Our guest writer is Matt Cavanagh, special adviser to the Labour Government between 2003 and 2010, in the Home Office, Ministry of Defence, Treasury and Downing Street

Labour’s drug policy has few defenders, the Right thinking it not tough enough, and the Left thinking it too tough, along with the public health community – and all three agreeing that “we are losing the war on drugs”. But while the Left and the public health community debate the merits of decriminalisation or legalisation, there is a real risk that the Right’s agenda – cutting the money spent on managing drug addicts’ habits, in favour of “abstinence-based” treatment – will go unchallenged.

Few of those working on either drug enforcement or treatment would pretend that we are “winning” the war on drugs. The appalling human and financial toll both of the organised drug trade and of the chaotic lives of individual addicts is all too clear.

But any evidence-based approach should also acknowledge, despite this undeniably bleak landscape, that some trends are at least not going in the wrong direction: overall rates of drug abuse are stable or falling, and numbers in drug treatment have risen. (See page 7; within that overall trend, heroin and crack cocaine use seem to have been falling for some time; powder cocaine use seems to have started to fall; heavy cannabis use, by contrast, seems to be rising.)

That should give anyone pause before taking an axe to the drug treatment budget. Given the fiscal situation, the coalition is right to look for savings from this billion-pound drug budget – indeed many inside the Labour Government felt that, while we had been right to expand this budget a decade ago, we should have found more savings in this area ourselves during our last year.

The coalition is also right to try to accelerate the move away from input targets (numbers in treatment) and towards outcome targets (the number and proportion of users going on to drug free lives) – here too Labour should accept that we were too slow in pushing the National Treatment Agency in this direction over recent years.

But again, any new approach should acknowledge that, while painfully slow, this move towards a focus on outcomes has already begun – and not only are overall rates of drug abuse falling, and more addicts in treatment,  but the proportion completing treatment is rising, and so too is the proportion going on to drug-free lives. (See page 8.)

So there are two reasons for caution before rushing into bold policy adjustments. In fact, for those of us who believe that radical solutions – including decriminalisation, or a pharmaceutical or medical breakthrough – are too risky or too underdeveloped, this is the way drug policy is likely to remain for the foreseeable future – slow, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the stuff of clunky workshops on ‘joined-up working’ rather than headline-grabbing initiatives.

Of course we need to try to increase the number of addicts moving on to drug free lives – but we need to do this carefully, and we need to see it as a complement, not an alternative, to reducing the harm that addicts cause – and that will include “managing” those addicts who are unlikely to kick their habit any time soon.

Critics of “managing” addiction point to the suspicious increase in methadone prescription in prison, with some justification; but before that gives the whole approach a bad name, we should remember one of the quiet success stories of the last couple of years, which was an experiment to increase prescription of heroin for hard cases who had tried and failed other kinds of treatment – an experiment which significantly reduced crime, without reducing the numbers going on to drug free lives.

Above all the different agencies involved in drug treatment need to work together to combine a focus on addicts’ needs as patients, with a focus on reducing the harm they cause to others – and that means genuinely combining these aims, rather than the two respective bureaucratic empires squabbling about who “owns” the addicts and the budgets that come with them.

Family intervention projects have shown on a smaller scale how agencies can truly work together to tackle drug addiction, alongside many other problems. Michael Gove may have included FIPs (Key workers providing intensive support to families) on his list of banned words, but if he’d looked at the cost-benefit analysis, he would have realised that the real challenge he should be setting his officials is not to think of a better name, but to think about how to make them scaleable, and how to apply the lessons in other areas of social policy.

As it stands, the coalition’s apparent hostility to spending on “managing” addicts’ habits looks like a dangerous mixture of cost-cutting (with the Treasury realising that few will want to defend spending on drug addicts) and moralising (with Iain Duncan Smith and his Social Justice Policy Group leading an increasingly influential strand in Tory thinking that state spending on drugs for addicts is not merely wasteful or low-priority, but morally wrong).

Both are simplistic – to reiterate, other than the leap of faith of decriminalisation, or some new pharmaceutical or medical breakthrough, there are no easy answers in drug policy, and responsible politicians should not pretend otherwise.

It emerged today that the Home Office is considering implementing a plan under which those dependant on drugs and alcohol would have their benefits removed if they refused to receive treatment. The move was originally proposed by the Labour government, but it was scrapped when the Social Security Advisory Committee warned that it could lead addicts into crime and prostitution. However, with its re-appearance in a consultation paper today, it appears the coalition government are once again considering the contentious idea.

The move certainly seems in keeping with Cameron’s iron-fisted clampdown on benefits, and there are many who would argue that in our new-found ‘age of austerity’ , substance-abusers should have to feel the pinch like everyone else. 

Indeed, if there is any social group the prime minister can play hardball with and probably avoid too much criticism, is is drug addicts. His good friends in the tabloid media – who so revel in demonising almost anyone reliant on welfare – are hardly sympathetic when it comes to more liberal approaches to tackling drug problems.

However, a leading figure at a major UK drug charity – arguably the sort of group best placed to comment on the potential effectiveness of any given scheme – has reacted with apprehension and dismay to the news that this move is being considered again.  Martin Barnes, chief executive of charity DrugScope, said on Radio 4 this morning:

“The benefit system can and indeed does have a very important role in terms of advice and support to encourage people both to access treatment and employment. But we seriously question both the fairness and the effectiveness of actually using the stick of compulsion – benefit sanctions – to link a requirement to undergo medical treatment with a condition of receipt of benefit.“

Barnes drew attention to the fact that the NHS constitution requires that “medical intervention should be therapeutic, consensual, confidential”, and stated there is “absolutely no evidence” the scheme would have any positive effect upon drug-users, who he labelled a “vulnerable and often marginalised group”.

In this light, it is hard not to question whether the coalition’s reviving of this untested scheme is a wise move. When experts are  heavily questioning the impact it will have, and when the proposal comes only months after the Social Security Advisory Committee canned the idea first time round because they concluded it would cause “significant harm” and have “negative economic and social impacts”, one wonders why the government has decided it is an idea worthy of consideration again.

However keen Mr Cameron is to save billions of pounds, he must surely recognize that all the evidence suggests this is a scheme which will do little more than exacerbate an already awful problem. Many hold true the maxim that ‘a society is ultimately judged by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members’, and if this plan is followed through on, and the result that all the available evidence suggests will occur, does occur, then it will reflect damningly upon the coalition.

