Gordon Brown calls for action in flood-hit Pakistan

Gordon Brown has written movingly in The Huffington Post of his support for a huge, co-ordinated response to the recent Pakistan floods:
I have proposed a global reconstruction corps to offer civilian help – engineers, doctors, builders – to build homes, rebuild the schools, staff the hospitals and get agriculture and industry moving again. We have set up a British corps – and a global volunteer corps is more important and imperative than ever. To make it effective on the ground in Pakistan we need of course an agreement with all Pakistani parties that they will use and work with a Reconstruction Corps.
But we do have to ask ourselves one [...]

Medway Tory councillor resigns after just 13 days

The Conservative Party victor of the recent by-election in Medway’s River Ward has resigned after just 13 days in office the local newspaper reports:
“Yourmedway approached Mr Craggs for a comment and was told that a full statement detailing the reasons behind his resignation would be released later this afternoon.
However, we are led to believe that Mr Craggs was told he must choose between serving as a special constable, a position he has held for 17 years, and a Medway councillor.”
Mr Craggs narrowly won the River ward by-election on Thursday, August 12, after polling 617 votes. The Labour candidate, John James, came a close second with 544 votes.
Medway Council’s Returning [...]

Labour coffers boosted by donations and new members

Former Deputy Leader Lord Prescott has said the party has forgotten how to organise and called for limits on party political spending, repeating claims he recently made to The Guardian that the Party is close to bankruptcy.
Calling for a membership drive, John Prescott, who is campaigning to be elected Treasurer of the Party, told the Scottish Parliament’s annual Festival of Politics:
“We want a strong treasurer who’s involved in the membership drive, putting a proper financial account into the party, and is an active political person in making that accountable to the constituencies. You can go on if you like and just have somebody doing what’s always been the [...]

David Blunkett will not advise the ConDems

David Blunkett has responded to a story in the Mail on Sunday which today suggests that he might take a job in the coalition government, advising on welfare reform.
Writing on his blog Mr Blunkett explained that he was happy to work with think tanks, but dismissed suggestions that he would advise the coalition government:
“Now that Iain Duncan Smith is the Work and Pensions Secretary and has obviously severed his links with the Centre for Social Justice, the CSJ is seeking a greater degree of independence and has approached me to see if I would be prepared to act as an advisor.
“I have asked the CSJ to come [...]

Labour’s legacy is fast growth and more jobs

The current Chairman of the Conservative Party, Baroness Warsi, and and Lib Dem Chris Huhne held a joint press conference today to put the ConDem spin on the employment figures and accuse Labour of being “in denial” of the need for spending cuts.
If it seems unusual for leading politicians to be trying to influence the media in the August ’silly season’, when most are taking a break from politics, it’s even more unusual because the employment figures showed the number of EMPLOYED people from April to June INCREASED sharply by 184,000 – the result of the previous Labour Government’s economic policies.
The Baroness Warsi repeated the lie that the [...]

Labour’s River Ward by-election candidate gets leadership boost

The River Ward by-election for Medway Council on 12 August is a straight fight between Labour and the Conservatives, as the results of the 2007 council elections show. Labour’s defending a seat in a ward which returned one Labour and one Tory councillor, so it can only help that Labour’s candidate, John Jones, was recently given the assistance of one of the Leadership candidates:
Ed Miliband stopped off in Brompton last Wednesday afternoon to help prospective councillor John Jones canvass ahead of the by-election on August 12.
The election was prompted by the resignation of Bill Esterson, who was elected MP for Sefton Central, near Liverpool in the general [...]

ConDem cuts call time on support for community pubs

David Cameron made much of his beer drinking credentials, even staging an event at a brewery during the election, but his coalition government has dealt a bitter blow to ailing community pubs:
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that a £3.3 million fund set up by Labour to help stem the closure of local pubs has been closed down before a penny was paid out.
Critics said last night that ministers were “turning their back” on rural communities.
More than 80 groups have come forward for help to buy out their local pub since the Community-Owned Pubs Support Programme was announced in March.
But about 50 projects across England that were in line to receive [...]

Liberal Democrat support slashed in Summer poll

Labour’s frontbench can go on their Summer holidays with a small sense of schadenfreude as the latest opinion poll justifies their relentless assault on the Lib Dems since the election. The people who campaigned against early cuts and VAT increases have been rumbled and their vote halved, The Telegraph reports:

The YouGov survey for the Sunday Times also recorded a steep nosedive in the popularity of the party’s leader Nick Clegg since he became Deputy Prime Minister by taking the Lib Dems into coalition Government with the Conservatives.

Mr Clegg’s personal satisfaction rating was eight points, compared to the spectacular 72 points he achieved in the wake of the first televised leaders’ debate during the election campaign.

Today’s poll suggested that Tories have not suffered in the same way from going into coalition.

David Cameron’s party were up five points since the General Election on 42per cent, with Labour gaining ground on them – up eight points since the Election on 38per cent.

The Lib Dems rating was half the 24per cent the party won in the election and the lowest since October 2007, when Sir Menzies Campbell was forced out as leader.

Read the full article.

Media rubbish ConDems claims economy “worse than we thought”

Claims by David Cameron that the economy is “worse than we thought”, following the publication of Sir Alan Budd’s report, have been rubbished by economic correspondents.
The Economics Editor of The Telegraph, Edmund Conway, said:
“…Cameron is simply wrong: the public finances do not look any worse than under Labour. Ironically, the Tories actually had sight of some of these private calculations a year or so ago and leaked them to the press, so even if Cameron is merely neglecting to read the papers, he surely cannot claim that he had no inkling of what he was facing.”
Even right wing journalist Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, couldn’t back the Tory [...]

Alistair Darling “expecting Cameron apology” over debt claims

Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, Alistair Darling, said he would demand a “very big apology” from David Cameron if borrowing figures on Monday were more favourable than he forecast in his last Budget, reports the Press Association:
Mr Cameron said the independent OBR would “show the scale of the problem we are in today” and accused the Treasury under Labour of sanctioning “scandalous” waste by publishing growth forecasts that were “far more optimistic than independent forecasters”.
Mr Darling said: “If it turns out that borrowing is lower than I thought then that puts a completely different complexion on things because what he has been doing is exaggerating the scale of the difficulties we face [...]