speaking this afternoon, Clegg said: “This IFS analysis is, by definition, partial. It does not include the things we want to do to get people off benefits and into work.

“If you just look at who is receiving benefits then, in a sense, you don’t ask the most important question of all – which is how you can relieve poverty and make Britain fairer by getting people off benefits and into work.”

Clegg, who quoted extensively from IFS reports when he was attacking Labour and the Tories during the prime ministerial debates, said the government’s plans also included a pupil premium to improve the education opportunities for poorer children and further changes to the tax system.

“That is a plan for real fairness, that is progressive,” he said. “And I think that is a richer understanding of what fairness is about than a single snapshot that simply doesn’t provide the full picture of what we are trying to do over the coming months and years.”

Earlier, Mark Hoban, the financial secretary to the Treasury, also insisted the IFS had been selective.

Hoban said housing benefit cuts – which have been cited by the IFS as an example of a budget measure that will have a disproportionate impact on the poor – could result in claimants moving into cheaper accommodation.

He said cuts to disability living allowance would be based on the medical condition of those claiming, not their income, and also insisted the Treasury had published a distributional analysis of the budget measures showing why the government considered them progressive.

“We went further than any previous government has gone in explaining how our measures would impact on people, why it’s a progressive budget, and we stand by that robust analysis,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

The Treasury based its claim on the impact of the budget measures in the short term, but the IFS has taken a longer view including the impact of cuts that will only take effect towards the end of this parliament.

The IFS report says Osborne’s tax and benefit changes between June 2010 and April 2014 will cost the poorest 10% of households – those in the first decile group – £422.83. But those in the ninth decile group will find themselves £339.12 worse off.

The report builds on earlier IFS analysis of the budget, which indicated that Osborne’s claims that it was progressive were mainly down to changes previously announced by Labour.

The new study, part-funded by the End Child Poverty campaign, attempts to reflect the impact of all the benefit cuts announced in the budget.

“Our analysis shows that the overall effect of the new reforms announced in the June 2010 budget is regressive, whereas the tax and benefit reforms announced by the previous government for introduction between June 2010 and April 2014 are progressive”, the report says.

“Low-income households of working age lose the most from the June 2010 budget reforms because of the cuts to welfare spending.

“Those who lose the least are households of working age without children in the upper half of the income distribution. This is because they do not lose out from cuts in welfare spending and are the biggest beneficiaries from the increase in the income tax personal allowance.”

The IFS also questions Osborne’s decision to change the way benefits are increased, moving to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the Retail Prices Index (RPI) or Rossi index, which would lead to “less generous benefits” in the year ahead.

The thinktank accepts the government’s argument that the CPI is a better measure of inflation than the indices to which benefits are currently linked because it allows for the fact that consumers can to protect themselves from price changes by choosing relatively cheaper goods.

But it said the argument that CPI measured goods and services which more realistically reflect the “inflation experience” of households on benefits was “more questionable” because only 23% of benefit claimants are unaffected by increases in mortgage interest payments and council tax, the main items excluded from the CPI but included in the RPI.

Today, in a post on his website, the Labour leadership contender David Miliband said the IFS report showed the coalition government was “targeting children and the most vulnerable in our society”.

The shadow foreign secretary added: “In a little over 100 days, David Cameron and George Osborne have taken backward steps that threaten Labour’s work in government in lifting 500,000 children out of poverty.

“They have all but given up on their ‘aspiration’ of bringing the percentage of all children living on less than 60% of the median income to below 10% by 2020.

“As local government minister Bob Neill confessed in the House of Commons in June: ‘Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt.’”

Ed Balls, another Labour leadership contender, also condemned the government, telling Sky: “The idea that families with children on the lowest incomes are being hit hardest is just shocking, to be honest.

“And it’s a complete assault on the welfare state and on families and children from a government which has always claimed in its language to support families.”

He also said the Treasury was wrong to reject the IFS’s conclusions.

“I was in government for a long time, and I think one of the things you learn is that, however uncomfortable it may be, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, independent analysts, they tend to get things right and they tend to do things in a fair way,” he said.

Originally published here

George Osborne’s budget described as ‘clearly regressive’ by respected fiscal thinktank

Britain’s leading independent tax experts today flatly rejected the coalition government’s claims to have shielded poor families from five years of austerity when they described George Osborne’s emergency budget as “clearly regressive”.

In a direct challenge to Treasury claims that the package of spending cuts and tax increases announced in June was fair, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said welfare cuts meant working families on the lowest incomes – particularly those with children – were the biggest losers.

The IFS said it had always been sceptical about Osborne’s claim that the budget was “progressive” but added that this instant judgment had been reinforced by a study of proposed changes to housing benefit, disability allowances and tax credits due to come in between now and 2015.

Passing judgment that is likely to make uncomfortable reading for the Liberal Democrats, the IFS concluded: “Once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms.”