Perhaps, if the prime minister really wants to tackle Britain’s drug issue, he will move away from plans to try and coerce addicts into receiving treatment through arbitrary financial sanctions, and consider a more fundamental review of the country’s drug laws – as repeatedly called for by leading doctors and analysts, and advocated by Left Foot Forward earlier this week.

The UK’s ‘War on Drugs’ has been resoundingly lost. It’s only demonstrable results have been the criminalization of thousands of users who are badly in need of better medical help, and the financial ascension of global crime syndicates. The Coalition government must consider a new approach.

Calls for a new approach to UK drug policy have been growing in recent weeks. The Observer’s recent editorial remarked – tongue firmly in cheek – that:

“If the purpose of drug policy is to make toxic substances available to anyone who wants them in a flourishing market economy controlled by murderous criminal gangs, the current arrangements are working well.”

In July, Stephen Rolles – senior policy analyst at Transform Drug Policy Foundation – produced a detailed study in which he drew attention to a growing consensus within the drug field:

“The prohibition on production, supply, and use of certain drugs has not only failed to deliver its intended goals but has been counterproductive. Evidence is mounting that this policy has not only exacerbated many public health problems… but has created a much larger set of secondary harms associated with the criminal market.

“These now include vast networks of organised crime, endemic violence related to the drug market, corruption of law enforcement and governments, militarised crop eradication programmes… and funding for terrorism and insurgency.”

Rolles’s meticulous study was based on evidence provided by a range of UK committees and think-tanks, as well as recent UN reports. Its demand for the debate on drug legislation to move beyond “populist politics and tabloid headlines” and onto a consideration of “a risk guided regulatory approach” which would provide “a more pragmatic public health model” and transform “a proportion of existing criminal profits into legitimate tax revenue” could not have been more clearly presented.

Indeed, just this week, the study was praised by Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, who agreed that moving from prohibition towards regulation and taxation would “drastically reduce crime and improve health.”

In light of such evidence, it would appear that common sense simply demands that the coalition government rethink UK drug policy. Even if you ignore the fact that alcohol and tobacco together account for more deaths than AIDS, legal drugs, illegal drugs, road accidents, murder and suicide combined, all the while remaining perfectly legal. And even if you ignore the fact that the UK has completey failed to combat the health issues related to drug addiction, the financial implications of drug policy reform demand consideration.

A study undertaken by Transform in 2004 revealed that a regulatory approach to drug policy would have produced “a net saving to tax payers of up to £13.943billion”. The Independent Drug Monitoring Unit found that taxation on current levels of imported drugs would bring in anywhere between £3.4billion and £6.4billion in extra tax revenue per year.

Meanwhile, evidence from Portugal and the Netherlands reveals clearly that the decriminalisation of drugs has had very few adverse effects. On the contrary; in both countries, the amount of drug-related infections and deaths has plummeted, and overall usage has declined among teenagers. In Portugal, a detailed study concluded that:

“None of the fears promulgated by opponents of Portuguese decriminalization have come to fruition, whereas many of the benefits predicted by drug policymakers from instituting a decriminalization regime have been realised.”

Facts such as these are irrefutable, and for a government that is so hell-bent on saving every last penny, cannot be ignored. When David Cameron (with the aid of his running mate, The Sun) is so desperate to claw back £1.5billion from “benefit scroungers,” it would be sheer stupidity for him not to examine the possibility of legislative reform – the blueprint for which already exists – that could potentially save ten times that amount of public funds, and which has the backing of numerous authoritative voices.

A major review of drug policy is due in December of this year. At a time when other European countries are already reaping the benefits of a regulatory approach, Latin American states such as Mexico are beginning to move in a similar direction, and even American legislatures are considering legalising cannabis, it would be foolish for the UK not to seriously look at the option of decriminalization.

It is high time that Cameron and the rest of the coalition recognised that the ‘War on Drugs’ has been lost, and that a new approach is desperately needed. If this government is truly concerned with the economic and medical health of this nation, it will take steps to reform our drug laws. Rational science and simple common sense demand it.

Speaking today on social mobility, Nick Clegg appeared to create a new front with his Conservative colleagues by openly discussing the need to reduce income inequalities. Only yesterday, George Osborne outlined that his focus was on equality of opportunity and not equality of income. A debate has been raging in recent weeks over the conclusions of ‘The Spirit Level‘ by Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

In his speech to the Lib Dem think tank, Centre Forum, Nick Clegg said:

“The goal of improving social mobility overlaps with other objectives for social policy, such as reducing poverty or narrowing income inequality.”

Although making it clear that social mobility and income inequality were not the same, he outlined his own commitment to tackling the problem.

In answer to a question by Sam Coates of The Times, Mr Clegg explicitly referenced the current debate over ‘The Spirit Level’ and, while dismissing the idea that Britain could ever be a perfectly equal country, outlined his view that income inequality was problematic and that “extremes of wealth inequality” were wrong especially when they became “stratified”.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks appear to be at odds with those of Chancellor George Osborne just yesterday. In his speech yesterday, Mr Osborne referred to “equality of opportunity” rather than tackling income inequality. And as noted by Tim Montgomerie on Conservative Home yesterday:

“Mr Osborne used his Today programme interview to distance himself from the idea that greater equality of outcome should be a government aim. He said that he wanted to deliver equality of opportunity and that the Coalition’s reforms in education, welfare and health – as well as the reduction of the deficit – were part of his hope that a child born today would enjoy a better chance to succeed in life than a child born during the Brown-Blair era.”

Although David Cameron name checked the work of Wilkinson and Pickett at his Hugo Young Memorial lecture last year, Conservative think tanks such as Policy Exchange and the TaxPayers’ Alliance have, in recent weeks, been challenging the findings of the Spirit Level. Malcolm Clark has debunked these attacks on this website. Much to Mr Montgomerie’s chagrin, 11 Tory MPs have signed a pledge to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

The prime minister’s blustering attack on people committing benefit fraud yesterday highlighted the growing gap between work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s increasingly nuanced line on the issue and the rest of government’s determination to milk the potential of a ‘government cracks down on benefit cheats’ headline for all it’s worth.

