On Monday Ed Balls is expected to deliver a major speech setting out Labour's case on the economy ahead of George Osborne's spending review next month.

These two speeches will define the battle lines on the issue which will determine the next election. Labour's task will be to demonstrate that...

While hardly of the same historical significance, it was somehow appropriate that Margaret Thatcher's death and Tony Blair's first major intervention into British politics since leaving office both occurred in the same week. When asked about her most important legacy, the former prime minister is alleged to have...

Shortly after Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party, the BBC began running Caroline Ahern's mock talk show, The Mrs Merton Show. One of the elderly host's best comic one-liners was her famous quip to Debbie McGee: "so what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?" Reaction to...

There have on occasion been fairer winds blowing in the opposition's sails going into a set of local elections. Take, for instance, 2006 when the weeks before polling were dominated by revelations of the deputy prime minister's affair with his secretary, the health secretary being booed by nurses, and the...

The first Queen's speech in two years is imminent. Labour should seize on the event to set out its own stall.

Few events in the political calendar underline quite so graphically the power of the government and the impotence of the opposition as much as...