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, has argued that the budget represented “progressive austerity” by sparing the poorest families from the brunt of the attack on the UK’s record peacetime deficit.

Alistair Darling, shadow chancellor of the exchequer, said: “Just last week George Osborne told us that his budget was ‘fair’. But it’s decisions, not warm words, that count. Today there’s conclusive evidence that far from being fair the coalition has hit the poorest hardest, especially those with children.

“While Nick Clegg is in charge he would do well to ask himself what he thinks he’s doing providing cover for this old-fashioned Tory budget.”

An Osborne aide said: “We will take no lectures on fairness from a party that, for example, failed to meet its targets on child poverty and did not restore the pension-earnings link.”

The Treasury said last night that it still considered the budget to be progressive despite the IFS assessment. “The government does not accept the IFS analysis,” said a spokesman. “It is selective, ignoring the pro-growth and employment effects of budget measures such as helping households move from benefits into work, and reductions in corporation tax.

“It is essential that policy is informed by transparent analysis: that’s why we stand full-square behind our budget analysis which is based on what can accurately and completely be measured.”

The IFS said the poorest 10% of families would lose over 5% of their income as a result of the budget compared with a loss of less than 1% for non-pensioner households without children in the richest 10% of households. It added that the budget contrasted with the “progressive” plans for 2010-14 inherited from Labour, under which the richest 10% of households bore the brunt of the cuts.

Ed Balls, the shadow children’s secretary, said: “So much for the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s promise to be a family-friendly government. It is hard to think of any government in the history of our welfare state that has hit children and poor families so heavily and so fast.

“While Labour’s budgets saw hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty, this Tory-Lib Dem budget will see the poorest families with children lose more than any other group. This report is the final nail in the coffin for George Osborne’s claims to have delivered anything but the most regressive budget in a generation.”

Fiona Weir, spokeswoman for the End Child Poverty campaign, which commissioned the report, said: “The coalition has committed to ending child poverty by 2020, but its cuts are hitting the poorest families hardest. It’s not fair that children should have to pay for the cuts and shocking that the poorest families are bearing the brunt.

“The coalition must re-consider its cuts, including changes to housing benefit and uprating benefits. The spending review will need to show clearly how the government will deliver on the commitment to ending child poverty, ensuring that cuts fall on those most able to pay.”

The IFS said: “Low-income households of working age lose the most as a proportion of income from the tax and benefit reforms announced in the emergency budget. Those who lose the least are households of working age without children in the upper half of the income distribution. They do not lose out from cuts in welfare spending, and they are the biggest beneficiaries from the increase in the income tax personal allowance.”

Osborne’s budget is also facing a legal challenge over claims it may break equalities laws.

The Guardian has learned that the government has so far failed to answer whether it carried out an assessment as required by law, showing it had considered whether women, ethnic minorities, the disabled and the elderly would be disproportionately affected by the cuts.

The Fawcett Society has filed a legal challenge and the government was supposed to reply by Monday. It has asked for more time before lawyers acting on its behalf send a reply.

Sources say the equalities impact assessment, as required by the Equalities Act of 2010, has not yet been carried out.

Earlier this month a leaked letter from Theresa May, the home secretary and equalities minister, revealed she had warned Osborne that cuts in the budget could widen inequality in Britain and ran a “real risk” of breaking the law.

May wrote “there are real risks” that people ranging from ethnic minorities to women, to the disabled and the old, would be “disproportionately affected”.

Anna Bird, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the Fawcett Society said: “Under equality laws, the government should have assessed whether its budget proposals would increase or reduce inequality between women and men.

“It is our belief that the Treasury did not do this, and so did not follow the law when drawing up their plans. Their continued failure to produce any evidence showing they considered the gender equality impact of the budget only adds weight to this concern.”

Originally published here

Policy shift to abstinence-based approach for treating problem drug users won’t work unless prejudice is tackled, warns report

The use of stigmatising terms such as “junkie” and “addict” is proving a major obstacle to the rehabilitation and recovery of problem drug users, according to a report published today by a leading drug policy thinktank.

The UK Drugs Policy Commission says a shift by the government towards a more abstinence-based approach to treatment is unlikely to work unless prejudices about addiction are tackled.

The UKDPC study, Sinning and Sinned Against: The Stigmatisation of Problem Drug Users, suggests that celebrities and public figures who are prepared to talk openly about their recovery from drug addiction should be encouraged.

The report also says that unthinking media reporting of drug addiction should be challenged, education campaigns should be mounted and greater use made of voluntary work placement schemes to help get beyond the “junkie” stereotype.

The report comes as the drugs minister, James Brokenshire, confirmed a clear shift in the rhetoric surrounding official drug policy with the ultimate aim of helping the 210,000 problem drug users currently in treatment to achieve a drug-free life.

But he also acknowledged that the use of methadone treatment programmes to stabilise problem drug users remains an important part of that process.

His statement follows reports that the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, had failed in an attempt to wrest control of drug policy from the home secretary, Theresa May.

