The Labour leadership has made little secret of its intention to turn 2015 into a “living standards election”. Speeches have been given and lessons from the United States on living standards are apparently being placed at the heart of the party’s policy review process.
It’s increasingly hard to remember what Europe looked like when it wasn’t in the midst of a slow-motion financial cataclysm. As a credit crunch metamorphosed through being a recession into ‘Eurogeddon’, attitudes to the post-war ‘European project’ have inevitably shifted.
Even without the small matter of Labour losing the Bradford West by-election on a 37% swing, the intended resignation of Liam Byrne from the Shadow Cabinet and House of Commons would have been spun as bad news for Ed Miliband.
It has been obscured by the undeniably important matter of when George Osborne last ate a Gregg’s pasty, but by far the most significant feature of the Chancellor’s appearance before the Treasury Select Committee yesterday was the announcement that he has asked the Treasury to look at the impact of ‘dynamic scoring’ of tax levels on the