Mark Pack

The lovely phrase “spray on evidence” was coined in the late 1990s in frustration at the attitude towards evidence shown by many in the Labour government. Though officially the government was determinedly set on a course of evidence-based policy, many of those involved in policy making felt that evidence was being applied as a bit [...] »

At the book’s title suggests, Peter Mandelson’s memoirs The Third Man do not hold back from placing himself not only at the heart of New Labour but also at its top, variously using the phrases the three musketeers or the triumvirate to describe himself and the two Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Mandelson [...] »

Deborah Mattinson’s account of what she saw during her time as a leading pollster to the Labour Party certainly doesn’t stint in portraying her own role in what the book calls “Europe’s greatest election winning machine of the modern era”. The fact that Labour won three general elections in a row and yet the fact [...] »

Nick Clegg has been giving a speech at the think-tank Demos today, setting out his vision for what this Parliament should achieve – and what the Liberal Democrats should get from it. The heart of the argument is in this early section: Now that the Liberal Democrats are in government, liberal ideas are being deployed [...] »

Throws a bit of a spanner in the works of the Labour rhetoric about how awful anyone who contemplates raising VAT is: Amid reported wrangling between No 10 and the Treasury, Lord Mandelson suggested in his memoir that Mr Brown rejected a proposal from the chancellor to raise VAT while Mr Darling quashed calls for [...] »

Having seen trailed in advance the research being done for today’s piece on why Labour/Lib Dem talks broke down, I was intrigued as to what James Macintyre would dig up. But reading his piece, it’s a big disappointment – because it makes a trio of misjudgements, all of which burnish Labour’s reputation. Let’s take them one by [...] »

There’s this: All the main parties have promised to cut the government’s deficit after the election. Which party do you think is being the most honest about what spending cuts they would make to deliver this? Liberal Democrats 29% Conservatives 26% Labour 21% … and then there’s this: Gordon Brown was challenged on Wednesday morning by Gillian Duffy, a 65-year-old voter [...] »

Collectively we're obsessed with American political culture, which is why pretty much everything gets the "-gate" suffix in homage to Watergate. Now if only Gordon Brown had slammed a gate shut on someone... It's a very fine line between 'rolling news' and 'rolling obsession'. I first noticed this during the first Gulf War when Radio [...] »

Iain Dale quite rightly has queried why the prospect of Labour finishing third in the popular share of the vote isn’t a big story being talked about in the media. But actually Iain is too kind to Labour. Because the voting abyss Labour is teetering on the edge of is more than simply coming third. More than [...] »

Today's Evening Standard ran this letter from me: The polls are not just a surge in Lib Dems support but bit increase in the number of young backers of the party, and in the number of people saying they will vote overall. For the Tories to counter that energy with negative tactics, including “putting the [...] »