Word: labours
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Scanning the front pages of the Telegraph and rival newspapers he sells from his central London shop, Pankaj Mehta highlights another reason the expenses scandal hit Labour hardest. Reports of Conservative grandees submitting bills for the upkeep of mansions have reinforced the party's unfortunate image of entitlement and wealth, but the vision of Labour MPs subsidizing their lifestyles is more damaging still. New Labour defined itself as a party that encouraged wealth creation, that in the words of Peter Mandelson, Business Secretary and Brown's de facto deputy, was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich." But it still...
Brown's victory against the rebels could leave Mehta hanging on until next year for a chance to kick - or kick out - his MP. But the Prime Minister faces further bruising tests even before September, when Labour arrives in Brighton, a raffish seaside resort, for its annual conference, the traditional moment for coup attempts. And that's presuming Brown weathers two by-elections sparked by the expenses scandal. Michael Martin, a Labour MP serving in the party-neutral role of Speaker, or chair, of the Commons, steps down later this month. He was forced out after MPs' protests that...
...support Brown after he promised to change. "There are some things I do well and some things I do not so well," he said as faced down his critics. Both parts of that statement are accurate. Some of the things Brown does well are those that helped build New Labour's reputation. Old Labour was the party of tax and spend. New Labour, for the first two years after its 1997 victory, adhered to stringent spending plans set by its Conservative predecessors. Even after that date, as Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Finance Minister - the office that best...
...even as the downturn forced Labour to dump its tarnished rule to start spending like Paris Hilton on a shopping spree, it revealed weaknesses in Labour's orthodoxy about wealth creation as the means to social justice. After years of boom, the gap between rich and poor in Britain has actually widened, while higher earners face swingeing future taxes to plug a widening deficit. And some of the things Brown does not do so well are the things that have made him vulnerable to leadership challenges. A serious man, a well-meaning man, he's a hopeless communicator...
...Says He's the Great Reformer Stewart witnessed at close hand Labour's shock defeat in the 1992 election it was widely expected to win. That defeat inspired Labour's painful decision to throw out old class-war shibboleths and remake itself for a newly prosperous nation. The party now faces a similar proposition, Stewart believes: reform or die. "If the Labour Party fails to reform itself, then the second stage is that the electorate will reform it by throwing it out," he says, adding: "Barring an event like the Falklands War which helped save [Margaret] Thatcher, Labour...