After much concerted lobbying from Community Links, as part of our Need not Greed campaign, we were delighted to see DWP’s 21st Century Welfare paper include the paragraph:

“As a result [of the complexity and disincentives within the benefits system] working legitimately is not a rational choice for many poor people to make.

“Fraud is always wrong, but we must recognise that the benefits system is making matters worse by pushing valuable work, and the aspiration that this can engender, underground.”

This recognition that the system itself rather than individuals is usually to blame was conspicuously missing from Cameron’s remarks. Instead, he has followed every previous government in picking on an easy target – vulnerable benefit claimants – to win headline approval.

As with many of these issues, playing to the opinion poll leads to a vicious cycle. A Freedom Of Information request from us revealed that last year the then-Labour government spent £4.7 million on an advertising campaign against benefit fraud, as part of their communications strategy to “reinforce public attitudes to fraud, making it socially unacceptable”.

Little wonder, then, that when you survey people about their attitude to benefit fraud they give it a high priority, and welcome aggressive measures to tackle it.

Meanwhile, the complexity in the benefit system ensures that twice as much is lost each year in error (£2.2bn) as is lost to fraud (£1bn). The proportions are similar within the tax credit system, and only adding all these together produces the £5.2bn that Cameron implied was making its way into the pockets of fraudulent claimants.

Tackling these real problems within the benefits system, through a fundamental reform that allows people to take steps back into work, will ultimately be far more successful at bringing down the welfare bill than pandering to prejudice against benefit claimants.

Even the right have taken pot shots at the the idea to recruit credit checking agencies in tackling fraud – the only actual policy idea announced by Mr Cameron yesterday – the Daily Mail lampooning it in cartoon form, with Big Brother Watch asking “Would you trust bounty hunters to enforce the law?” and Mary Riddell in the Telegraph explaining why bounty hunters “won’t solve the benefits crisis”.

A senior member of Sinn Fein has warned that dissident republicans are deliberately raising tensions in Londonderry ahead of a major loyalist parade in the city.

Ahead of a march on the 14th by the loyalist Apprentice Boys, Gerry Kelly MLA, Sinn Fein spokesman on policing and justice issues and a junior minister in the Office of the First and Deputy First Ministers, has raised concerns over so called “feeder parades” which will, on their way to Derry city, pass the Ardoyne area of Belfast, the scene of violent riots last month.

Expressing his concerns, Mr Kelly warned:

“We think that it (the August 14 march past Ardoyne) should not go down without the Apprentice Boys talking to the residents and that has not happened for some time now. These things are being used by certain other groups to ‘wind up’ the situation. People need space.

“The dissident groups are trying to use these issues.”

The comments have come after more than two hours of talks in Belfast earlier this week between Sinn Fein and the North and West Belfast Parades Forum, representing organisers of loyalist parades. It was the first meeting of its kind in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the Ardoyne riots.

Commenting after the meeting, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams concluded:

“I found it a very useful exchange. We listened very, very intently to what our friends had to say about all of these issues and their sense of themselves and their sense of their section of our community in this city of Belfast.

“We are not going to sort all of this out in one meeting, these are big issues, and we have to remind ourselves of where we have all come from and how difficult this process of society building and transition is for everyone.”

For the Parades Forum, Tommy Cheevers struck an optimistic note, commenting:

“We did not know if we would be here for two minutes or twenty minutes and I think that shows that everyone was prepared to take whatever time it took.”

Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris of the Police Service of Northern Ireland has warned that it is only a matter of time before another police officer is killed as a result of dissident republican activity.

His comments came after a 200lb bomb was exploded outside a Londonderry police station, which damaged local businesses though, did not kill or injure anyone. It is reported that a taxi driver was forced at gun point to drive the device to its intended destination.

In a joint statement with First Minister, Peter Robinson, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuniess responded:

“This is a futile and cynical attempt to try to take us back to conflict and division. We will not allow them to do so. The people clearly support the institutions and we will remain united in our resolve to work together for the greater good.”

Our guest writer is Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and a candidate for the Labour Party leadership

It was thrilling to see such a large and enthusiastic turnout at the recent criminal justice hustings at Islington Town Hall, hosted by the Howard League for Penal Reform and Tribune magazine. Be in no doubt, this election is about change, and when it comes to criminal justice, we must use this opportunity to signal an end to the days of pandering to Daily Mail editorials instead of standing up for our values.

ID cards, child detention centres and Section 44 are just a few of the ugly blotches on our Party’s record. I certainly welcome the fact the other leadership candidates are distancing themselves from New Labour’s ‘hang-em, flog-em, DayGlo-bib-em’ approach to crime, justice and civil liberties.

Although as I pointed out during the hustings, I can only assume that my fellow contenders were off sick whenever criminal justice came up in Cabinet during Labour’s 13 years in Government.

Jack Straw is right about one important thing: crime did fall by 43 per cent between 1997 and 2010. As an MP, I have been proud to lead successful campaigns for longer sentences for carrying a gun, for a complete ban on imitation weapons, and I was delighted to see that last Thursday, my campaign to make eBay rethink new relaxed restrictions on the type of knives that it sells, made a real difference.

Amidst the chilling prospect a potential 60,000 police officer and civilian posts being axed by 2015, Britain must not lose sight of the magnitude of issues around criminal justice. I have every sympathy with victims of crime because I live in Hackney, which a high crime area – but under my leadership, Labour’s focus on crime will be rooted in our values.

As leader, I will make a start by protecting frontline police from budget cuts; creating a civil rights division to strive for fairness within our justice system; and by launching a complete review of stop-and-search laws.

Whilst we must oppose Lib-Con privatisation of the justice system, we also need big changes. Reform of the system, at this point, is not enough – we need a whole new outlook. The criminal justice system now costs almost £20 billion a year, making it one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world. There is a higher percentage of people in prison here than in any other country in western Europe and re-offending rates are also still too high.

Looking back at some missed opportunities, a huge prison-building programme took priority over the Corston Report’s recommendations for different and non-custodial approaches for women, for example. Recent research suggests that over 4,274 women and girls languish in British jails and that more than half have been victims of domestic violence, a third have experienced sexual abuse, and 25 per cent have been in care as children.

The first job I had when I finished university was a graduate traineeship with the Home Office working on prisons policy and so on the campaign trail, I am enjoying listening to Labour members’ ideas on justice and community. Throughout the campaign, many of the people I have spoken to have said that they would, in fact, prefer to see punishment that allows the offender to repair some of the damage done, receive treatment for any addiction and re-learn some responsibility, particularly for non-violent offences.