It is believed that any drug strategy that adopted a policy of time-limiting methadone use as a substitute for heroin would provoke strong objections from doctors and other leading medical figures. The current policy of long-term methadone treatment has been criticised by Tory reformers as a method of “parking” problem drug users on a substitute pharmaceutical.

A proposal by the Department for Work and Pensions to dock the welfare benefits of problem drug users appeared in a Home Office consultation paper published last week but only as a possible option for those who fail to take any action to address their drug or alcohol dependency. It is believed, however, that David Cameron’s policy tsar, Oliver Letwin, based in the Cabinet Office, is also pushing for a stronger abstinence-based approach behind the scenes.

The National Treatment Agency, which is to become part of a new public health service, is already recasting its approach with a focus on enabling people to become “free of their addictions, including alcohol”, and talks of problem drug users recovering and contributing to society.

Brokenshire said yesterday: “We need a new approach and need to be more ambitious. More focus on a pathway to recovery, so users are free of addiction and can contribute to society. We want users to be clear of addition.

“However, we acknowledge that stabilising someone is still a part of that process, particularly in relation to chaotic and vulnerable users such as sex workers. Stabilising users can then lead to a pathway of recovery where they are free of drugs and can contribute to society by gaining employment, not held in addiction.”

But the UKDPC report says the stigma attached to drug addiction remains a big obstacle to that goal. It says people think of users and former users as the “junk of society” – dangerous, unpredictable and, crucially, only having themselves to blame. It adds that this attitude is hindering access to treatment, securing work and housing, and rejoining society.

The report is the first published in a four-part study led by Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University. He said: “‘Junkie’ and ‘addict’ have become pejorative shorthand for perceived social decay, conveying a sense of anxiety out of all proportion to reality, but such hostile attitudes only add to the barriers of escape from drug dependence.

“When drug use is so common in our society we need to inform the public about the true nature of addiction so that addiction is no longer a lifelong handicap.”

The report found that those involved in treating problem drug users, including pharmacy staff dispensing methadone, can be distrustful and judgmental in dealing with users. These stigmatising attitudes can have a profound impact on problem drug users’ lives.

Charlie Lloyd, its author, cited Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “recovery month”, held in California every September, as an example of moving towards greater compassion for problem drug users.

Originally published here

Policy shift to abstinence-based approach for treating problem drug users won’t work unless prejudice is tackled, warns report

The use of stigmatising terms such as “junkie” and “addict” is proving a major obstacle to the rehabilitation and recovery of problem drug users, according to a report published today by a leading drug policy thinktank.

The UK Drugs Policy Commission says a shift by the government towards a more abstinence-based approach to treatment is unlikely to work unless prejudices about addiction are tackled.

The UKDPC study, Sinning and Sinned Against: The Stigmatisation of Problem Drug Users, suggests that celebrities and public figures who are prepared to talk openly about their recovery from drug addiction should be encouraged.

The report also says that unthinking media reporting of drug addiction should be challenged, education campaigns should be mounted and greater use made of voluntary work placement schemes to help get beyond the “junkie” stereotype.

The report comes as the drugs minister, James Brokenshire, confirmed a clear shift in the rhetoric surrounding official drug policy with the ultimate aim of helping the 210,000 problem drug users currently in treatment to achieve a drug-free life.

But he also acknowledged that the use of methadone treatment programmes to stabilise problem drug users remains an important part of that process.

His statement follows reports that the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, had failed in an attempt to wrest control of drug policy from the home secretary, Theresa May.

It is believed that any drug strategy that adopted a policy of time-limiting methadone use as a substitute for heroin would provoke strong objections from doctors and other leading medical figures. The current policy of long-term methadone treatment has been criticised by Tory reformers as a method of “parking” problem drug users on a substitute pharmaceutical.

A proposal by the Department for Work and Pensions to dock the welfare benefits of problem drug users appeared in a Home Office consultation paper published last week but only as a possible option for those who fail to take any action to address their drug or alcohol dependency. It is believed, however, that David Cameron’s policy tsar, Oliver Letwin, based in the Cabinet Office, is also pushing for a stronger abstinence-based approach behind the scenes.

The National Treatment Agency, which is to become part of a new public health service, is already recasting its approach with a focus on enabling people to become “free of their addictions, including alcohol”, and talks of problem drug users recovering and contributing to society.

Brokenshire said yesterday: “We need a new approach and need to be more ambitious. More focus on a pathway to recovery, so users are free of addiction and can contribute to society. We want users to be clear of addition.

“However, we acknowledge that stabilising someone is still a part of that process, particularly in relation to chaotic and vulnerable users such as sex workers. Stabilising users can then lead to a pathway of recovery where they are free of drugs and can contribute to society by gaining employment, not held in addiction.”

But the UKDPC report says the stigma attached to drug addiction remains a big obstacle to that goal. It says people think of users and former users as the “junk of society” – dangerous, unpredictable and, crucially, only having themselves to blame. It adds that this attitude is hindering access to treatment, securing work and housing, and rejoining society.