Under my leadership, there will indeed be an emphasis on early intervention, diversion, preventative support and rehabilitation; reducing the use of short sentences where possible whilst replacing them with community sentencing; and increasing use of restorative justice, forcing criminals to confront their behaviour.

It cannot be right that, at present, just over 2,000 children and young people are in jail in England and Wales, and it is tragic that three out of four young offenders are reconvicted within a year of completing their sentence. I will give the justice system the change it needs, starting by ensuring that all staff working with children and young people in the justice system have received training in children and young people’s development, and by creating a care pathway that includes a full range of mental health services, with transitional arrangements for young people leaving prison.

My constituents in Hackney, like many people across Britain, understand what the right-wing media will never understand: Labour needs a new national approach to crime, which makes the important link to inequality, social care, health, economics, housing and education.

The best solutions to crime are when communities come together to solve it, and I will lead Labour in that new direction by: launching the construction of a new generation of quality council homes; increasing early intervention in schools with classroom-based education programmes; investing in drug rehabilitation programmes in the community; improving access to parenting classes; and also piloting police cadet schemes in local schools.

To Labour members I say this, plainly and simply – this election must be about vision, not division. Hope, not fear. A new direction, not business as usual. And all of this is just a few first steps towards that radical change that we need.

The home office yesterday unveiled its blueprint for reforming the police which promises the biggest organisational shake-up for 50 years. The proposals are contained in Policing in the 21st century: reconnecting police and the people and, among other things, will see the creation of elected Police and Crime Commissioners in each police force area from 2012.

In a completely new constitutional departure, commissioners will be responsible for setting a force’s priorities and budget and have powers to recruit and dismiss chief constables. Police authorities, which date back to 1964, will be scrapped entirely. Meanwhile a new Police and Crime Panel will oversee the commissioner’s budget, hold public meetings and produce an annual report.

The frustration about this announcement is that it should have been a Labour home secretary making it. Although crime levels fell a staggering 43 per cent under the last Labour government, the police went virtually unreformed and the otherwise estimable shadow home secretary, Alan Johnson, is completely off the pace in his opposition to this issue.

In responding to home secretary Teresa May, Mr Johnson said elected police commissioners were an “unnecessary, unwanted and expensive diversion”, claiming that the idea amounted to the politicisation of policing.

But of course one person’s ‘politicisation’ is another’s ‘public accountability’. For a service which was recently exposed for having just one in every ten police officers available to tackle crime at any one time – despite year-on-year budget increases over the past four decades – a bit more scrutiny is probably long overdue.

And when more democracy is seen to be a problem, then it’s a funny old world. Indeed, there seems to be a resistance from some progressives about elected police commissioners because they fear it ushers in the “frightening” prospect of BNP bovver boys getting elected.

Let’s be clear: you cannot run a democracy on the basis that the wrong person might get elected. You fight to make sure the right one does. No-one seriously argues that because housing and children’s services are sensitive matters we should scrap elections to councils in case the BNP takes control of them too.

Neither is it the case, as the Local Government Association inexplicably argues, that elected commissioners will “weaken the ability” of the police and local authorities to cut crime. They will put a dent in the expenses of their members who currently sit on police authorities, but that is hardly the same thing.

The role of elected Police and Crime Commissioners is similar to that of a council leader to their chief executive. They are a democratic lead ensuring the public’s voice is heard throughout the organisation; while operational independence to run the force remains in the hands of the chief constable.

But the value of elected commissioners is that the very act of voting someone into office will stimulate greater debate about key local crime and disorder issues. The police will become more responsive simply because the buck will now stop somewhere to ensure the public’s priorities are delivered. The police will stop being a top-down, take-it-or-leave-it-service and get with the programme about how modern public services are run.

The simple truth is that nothing ever changes in large organisations unless the job of someone at the very top is on the line. But chief constables are virtually regal figures. They are untouchable. The system can only benefit from someone looking over their shoulder. And the bottom line is that the police force is the ultimate failing public service – unresponsive, unreformed and very expensive – and long overdue for a sharp kick in the pants. For so many years they have been immune from change because of lax corporate governance and their own low cunning in keeping politicians’ tanks off their lawns. These reforms will help sweep away that rotten culture.

In fact, the faster Labour reverses out of the intellectual cu-de-sac it now finds itself in on police reform, the better. It feels a bit like the Conservatives’ reaction to the creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly 12 years ago. Not so much implacable opposition, more a case of foot-dragging begrudgery. It will make it harder to elect progressive figures to these crucial roles if Labour is still pulling its face about whether they should even exist.

Good riddance to flaccid police authorities. As the consultation document puts it, they are “too invisible”. They are window-dressing; pseudo-democratic cover for feudal chief constables. Their democratic value is negligible. There is no direct connection to the public – only 8 per cent of wards elect councillors who sit on police authorities. And a third of their members must be magistrates – people who, with the greatest of respect, are part and parcel of the same insular, arcane system as the police. Rather than tribunes of the people they are vassals of the constabulary.

The fact that greater democratisation of the police service was a clear manifesto commitment of both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, means that this reform is going to happen, despite the police being adept at shutting the window on the winds of change in the past.

The response of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is markedly more diplomatic from the previous silly sabre-rattling of their president, Sir Hugh Orde, who predicted that chief constables would resign in protest if this reform went through. ACPO now says it needs to “examine in detail the government’s proposals for maintaining operational independence against the practical reality of directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners”.

Meanwhile, the usually excitable Police Federation which represents rank and file officers, is even more sanguine, saying:

“The Federation is not against the proposal for elected commissioners but we would urge detailed consideration and a firm business case.”

Tellingly, the Association of Police Authorities has not been able to steel itself to comment yet.

In our post-ideological political times ideas become increasingly fluid. There are still many issues to oppose this government over. But elected Police and Crime Commissioners should not one of them.

Convicted terrorists should be given reduced sentences in return for their cooperation with police investigations. This is just one of the recommendations made by Lord Carlile, the government’s Independent Reviewer of anti-terrorist laws, in his annual report delivered yesterday. Lord Carlile’s logic is sound. One of the key challenges for British courts handling terrorism cases is the fact that some forms of evidence, for instance wire taps, are not admissible in court. Creating terrorism ‘super grasses’ could be an imaginative way around evidentiary impasses.

As Lord Carlile observes, some defendants have shown they might potentially be willing to take part:

“Defendants in UK terrorism trials continue to show a willingness to plead guilty in the face of a solid prosecution case and a realistic approach to pleas by prosecutors and judges.”

Of course, cooperation will not come without a price. That price is agreeing to substantially reduce sentences for some defendants who provide information useful for preventing and detecting terrorism.

Cutting jail terms for terrorism convicts will not be easy to sell to the British public. But, in some cases, it might be the right thing to do. As Lord Carlile says:

“The prevention and detection of terrorism offences are more important than the length of prison sentences, though it is right that terrorists should expect very long sentences especially if they have denied what has been proved against them.”

It is also worth keeping in mind that, at present, British jails are doing nothing to encourage individuals incarcerated for terrorism offences to abandon their Salafi-Jihadist ideology. Nor are they preventing convicted terrorists from spreading that ideology to other prisoners.

It is no coincidence that, as a report by my colleague James Brandon showed last year,  no fewer than five convicted terrorists originally adopted extreme interpretations of Islam during their time in a British prison. Four of them were converts. As Ken Clarke said recently, longer prison sentences cannot be the sum total of our response to crime. Instead, we must rehabilitate existing terrorists by encouraging them to abandon their ideology.

Indeed, rehabilitation is second in importance only to getting the information needed to detect and prevent future terrorist attacks. Locking terrorists up and throwing away the key might sound good to tabloid news editors and right-wing pundits, but it does little to keep our country safe in the long run.

In recent weeks three separate pamphlets have been published which take issue with the research and the analysis of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s widely acclaimed book ‘The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone’.

The authors of The Spirit Level have already written a detailed response (and also this one published in The Guardian) which expose “the serious methodological errors” in Policy Exchange’s work; point out the lack of any peer-review of their detractors’ work; and cite the many other academics who have conducted research which supports The Spirit Level’s conclusions.

But there are some further gaping holes in the Policy Exchange and TaxPayers’ Alliance’s publications which are worth pointing out.

First and foremost, The Spirit Level is not the only influential study to recognise that socio-economic inequality, particular in the distribution of income and assets, is also profoundly damaging to individuals, families, society and the economy.

This year alone we have had the Marmot Review into Health Inequalities and John Hill’s National Equality Panel’s report – written by the current president of the British Medical Association and the Professor of Social Policy at LSE respectively. Both men conclude that while the poorest suffer most and require most support to boost their life chances and well-being, improvements can only happen once there are fewer gaps between all sections of society.

As Marmot puts it:

“Focusing solely on the most disadvantaged will not reduce health inequalities sufficiently. To reduce the steepness of the social gradient in health, actions must be universal, but with a scale and intensity that is proportionate to the level of disadvantage.

“We call this proportionate universalism.”

Will Hutton, the very person the government has entrusted with its review of public sector top pay, has just written a book (publication imminent) called ‘Them and Us’: politics, greed and inequality – why we need a fair society. The respected cartographer Danny Dorling has also just published a book ‘Injustice – why social inequality persists’ which pulls together reams of ONS and other data to draw parallel conclusions to The Spirit Level.

Politically this new emphasis has also been evident in the commitment by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to a London living wage of £7.85 an hour and David Cameron’s view that the differential between highest and lowest paid in any public sector agency should be no greater than 1:20. The election campaign, the Coalition Agreement and most recently the Budget have all been framed in terms of fairness, who should be paying the burden for reducing the deficit, and whether resources should be targeted most only at those at the bottom or more universally.

Policy Exchange and other recent critics conveniently forget that The Spirit Level has been embraced by people across the political spectrum.  Positive reviews have been penned from the likes of The Daily Telegraph’s economics editor and The Economist; David Cameron referenced it in his Hugo Young lecture and Michael Gove was effusive in his praise when interviewed alongside Richard Wilkinson on the Today programme. Demos have even written a pamphlet (with a foreword by David Willetts) which proclaims on its cover that “equality can be a core conservative value”.

The embrace from the right has always ever only been partial; and policy prescriptions  emanating have tended to focus on tackling poverty at the very bottom but not inequality throughout society. There are now renewed attempts within the Conservative party to abandon the concept of relative poverty and say that only absolute poverty matters. That is the political context for what looks like a co-ordinated – but academically suspect – attack on The Spirit Level.

Our guest writer is Cllr. Andy Hull (Labour), Highbury West ward, Islington; he is vice chair of The Islington Fairness Commission

London is a place of abject poverty and extreme affluence, living side by side and cheek by jowl. Profound inequality is a day-to-day reality here: picture Canary Wharf, with average earnings through the roof, towering over estates where they are through the floor. Or Angel’s Upper Street, with its trendy boutiques and bars, which runs through what is actually the eighth most deprived borough in England.

That borough is Islington, where those living in the wealthiest areas have a life expectancy on average four years longer than those in the poorest. But, as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue compellingly in The Spirit Level, more equal societies are happier and better, for everyone who lives in them, no matter how well off.

That is why next week we will be launching The Islington Fairness Commission, with Professor Wilkinson in the chair. Bringing together councillors from both the new Labour administration and the Lib Dem opposition, local service providers like the NHS and Met Police, voluntary and private sector representatives and outside experts, The Islington Fairness Commission is being established to take a long, hard look at the nature and the scale of the gap between rich and poor in our borough, and to come up with radical ideas and concrete plans to narrow it.

During the course of its deliberations, the Commission will pull together the evidence available on inequality in the borough before exploring how to close the gap from the bottom up and the top down. It will also consider how to make the inevitable cuts in the months ahead as fair as possible, in spite of the Coalition’s regressive budget.

Meeting in public seven times throughout the course of a year, the Commission will take the debate into the communities it seeks to serve. Convening not just in municipal buildings, but in estates, schools and businesses, it will hear testimony from witnesses drawn from those communities as well as from others with expertise and experience of tackling persistent poverty and inequality elsewhere.

The Commission’s recommendations will feed directly into the council’s corporate budgeting and strategic planning processes and will inform the important work of partner organisations in the years ahead.