The report is the first published in a four-part study led by Colin Blakemore, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University. He said: “‘Junkie’ and ‘addict’ have become pejorative shorthand for perceived social decay, conveying a sense of anxiety out of all proportion to reality, but such hostile attitudes only add to the barriers of escape from drug dependence.

“When drug use is so common in our society we need to inform the public about the true nature of addiction so that addiction is no longer a lifelong handicap.”

The report found that those involved in treating problem drug users, including pharmacy staff dispensing methadone, can be distrustful and judgmental in dealing with users. These stigmatising attitudes can have a profound impact on problem drug users’ lives.

Charlie Lloyd, its author, cited Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “recovery month”, held in California every September, as an example of moving towards greater compassion for problem drug users.

Originally published here

The former climate change secretary on why New Labour must be consigned to the past, why he is the person to lead the left’s revival – and why he’ll never say anything bad about his brother

Party leadership races are generally much less interesting than pundits tend to hope. In the current contest, everyone always knew David Miliband would run – and everyone knows by now that three of his challengers are very unlikely to beat him. Thus it fell to Ed Miliband to provide the excitement.

The young pretender is certainly a sexier part to play than the dauphin, but when I heard Ed Miliband speak back in late May, he seemed so manifestly awkward about fighting his older brother that it was hard to see how the contest was going to work. Remarkably, the pair’s pledge to say nothing bad about one another has been maintained, disappointing Fleet Street’s hopes of a family catfight. But the pledge has also created a vacuum – and in the coded world of Westminster, this has gradually been filled by a subtle but damning Blairite critique of the younger brother.

“Ed Miliband is a really nice guy,” Alastair Campbell has said, “but I think you’ve got to differentiate between making the party feel OK about losing, and making the party face up to what it needs to do to get into shape again.” The former climate change secretary isn’t “up to taking difficult decisions”. Just last week, the former City minister, Lord Myners, accused him of tacking too far to the left on economic policy, and the columnist Matthew d’Ancona has declared, “Ed Miliband will never be prime minister. You know it, I know it. So why would Labour choose not to know it? Because, in this case, ignorance is so much easier than undertaking the sweaty, mostly thankless task of plotting a route back to power.”

When we meet at an aerospace factory in Burnley, I’m curious to see which version will appear – the bold young pretender, or the endearingly meek old Labour loser. It takes less than a minute to find out. I’ve met Miliband several times before, and can safely say I have never known him to sound hungrier, or angrier, or more radically combative. When I mention the whisper that he’s really a Bennite, he goes off like a shotgun.

“That is such nonsense! It’s pathetic, genuinely, I think it’s pathetic. If we think that the way we should conduct political debate is by caricaturing people we disagree with as Bennites, I think it is an absolutely hopeless way to conduct a political debate. Are we really getting to a stage where if an aspirant leader of the Labour party has policies of the centre left, we then say they’re a Bennite? Or we say then where are your rightwing policies? That is the politics of triangulation. And that is not the politics I believe in.”

Miliband’s politics are quintessentially centre left, and not spectacularly different from those of his brother. “I’m confronting the issue of the kind of capitalism we have in this country, which means people get stuck in low-paid work.” He is campaigning for a “living wage” of £7.60 an hour and would look at making the 50% top tax rate and the tax on bankers’ bonuses permanent, but stresses: “I do not want a return to penal rates of taxation.” He proposes a high-pay commission to scrutinise “corporate governance – the cosy cartels which award each other high pay”, but also wants Labour to be the “party of small business and the self-employed” by looking at “the way the banking system works”. On the Iraq war, some of his rivals have disputed his claim to have been opposed from the outset, but a friend of his confirms to me categorically that this was his position in 2003.

What he offers seems to be less a dramatic break with the politics of the past 13 years than with its style and sensibility. He promises to revitalise the party by devolving power and inspiring grassroots participation – and it’s a noble ambition. But what happens, I ask, if the party lurches back to the left, leaving him with a pre- Kinnock problem on his hands?

“The New Labour style of leadership was, ‘We seize control of this party, ‘cos otherwise it’s going to carry on losing,’ right? That had its merits for its time. But this is a different world. And actually, if we’d listened to our party more on a range of issues – housing, agency workers, tuition fees – we’d have been a better government, not a worse government. We’ve got to not misunderstand where the centre ground of politics is – because you know, it’s not just people in the south who have aspirations, and it’s not just people in the north who don’t like what happened with bankers’ bonuses. And sometimes we were a bit behind the public in terms of where the centre ground of politics is.

“Of course you can’t just win with the converted. But the point is that a lot of the converted became unconverted, and we’ve got to win them back, as well as the people who came to us in 1997.”

Touring the aerospace factory last week, his thesis is borne out by the striking number of working-class, low-income union men who admit they voted Tory this year. Miliband also cites a recent psephological study which found that Labour lost three times as many voters categorised as DE – the poorest of the population – as it did the most affluent ABs.