It’s easy to be cynical about initiatives like this, to write them off as wonkish quangos that won’t make any real difference. But none of those on the Commission are interested in being part of another talking shop. And relative poverty in Islington is a wicked problem that demands concerted attention and serious analysis as well as action. If the answers were simple, we’d have found them by now.

Improving the life chances of residents, especially in the more deprived parts of the borough, is the top priority and central task of the incoming council. This is about the core progressive values of social justice which brought many of us into politics. And it’s about delivering on a commitment to fairness which is a defining characteristic of the British people.

The Labour leadership and London mayoral candidates could do worse than look to trailblazing local initiatives like this when they are searching for the new policy ideas, and the strong political narrative, the party now needs.

• The Commission’s first meeting will be held in Islington Town Hall at 7.30pm on Monday 19th July and is open to the public.

Official statistics out today show that crime fell by 43 per cent between 1997 and 2010. The British Crime Survey reveals that crime is down 9 per cent from 10.5 million to 9.6 million offences in the past year – the lowest figure since 1981 and the first time the number has dropped below the 10 million mark since records began – while police recorded crime fell 8 per cent, down from 4.7 million to 4.3 million crimes.

There has been no significant change in violent crime in the past year, though longer-term, as with overall crime, it is down 50 per cent since its peak in 1995. Homicides are down 6 per cent in the last year to 615, and down significantly from the figure of 753 in 2007/8, though sexual offences are up 6 per cent since 2008/09, to 54,509.

Gun and knife crime, which together account for just 1 per cent of overall crime, are both down. The number of firearms offences is down 3 per cent to 7,995 (0.2% of all offences), with knife crime down 7 per cent to 33,566 (0.8% of all offences).

The BCS also shows that young men face a higher risk of being a victim of stranger violence (2.2% of men compared with 0.6% of women), and that women are at greater risk of domestic abuse (7% of women aged 16 to 59 were victims in the past year compared with 4% of men); with regard to area, the BCS shows the risk of being a victim of any household crime was higher for households living in urban than rural areas (18% compared with 12%).

According to the BCS, the proportions of the 9.6 million offences committed in 2009/10 by category are: burglary (7%); vehicle-related theft (13%); all other theft (33%); vandalism (25%); and violence, including robbery but excluding sexual offences (22%).

While the police recorded crime stats for the 4.3 million offences recorded in 2009/10 are: burglary (12%); offences against vehicles (11%); other thefts (24%); fraud and forgery (4%); criminal damage (19%); violence against the person (20%); sexual offences (1%); robbery (2%); drug offences (5%); and all other offences (2%).

Shadow home secretary Alan Johnson said the statistics showed that Labour’s law and order policies had worked. He said:

“These figures again demonstrate how impressively the police and other agencies tackled crime under the Labour Government…

“But rather than congratulating everyone who has worked so hard to make our country safer, we now have the bizarre spectacle of Tory ministers trashing the official figures which show undeniably that crime has fallen.”

Police minister Nick Herbert said:

“It is welcome when crime falls but let’s get this into perspective, Britain is a high crime country.”

And home secretary Theresa May said:

“No society should accept a situation where at least 26,000 people a day fall victim to crime - that is why we will reform the police to make them more accountable to their communities and cut bureaucracy to get officers on to the beat and fighting crime.

“This is why we want the public to know what is really going on in their area and will publish monthly crime information about what is happening on their streets by January next year.”

Last night there was a fourth night of rioting in north Belfast, during which police fired a number of baton rounds, a car was set on fire and petrol bombs and fireworks were thrown during sporadic violence in Ardoyne. The BBC reports that two men in their late teens and early 20s were arrested.

Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland said police would be conducting a major investigation into the violence:

“We will now continue to work hard to identity those involved and will be doing our utmost to put people before the courts. We are very clear that we can and we will continue to maintain public safety and public confidence – we would appeal for the assistance of everyone to that end.”

The latest outbursts are less intense than those of previous nights. On Tuesday night, 100 police officers were forced to use a water cannon to repeal nationalist rioters firing shots at them, erecting burning barricades and shining laser pens at the police.

Earlier this week, it was reported that 82 police officers had been injured during protests on Sunday and Monday evening. Nationalist protesters took the action following Monday’s 12th of July parades, the day that a majority of unionist Orange Order parades take place, marking the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.   

SDLP councillor Nicola Mallon called for an end to the “absolute madness and mayhem” following the violent riots in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, while Sinn Fein’s deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, made clear that he and the first minister remained “resolute” in their search for a solution, adding:

“This will require the community to stand united against all those forces seeking to bring conflict back on to our streets.”

Likewise, DUP first minister, Peter Robinso,n sought to highlight the partnership between himself and Mr McGuinness, declaring:

“I am disgusted at the outright thuggery and vandalism that has taken place over the course of the last 48 hours. There is no excuse and no place for violence in civilised society. Both the deputy First Minister and I have been, and will continue, to work for a resolution of the difficulties around parading.”

The latest round of violence has once again raised the need for a reformed system for regulating parades in such a way that commands the confidence of both nationalist and Unionist communities, a point echoed by Police Service of Northern Ireland chief constable, Matt Baggott.

As part of the Hillsborough Agreement, a commitment was given to seeking a new framework for parades.

This was followed by a consultation which ended just yesterday, which proposed:

• A new focus on encouraging dialogue between communities;

• Replacing the current Parades Commission with two new groups – one to administer applications for or objections to parades and to facilitate talks and a second adjudicating body to make rulings where no agreement can be found; and that

• Under the plans, marchers would be obliged to apply for a parade 37 days in advance, with objections to be filed within seven days, while a further seven-day deadline would be put in place for permission to stage a protest against an event.

The measures however have proven contentious, despite both Sinn Fein and the DUP having sought to reassure their respective communities.

Last week, the loyalist Orange Order rejected the reforms, whilst SDLP leader, Margaret Ritchie, has said:

“The Public Assemblies, Parades and Protests Bill is a most obnoxious piece of legislation resulting from the worst kind of behind-the-scenes deal-making.”

Her comments came after Eamonn McAnn, writing in the Belfast Telegraph, warned Northern Ireland not to “sleep walk” into the new parades legislation, whilst an editorial in the Newsletter on Monday concluded:

“Anyone who has looked at these proposals, whether charities or churches, trade unionists or school governors, will recognise that the current proposals are a recipe for chaos.”

The riots over the past days will once again put pressure on all sides to come up with a solution. However, perhaps most worrying of all, as the BBC’s Northern Ireland correspondent Mark Simpson concludes, whilst the violence has brought political leaders together, “the problem was the rioters don’t seem to be listening”.

Our guest writer is Ben Rogers, a visiting fellow of the RSA and a former Downing Street policy strategist

In 1878 a young army surgeon based in the military hospital in Woolwich, Peter Shepherd, taught the first ever first aid class. Within 10 years there were over 300 centres teaching first aid around the world. By the early 1960s St John’s ambulance had issued more than 9 million first aid certificates globally. Today I publish a paper with the Royal Society of Arts arguing that we should adapt the first aid or ‘Woolwich model’ to address anti-social behaviour. My starting point is that we have a problem with anti-social behaviour.

Crime has fallen, and so has people’s concern about crime, but the proportion of people reporting anti-social behaviour as a serious problem in their area has not fallen over the past few years – though I concede the most recent BCS figures show a move in the right direction. Moreover we know this is a priority for the public – and we know that we as a nation are particularly unconfident about intervening.

A 2006 survey by the Jill Dando Institute found that British people are more wary of intervening that most other European people. Sixty per cent of Germans said they would intervene to prevent a group of 14-year-olds vandalising a bus shelter but that figure falls to 30 per cent in Britain.

Finally, we know that this is an issue particularly associated with young people – in two ways: first, people report that ASB tends to involve young people – often groups of young people; second, young people are more concerned about it than are older people.

My suggestion is that we should do more to skill people to deal with anti-social behaviour themselves – that we should complement the recent drive to strengthen neighbourhood policing, by equipping people to intervene and resolve issues without necessarily having recourse to the police

Training in community safety, I argue, could give people the ability and so the confidence to intervene. This confidence is key. There is actually quite a strongly shared set of standards in this country about what is unacceptable in terms of public behaviour. But we are unsure about intervening. I think there are a number of different factors contributing to this diffidence. There is a concern that the state is not on people’s side.  People are worried for their safety. And they are worried about doing something perceived as inappropriate or about losing face.

So what would training consist of? It would aim to teach 3 core skills:

How to read a situation and judge whether it is safe and appropriate to intervene

How to ensure one’s physical safety and that of others (how to position oneself to as to be able to escape safely, defend oneself and protect others if they are being attacked)

How to manage anger in other people and defuse conflict.

These skills can be taught and often are. The police are taught them. PCSOs are trained in them. Teachers are sometime taught them but more often acquire them on the job. And experience suggests that people who are taught them value them – and they it useful not just in dealing with anti-sociable behaviour but anger and conflict wherever they occur.

Who would these skills be aimed at? Most obviously the public service workforce – especially people who work in the local public realm. And also shopkeepers, publicans and similar. But young people and ordinary citizens can be taught them too.

Download The Big Society approach to anti-social behaviour

A poll recently commissioned by Lib Dems for Drug Policy Reform and conducted by Vision Critical shows that 70 per cent of people are in favour of cannabis being legalised. It also shows that more people are in favour of legalising amphetamines (speed), magic mushrooms and mephedrone (the drug recently banned by the government) than are in favour of keeping them prohibited.

For ecstasy there is still a small majority in favour of prohibition (54%) but 39% are in favour of legalisation in some form. Even heroin and cocaine have around a third of people who want to see them legalised. What these findings show is not just that over two thirds of people think that cannabis should be legal, it is that even across other drugs there is not a huge consensus in favour of prohibition either.

At the very least this could be interpreted as there being scope for a proper debate about the future of drugs policy that includes all options and that such an approach would not be as “politically toxic” as many politicians seem to fear. This poll should go some way towards reassuring them that this is not the case.

The poll took a slightly different approach to previous ones in this field. It outlines three scenarios, “Light regulation”, “Strict government control and regulation” and “Prohibition”. It then detailed what each of those categories mean and asked people to say which category they thought a number of currently legal and prohibited drugs should go into.

Some of the demographic breakdown information from the results is interesting too. For example, there is no significant difference between the three different age ranges (18-34, 35-54, 55+) across the different drugs and categories people want to see. There is also little difference between supporters of the main parties; perhaps the results of this poll could be interpreted as giving “permission” for politicians to have that full and open debate.

You can read more information including a more detailed breakdown of the poll methodology and results here. You can also view an interview I conducted back in January with Professor David Nutt, former head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs which touched upon some of the issues raised by this poll here.

Our guest writer is Arthur Baker, a 17-year-old Young Labour member from south east london, who campaigned extensively in the run-up to the election, and is now education rep for the True Labour Policy Group following his work for the Campaign for State Education

One of Labour’s key goals in their 13 years of power was to eradicate child poverty, and progress has been made. However, some of the most vulnerable children in Britain now hover under Osborne’s axe.

About one in ten children in the UK suffer abuse or neglect, according to figures by charity Kids Company, who work to protect the capital’s homeless, abused, and vulnerable children. One child is killed every week by abuse from parents/guardians, and of those who come to KidsCo for help, 84 per cent are homeless, 83 per cent suffer sustained trauma, and 87 per cent suffer mental health difficulties.

Research by leading neurologists working with KidsCo has shown that neglect and abuse causes irrevocable damage to brain development, and can lead to long term mental health difficulties, violence, alcohol and substance abuse. One girl’s story, as documented by KidsCo, gives an example of this.

My worry is that these children will not be protected, but victimised and demonised by our new Government in their mission to crack down on ‘anti social behaviour’ and crime. Labour’s double edged sword of Sure Start centres, support, and rehabilitation, coupled with ASBOs and tougher sentencing may have worked, but cutting the former whilst extending the latter will have a dangerous and detrimental effect on the most vulnerable children.

The VAT rise and the Coalition’s cuts will also have an adverse impact. As things stand, of the 1.5 million children abused and neglected in Britain, around 547,000 are referred to social services, and only 37,900 could be protected by a child protection plan; social services have a crippling lack of resources and workers.

It has come to a point where some have even been forced to set up ruthless quotas, according to founder of KidsCo Camilla Batmanghelidjh, where they will intervene if a child has been raped, but not if they have been sexually abused without penetration. Further cuts to the already emaciated social services budget will be crippling, but cuts in other areas will of course take their toll too.