“This is fundamental,” he stresses urgently. “If we think the New Labour play book is going to work for us in the 2010s, we are completely wrong, because the electoral challenge is completely different now. But I think some people in the Labour party are stuck in the New Labour comfort zone, and think let’s just repeat the formulae of the past and that it’s going to win us the election.

“The problem is we took the working class vote for granted. Politics isn’t just about policies – it’s impressionistic, it’s about emotions, and whose side you’re on. It’s about whether you’re the party that starts off with a windfall tax on the utilities monopolies, and ends up defending bankers’ bonuses. I don’t think we lost the last election because we were too leftwing. I think we lost the last election partly because people thought we were all the same.”

Miliband concedes that he does support certain coalition policies – on ID cards, prison policy, and an inquiry into British collusion in the torture of terrorist suspects, although he quickly adds, “I know my brother more than anyone else, and I know he would never sanction torture, implicitly or explicitly.” But when I suggest that we have the Lib Dems to thank, he shakes his head impatiently. “No, no, I totally disagree with that. Does the fact they’re scrapping ID cards compensate somehow for the fact they’re taking an axe to the welfare state? Absolutely not, in my view. I care about civil liberties, but I care massively about people finding the services they rely on done in.”

So Labour under Miliband would no longer be agreeing with Nick? “Nick Clegg,” he says icily, “is a betrayal of the Liberal tradition. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are texting each other like teenagers in love because they agree with each other. It’s not some forced marriage, they ideologically agree with each other.”

The possibility of forcing a divorce, however, he regards as very real. “I think we can stop the coalition lasting. It depends upon people like Simon Hughes, Charles Kennedy, Ming Campbell – who I believe are unhappy.” He sounds so knowing that I wonder if he is in private communication with them. “I have private relationships with some Liberal Democrats that I’m not going to particularly talk about. But I think there are lots of unhappy Liberal Democrats.”

Miliband’s claim to be the leader most likely to draw disillusioned Lib Dems to Labour sounds quite plausible. The prospect of an election in less than five years, however, poses perhaps his greatest problem – the perception that only his older brother is oven-ready for office.

“Well obviously I don’t agree with that.” But many Labour members struggle to picture the 40-year-old in No 10, so I wonder when he first imagined it himself. “I think I was a late adopter, actually,” he smiles. “Others got there before me.” Does he mean he was talked into it? “No, I’m not saying that. But you do judge the support, otherwise you wouldn’t run. And lots of people said to me, I think we need someone who represents more of a change from the past.”

Alistair Darling has warned candidates against being over-critical of Labour’s record, in a bid to sell themselves as a fresh start. “Well I don’t know who Alistair’s talking about, but I’m certainly not dumping on the record. I’m absolutely not. But if you say, when you lose an election, the show was great but the audience was poor, you’re going to keep losing elections.”

He also dismisses any suggestion that his backing from the three biggest trade unions risks reviving an impression of a Labour leader in the pocket of Unite. “I’m not defending everything the trade unions do, nor would I as Labour leader. I don’t think we’re about to go back to the 1970s, and I’m not planning to take us there. But I do defend the role of trade unions in our society. And I think it’s surprising that that’s surprising, coming from someone who wants to be leader of the Labour party. Politics has basically become a middle-class pursuit – a London-middle-class pursuit, detached from ordinary people’s lives – and it’s actually the link with the trade unions which helps make us relevant to people’s lives.”

Miliband himself, of course, is a middle-class Londoner whose entire life has been spent in politics. An Oxford PPE graduate, with an MSc from the LSE, he worked for Harriet Harman before becoming an adviser to Gordon Brown, then won Doncaster in 2005, and joined the government only a year later. “Well I am the person that I am,” he says simply. “But there are people who have worked in a whole range of jobs who aren’t very empathetic, and can’t understand people’s lives. And there are people who have worked in politics for a large part of their lives who can, and that in the end is the test.”

I get to test Miliband’s famous empathy for myself when we visit a vast building site in Salford, where he tours the staff canteen meeting construction workers. Most of them seem to have no idea who he is, and it’s a vintage scene of dauntingly tough masculinity – hard hats and red tops, pie and chips and tattoos. Any trace of the slightly geeky awkwardness Miliband sometimes used to convey has vanished, but there is nothing ostentatious about him either as he moves from table to table: no polished quips to bridge the class divide, but instead an unusually respectful intimacy. “What did we do wrong?” he asks them, listening carefully to their answers. “What do we need to do to win back the voters?”

The only self-consciousness comes when the photographer wants him to pose holding a hard hat in the yard, before an amused audience of smoking men. “Any politician that claims to you that they’re an ordinary person is not telling you the truth,” Miliband mutters, half smiling and wincing. “Because politicians don’t lead ordinary or normal lives.”