Cutting Sure Start, and the support to parents and children who so desperately need it, will be catastrophic, and will unquestionably lead to an increase in neglect of young children. The VAT rise, job losses, cuts to schools, health etc. will also put more children in danger of abuse, neglect, malnutrition, homelessness, and all of the things which should have no place in an affluent society.

However, mention of child protection was omitted from the Coalition Agreement and ignored by both parties’ manifestos, as in the election campaign: we know Cameron “met a black man”, and plenty of people worried about anti social behavior, but apparently none of the leaders met a vulnerable child.

Have the Government considered the effect of their policies on these children, who outnumber membership of the three political parties combined, and the entire Sikh population of Europe? We cannot know, but what we do know is that we cannot trust them to protect the most vulnerable members of our society.

That Labour are out of power, does not mean that we should stop fighting to reduce child poverty, and protect the vulnerable – and a good place to start is Kids Company’s Peace of mind campaign. The charity have created a giant virtual brain, in which you can buy a neuron for £5, upload pictures, write messages, and join groups with others who have joined. So far the list includes Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren, Ruby Wax and many others.

It’s already being Tweeted by Kerry McCarthy, and John McDonnell has agreed to help out as well; you could hardly be in better company.

In the wake of the July 7th terror attacks of five years ago many awkward questions were levelled at the Muslim community in the UK and a link was established between the bombers and Al Qaeda.

The evidence for this link is the fact that Al Jazeera reported the videotaped suicide note of bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan as having come from Al Qaeda. Likewise Khan made references to Al Qaeda leaders and used the language of Al Qaeda, calling himself a ‘soldier’ and asking to enter ‘the garden of paradise’. And so, here, the debate about July 7th ended.

The events of that day, with this evidence, could be cleanly fitted into the prevailing dialogue about ‘radical Islam’. July 7th became a tragic reminder of why we are fighting in Afghanistan, another example of Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ and a classic case of terrorism trying to undermine democracy and freedom.

What lies beyond the political rhetoric though, and the casual employment of such easy categorisations as ‘terrorism’, ‘freedom’ and ‘radical Islam’?

Al Qaeda is now widely recognised as being less an organisation, more a franchise, a brand. It is true Khan travelled to Pakistan, and he was probably given the authority to carry out the attacks in the name of the Al Qaeda brand but does this mean Al Qaeda attacked the UK?

This dominant hegemony misses the real lessons of July 7th.

Beyond Islam the bombers were unified by many other demographic factors. They were all young men, from minority communities whose experience of Britain was that of working class life in the North. This is far more important than their religious inclinations.

For many people in the communities that the bombers come from, of all creeds, colours and religions, Britain remains a closed shop and a place of limited opportunity. A number of recent reports have shown that inequalities of wealth and mobility persist and linger, such as these two, reported by The Guardian. Dewsbury, from where several of the bombers hailed, is a place of deprivation and poverty.

It is a town a million miles away from the corridors of power, from the media. It is a place familiar to many people, up and down the land, who feel a genuine alienation from the political process and legitimate routes to empowerment. Parallels between radical Islam and the BNP seem counterintuitive but, as shown by this article about the far right, the emotions that underpin extremism are common to all communities.

Jamie Bartlett from Demos explains today how a more meritocratic society, of greater opportunity and mobility, where there are more avenues through which political grievance can be expressed leads to a net reduction in radicalisation and the subsequent violence.

There can never be any excuse for the horrific and barbaric actions of the July 7th bombers. To focus on Islam though, and the dynamics of international politics is to ignore the more difficult questions. What drove some ordinary men from Yorkshire to declare Jihad on their own country? What fostered such intense anger and alienation, so easily exploited by extremists?

The sad fact is that the people of Dewsbury, and numerous communities like it, will probably never read this article. A proper response to 7/7 must be to bring the alienated and angry young men of Britain, whether seduced by Al Qaeda, the BNP or football hooliganism, into society. Only then can we have social cohesion and only this is true counter-terrorism.

David Miliband, writing in tomorrow’s New Statesman, will say that the “failure” of Tony Blair to take account of people’s struggles with the impacts of globalisation on their communities led to voters “turning their backs” on the Labour Party. Miliband, frontrunner in the race to be the next Labour leader, also criticises Gordon Brown for not resolving “Labour’s English question”.

The shadow foreign secretary writes:

“Tony Blair’s connection with ‘Middle England’ was a profound electoral attribute. It is less well remembered that early on Tony made the patriotic case for strengthening the bonds of community. I know how passionately he felt.

“But, over time, he failed to take sufficient account and respond fast enough to the real struggles that many communities faced in confronting the impacts of globalisation – migration, low wages and public services under strain.

“When I campaigned in the last election it was very clear that the effect of this failure was people turning their backs on Labour. They felt we were no longer standing up for them at a time of huge change in their lives.”

Of Mr Brown, he says:

“Gordon Brown faced a different problem. As a Scottish prime minister confronting the Anglocentric media, he sought to emphasise the bonds of Britishness. His was a heartfelt and rigorous account of British national identity but it failed to capture the public imagination.

“Moreover, as Gordon was seeking to construct an idea of Britishness from above, more and more of our fellow citizens were expressing an identity bound up in the history and iconography of England, Wales and Scotland. Gordon’s great achievement was to solve the Scottish question (of a Scottish prime minister governing the UK in an age of devolution), but he did not resolve Labour’s English question.

“Labour needs a revived politics of Englishness rooted in a radical and democratic account of nationhood. We need to draw upon a specifically English story that points to the battle for social justice born of a proud tradition of personal liberty and independence – as resentful of corporate elites as meddling bureaucracy.”

On immigration specifically, he cautions against suggestions from some Labour figures that “the easy answer is that immigration was the cause and that we should have been tougher”, saying he doesn’t want to “engage in a Dutch auction on immigration”:

“It’s not my way and it is not Labour’s. In fact, I don’t think it’s our country’s way either. Just ask Michael Howard about the 2005 general election – he tried it and lost.”

He concludes by insisting Labour has to look outside its heartlands and identify with England’s “traditions and values” if it is to win power again:

“If Labour is going to gain support outside its metropolitan heartlands and aspire to government again, it needs to speak for England and identify with its traditions and values.

“In four years’ time, as the English football team lifts the World Cup in Brazil, Labour needs to be leading that national conversation.”