Miliband lives with his pregnant partner Justine Thornton, a barrister, and their 15-month-old son Daniel. Never part of the glamorous 90s New Labour social scene, he admits that even his own pretty austere idea of a work-life balance has been out the window ever since the Copenhagen summit in 2008. He has never looked after Daniel by himself for 24 hours – “I’m not looking for special pleading, but, yes, it is a big sacrifice” – and describes Justine as “brilliant”, but feels no personal or political need to marry. “We’ll get round to it at some point, but I don’t think people would mind if we didn’t.” As party leader, he would guard his family life less ferociously than Brown, but more privately than Tony Blair, and “under no circumstances” will his sons go to private school.

He has to think quite hard to remember the last time he danced – “Oh yes, at Sue Nye’s party after the election, to something from Glee” – and on holiday in Cornwall this month he listened to Robbie Williams, and read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. He seldom cooks, buys his suits off-the-peg from TM Lewin, and when I ask if it’s true he once played in a punk band called Squashed Psyche, he laughs – “Oh I wish it was!” – but admits that the first he heard of this fiction was when it appeared on Wikipedia. In truth, reports of Ann Widdecombe joining Girls Aloud would be less surprising – and apart from driving too fast (”according to Justine”), his only discernible vice is an addiction to Desperate Housewives.

Miliband’s unracy style has led some observers to cast him in the Brown rather than Blair model of leadership. But when I ask when he last lost his temper, he says, “I very rarely do that. I’m not someone who spends their time shouting, and I think it’s important not to. I think you need calmness, stoicism and optimism. I think warmth and humanity are undervalued qualities in politics.” Is that why people like Campbell doubt he has the mettle to win? “Warmth and humanity don’t mean you can’t make difficult decisions. I think listening is an undervalued quality in politics. And that’s something I would do as leader.”

After 16 years of Blair and Brown, and New versus old Labour, Miliband may well be a genuinely new and untested quantity – a pragmatic young progressive. He clearly lacks the New Labour instinct for triangulation, spin and soundbites, but displays none of the self-indulgently defeatist idealism of old Labour either. I wonder whether it might be his refusal to criticise his brother that has created an impression of a lovable loser.

“I don’t care. I don’t care. There are certain prices I’m not willing to pay for this. If I thought I could win this election by taking lumps out of David, I wouldn’t do it. I’m going to win this with a clear conscience.”

If he won’t attack one David, is it just possible that people think he won’t attack the other one?

“That is nonsense!” he erupts. “I hate what David Cameron’s doing to this country. Alastair Campbell is wrong. He is wrong. Just to clear up any doubt, I don’t want a Labour party that feels comfortable about losing. I want a Labour party that’s back in power.”

Originally published here

• Simon Hughes wants Lib Dem veto over policy
• Alliance with Labour in future still favoured
• Clegg defends arrangement with Tories
• Read Haroon Siddique’s morning summary

10.43am: Hughes’s comments calling for a veto for Lib Dem MPs in the coalition were made in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, which also contained some interesting comments from the former Labour cabinet minister Jack Straw.

The shadow justice secretary said he was “relieved” when the Lib Dems went into coalition with the Conservatives rather than Labour partly because the “arithmetic was profoundly against us” but also because there is an “inherent suspicion of Liberal Democrats in the Labour party, which is very deep-seated”. That may dampen Hughes’s enthusiasm for a future coalition with Labour.

Straw also said “we would have had to spatchcock together whatever coalition we could”, which provoked much hilarity on the Today programme and subsequently on Twitter about his use of the word spatchcock. There has been some confusion as to the meaning of the word given that it can refer to “a fowl that has been dressed and split open for grilling”. But it also means “to insert or interpolate, esp. in a forced or incongruous manner”, according to dictionary.com.

10.33am: In the comments section below, makecoalition history quotes from a UK Polling Report article that observes that the Guardian story on its ICM poll focused on public backing for the economy, instead of the “rather striking finding” that Labour and the Tories are “neck and neck”.

Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report writes:

There is a new ICM poll in the Guardian tomorrow that probably isn’t what David Cameron hoped for on his 100th day in power. Topline voting intention figures are Con 37% (-1), Lab 37% (+3), Lib Dem 18% (-1). This is the first time an ICM poll has shown Labour catching the Conservatives since October 2007 and the election that never was.

There is a separate analysis piece in the Guardian about the party’s support ratings, based on the ICM poll. Tom Clark writes:

The Conservatives have mislaid their lead but it is Labour, and more especially the Liberal Democrats, that ought to worry. That is the paradoxical message of today’s Guardian/ICM poll, which shows a leaderless Labour party drawing level with the Tories for the first time since Gordon Brown’s disastrous dalliance with a snap poll in the autumn of 2007.

Buoyed by strong personal ratings, David Cameron need not be fazed by news that the two main parties are each on 37%, with the Lib Dems on 18%. In the novel settings of coalition, the opposition party can catch up with the principal party of government without threatening the prime minister. And after 100 days at the helm, he remains secure – in charge of a government that most voters believe is doing a good job. Consequently, Labour should draw little comfort from the results.

Nor should Nick Clegg. This week he is stepping in as the face of the government during David Cameron’s holiday, but the new poll finds his party is paying a price for power.

10.00am: Some other highlights from today’s papers.

The Daily Mirror has a poll that contrasts with the one in the Guardian this morning. It found 57% of people believe the coalition government is dragging the UK into a double-dip recession. It recorded Lib Dem support at 15%, with Labour at 33% and the Tories on 39%, figures the Mirror describes as a “disaster” for Clegg.

In the Financial Times, Tony Travers of the London School of Economics brands the coalition members “liberal anarchists” and says they are carrying out a “radical experiment in British government”:

The previous government believed in summoning all the power of the state to bear down on needs such as poverty, educational performance and hospital waiting lists. The “third” sector is not, by its nature, designed to be comprehensive. Councils are anyway cutting back on funding for voluntary organisations as they prepare for austerity. As a result, Mr Cameron’s moves to shift power downwards will almost certainly lead to more “postcode lotteries”. The government will need to explain to the electorate that Whitehall is no longer acting as guarantor of uniform public provision and that, say, GPs in Wiltshire may have different priorities to those in Newcastle, or that there is only one full-time library in some areas.

The real test of this emerging model, however, will be where it goes next. The logic of the coalition’s moves to date, for example, suggests it might allow different benefit levels in different parts of the country. Discretionary services could be stopped altogether in some areas, or charges introduced for services that are now free to users.

Trust the Daily Telegraph to feature a piece arguing the coalition “haven’t yet managed to break government’s addiction to higher spending”. Andrew Haldenby, director of the Reform thinktank, writes:

The alarm bells should have started ringing during one of Cameron’s recent question-and-answer sessions: the prime minister demonstrated his support for a particular cause (in this case the level of skills among young adults) by saying that the government was ready to spend billions on it. It might have been Gordon Brown talking. Surely if we have discovered anything in the past decade, it is that spending more is not the only route to success.

Compounding the coalition’s budgetary profligacy is its failure to deliver on its ambition to rethink the role of government. The budget in June imposed a freeze on some elements of public spending (such as child benefit and public sector pay) for two or three years, but left the structure of public services intact, with all its manifest inefficiencies.

9.49am: Despite being on holiday, David Cameron has made time for an interview with the Sun marking the coalition’s first 100 days. My colleague Paul Owen picks out the highlights:

David Cameron has used this interview to point out that he learned from Margaret Thatcher and New Labour to move fast as a government and take big decisions early on. He told the paper:

“One of the lessons I learned, not just from Margaret Thatcher but also from what happened under Labour, is you’ve got to act early. That is the time to take difficult decisions. You have a limited time to use the goodwill that you have to try and turn that into concrete results. When it [a new government] comes in, the golden moments are at the beginning.”

He said the coalition government had “achieved more than I expected” so far. His biggest regret so far was not getting banks to give more loans to businesses. “That would definitely be on my list of where we have still got to keep pushing and get the actions right,” he said, although he suggested no concrete measures to do this. Gordon Brown used to talk a lot about the responsibilities of the job in a way that made them sound like a difficult burden, but Cameron is relentlessly upbeat about the challenge of being prime minister:

“I am a relatively confident person. But you often wake up in the morning and look at the diary and think, ‘Right, there is a whole set of stuff today which I have never done in my life before. I had better make sure I do it properly.’”

The paper also reveals that Tony Blair left a message of support for Cameron when he took office, in addition to the more conventional letter from his immediate predecessor, Brown. “I had a very nice letter from Gordon Brown and Tony Blair when I arrived, both very friendly. They really were, they were genuinely helpful. I haven’t spoken to them since the election. I’m sure I will.”

9.24am: Aside from the poll, guardian.co.uk has plenty more coverage of the first 100 days of the coalition elsewhere on the site.

Paul Lewis has travelled the country, finding a north-south divide in reaction to the spending cuts. He writes:

Few people seem to query the need for drastic spending cuts. But the further one travels away from Cameron’s constituency [Witney], the more support for his government appears to be wavering.

Elsewhere, Jonathan Freedland writes:

Some predicted that the only way the government would achieve domestic tranquillity was by not doing very much. Those expectations have also been confounded. Indeed, the scale of this administration’s ambition has been its biggest surprise. Not content with a plan to wrestle the deficit to the ground and then transform it into a surplus within five years – a goal that would count as challenge enough to most governments – the Cleggerons have launched one grand scheme after another.

Michael Gove says he aims to transform education in England; Andrew Lansley has embarked on the largest reorganisation of the health service since the NHS’s founding in 1948; Iain Duncan Smith wants a full upheaval of the entire system of welfare and benefits. Every one of those grand projects taken on their own would be enough to keep a government busy. But to do all these at once – along with big shake-ups in policing and criminal justice – is either a mark of supreme confidence or outright recklessness. Or, perhaps, the latter fed by the former.

An excellent interactive shows the key relationships in the coalition and how well they are working.

Marina Hyde has taken a more light-hearted look at the relationship between the prime minister and his deputy, comparing them to partners in a buddy movie:

No one could deny Clegg has made obvious attempts to carve out a niche for himself in the set-up. For a while, he seemed to be affecting the pose of the crazy one in a buddy cop film. This guy literally doesn’t care! He’s going to stand at the dispatch box and pin an illegal war on Jack Straw’s ass!

Unfortunately, while these kinds of unconventional methods work well for Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, in Nick’s line of work they required the scrambling of civil servants to explain he was speaking in a personal capacity, with Downing Street declaring tightly: “These are long-held views of the deputy prime minister.”

9.07am: The headlines so far on this 100th day of the coalition:

• The Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes called today for Lib Dem MPs to have a veto on policies put forward by the coalition government. He also indicated a coalition with Labour at the next election could be “on the agenda”, saying “the idea of a centre left, of a progressive liberal Britain, is still very much for me what I am here to achieve”.

• Nick Clegg was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning. He painted a picture of perfect harmony with the Conservatives. He rejected the suggestion that his party was losing its distinctiveness within the coalition but at the same time refused to name any area of disagreement, even when asked about the immigration cap. Clegg said people should be pleased when politicians agree.

• A Guardian/ICM poll has found public backing for the coalition’s cuts-based recovery strategy for the economy. Of those polled, 44% said the coalition was doing a good job in securing economic recovery against 37% who said it was doing a bad job.

8.37am: Some details of the comments made by the Lib Dem deputy leader this morning, from the Press Association.

Hughes told the BBC:

If the coalition wants to deliver [parliamentary] votes, neither party on its own has a majority, so we have to make sure everyone is brought into that. As matter of practical politics… the parliamentary party on behalf of the wider party on big issues has to be able to say: “No, we can’t go down this road.”

He added that a coalition between Labour and his party was still “on the agenda”, perhaps by the time of the next general election in 2015. Last weekend he ruled out any suggestion that Tories and the Lib Dems could agree not to run candidates against each other in seats that were clearly winnable for one or other of the parties at the next election.

8.29am: Not a very revealing performance by Clegg on the Today programme. He painted a picture of perfect harmony within the coalition, refusing to identify any subject on which the Tories and Lib Dems disagreed. Perhaps, given the Conservatives’ positive poll rating, he sees aligning the Lib Dems as closely as possible with the Tories as the way to revive his own party’s flagging poll ratings?

Or maybe he was slapped down for the comments he made on Monday about it being “difficult for someone who is going to receive less housing benefit because of the changes … to understand why, at the same time, we should spend huge, huge amounts of money in a hurry on replacing Trident in full”. Interestingly, Davis did not ask him about the story the Today programme is leading on, deputy Lib Dem leader Simon Hughes calling for backbenchers to have a veto on ideas put forward by coalition ministers.

8.23am: In a year’s time you’ll have lost the referendum on AV, you’ll be at 15% in the polls and you’ll have retrenched the state, says Davis. Will you be happy about that?

Clegg rubbishes Davis’s “crystal ball”. He hopes that in five years’ time he will be able to say the coalition took difficult decisions but the economy is growing again, the economy is more balanced, they’ve protected civil liberties, increased social mobility and created a greener economy. “It’s a government for the long term,” he says.

And with that the interview is over.

8.20am: How do you maintain your distinctiveness from the Tories?

You have to work with people you don’t agree with in life, says Clegg. Cutting the fiscal deficit is “something I was very clear about in opposition” – I think a lot of people will disagree with that statement. Pushed by Davis to name something the coalition partners disagree on, Clegg just won’t rise to the bait, even when asked about an immigration cap, which the Lib Dems vehemently opposed before the election. I’m waiting for Davis to ask him about Trident. Clegg says you shouldn’t complain when politicians get on.

8.16am: Is social mobility a theme that you are promoting? Have the Conservatives taken persuading?

It’s something we have to do, says Clegg. He says it’s right not to hand on our debts to the next generation. “We are far too segregated a society.” It’s too easy predict where a person will end up from their background, he says.

8.14am: The first question from Evan Davis is about plans reported in today’s papers to cut welfare for the middle classes

“It would be irresponsible of me to comment on any fleeting rumour…we haven’t taken decisions yet,” Clegg says.

8.08am: Welcome to the 100th day of the coalition. How has it been for you? Nick Clegg will be marking the occasion with a speech on social mobility in which he will confirm the appointment of former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn as the coalition’s social mobility tsar. But his thunder has been stolen by his deputy leader Simon Hughes calling for backbenchers to have a veto on ideas put forward by coalition ministers. We’ll be following all the developments today right here and we’d love to hear you thoughts. First up, very shortly, is Clegg on the Today programme.

Originally published here