Ed Miliband Has Offered An Alternative – But Will Anyone Vote For It?

Miliband's indisputable leftward shift has put Labour at ease with itself but risks making the party less relevant than ever.












Ed Miliband hopes his vision, that he set out at conference, will connect with 'the country's wider shared values'.

Many years ago, I was walking down a street in London with a rising Labour politician. On a lamppost we caught sight of a poster advertising a SWP meeting. "Is there a socialist alternative to Kinnock?" the poster asked. "Yes, there is a socialist alternative," laughed Gordon Brown. "But the problem is that no one will vote for it."

Ed Miliband is certainly no Trotskyist. But his speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool this week is already raising some of the same questions that the old SWP poster did. For Miliband is gambling that there is an alternative to contemporary orthodoxy. He believes that the experience of financial collapse, public spending cuts and recessionary inequalities requires a resetting of the collective moral and economic compass. Crucially, he believes that the electorate can be persuaded to embrace it.

Miliband chose his words very carefully. Terms like socialism and capitalism do not appear in his speech. But they were implicit in it. Read in conjunction with the recent New Statesman article by Miliband's strategist Stewart Wood, this week's speech adds up to an attempt to reclaim social democracy as Labour's core route-finding principle. Cautious it may be – Wood sees Labour's aim as the creation of "a better capitalism", which won't please everyone in the Labour ranks – but the argument is put with clarity. It is indisputably a leftward shift from the New Labour years. It is also what Miliband has always wanted, which helps, sort of.

The large question now is whether Labour will succeed in shifting the national argument so that his version of social democracy stands at the centre of public debate. Miliband's conviction that it can is central to his entire leadership. It was embodied in the many sections of this week's speech that tried to connect Miliband's own vision with the country's wider shared values. If he succeeds in setting an agenda of market, welfare and community reforms that voters really want to and do believe in, then he may indeed reshape British politics. But if he fails, Labour's slide to the political margins will continue.

Less than three days after the speech, most of the reaction to it has already fallen into one of two camps. These strike me as too crude in both cases. On the one side there are those who welcome Miliband's commitment and think he can succeed – this was the general mood at Liverpool. On the other there are those who dismiss what Miliband said and think his approach is doomed to failure – which is what the Conservatives will undoubtedly say next week in Manchester.

In fact, the impact of Miliband's speech could be less straightforward than that. This is not an argument between a wholly laissez-faire approach and a wholly dirigiste one. In reality it is an argument about shifting the balance within a narrower set of priorities than those who insist on talking about the end of neoliberalism ever admit. Even so, this was one of the few party leader's speeches that may be remembered for longer than a week after it was given. Most of its actual phrases may already have gone down our mental chutes into the waters of oblivion. But it is quite likely that a lot of people will remember this as the moment when Miliband turned the party away from the New Labour orthodoxy that compromise with global markets is inevitable.

But there are turns and turns. To take an obvious example, which Miliband will have to address eventually, there is all the difference in the world between maintaining the coalition's tax and spending levels and committing to raise them. There is also a gulf between attacking economic predators and extolling producers, as Miliband did this week, and putting strict regulations in place to deny the former and promote the latter. And there is a massive difference between being a party of free trade, a principal that the left has always managed to embrace, and being a party of protection.

If he is dumb, Miliband may be tempted to do what the Tories would love him to do and promise to clamp down directly, almost certainly ineffectively and in all probability with unintended consequences, on morally indefensible excessive pay and bonuses. If he is smart, he will use the bully pulpit, as he did on Tuesday, at least as much as the tax system to encourage the better capitalism, and the better companies, to which he aspires.

The idea that there might be a workforce representative on remuneration committees caused outrage in the rightwing press this week, but it ought to be just the start, not to an expanded role for the unions, but for well-argued and flexible new models of workplace co-determination of the kind that have done so much for German companies.

The best news for Labour I heard in Liverpool is that Andrew Adonis is planning to focus on new thinking about industrial policy, a subject riddled with old ideas, especially in the unions, but which is crucial to any long-term reimagining of the UK economy. It does not follow that the left's traditional state-centred responses are the new centre ground just because people are outraged by the bankers and by indefensible wealth.

The experience of the last three years suggests public opinion has moved to the view that government deficits are part of the problem, rather than the solution. Thursday's vote in Germany and this week's budget in France were the latest reminders of that. Labour was canny about the economy this week: Ed Balls got the balance right in his speech. But parties of the left are losing ground across the world right now and Labour shouldn't imagine there is a magic moral bullet that will enable it to buck that trend.

Labour's move to the left can be, and has already been, exaggerated – by friend and foe alike. Yet it has been a significant declaration by the party nonetheless. The coalition parties will undoubtedly respond, and not merely with abuse and caricature. Expect surprise moves that try to undermine Labour claims to ethical uniqueness.

Electorally, the danger for Labour is that the party will have convinced itself that it has rediscovered its own sense of ethical virtue without persuading sceptical voters that it can run the economy. The party may be more at ease with itself but less relevant than ever. Miliband may want to see himself as the new Clem Attlee. But his ratings suggest that the voters still see him as the new George Lansbury – an unworldly leader and an electoral failure.

Liberal Democrats Vow To Fight Rightwing Policies Of 'Ruthless' Tories

Nick Clegg signals combative approach to coalition describing PM's party as political enemies who must be taken on.












Nick Clegg speaking at the Liberal Democrat party conference.

Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats have vowed to face down "ruthless" and "extreme" forces in the Tory party to protect the British people from right-wing policies that would widen inequality and benefit the rich.

At a rally on Saturday night to open his party's annual conference in Birmingham, Clegg underlined the Lib Dems' newly combative approach to the coalition, describing David Cameron's party as "political enemies" who must be taken on when necessary in the national interest. After a traumatic year during which the Lib Dems' popularity has plummeted and their leader has been accused of abandoning his party's principles, Clegg struck a markedly more assertive note.

While trumpeting his party's successes so far in influencing health and tax policies, he said it was more prepared than ever to "fight tooth and nail" for what was right. "We are prepared to be awkward," he said. "We are not here to make things easy. We're here to put things right."

In an interview with the Observer, his deputy Simon Hughes goes further, telling the Conservatives they have no mandate to drive through a rightwing agenda. Hughes says the Tories have shown themselves to be "ruthless" operators in the first 16 months of the coalition over the referendum on electoral reform and boundary changes and says the resurgent right of the party is "extreme" on issues such as Europe and tax.

He says Tories must come to their senses and realise that they did not win the last election – and that they rely on the Lib Dems for power.

"Not only did they not win but they got a third of those who voted," he said. "The Tory party is not the dominant party in British politics that it used to be. It is absolutely not the dominant force in Scotland and Wales that it used to be. The Tory right have forgotten that."

In a rebuff to Conservative hardliners he adds: "There is absolutely no majority in parliament for your views. If there is a coalition government in the national interest then extreme remedies and answers are not appropriate."

The comments are bound to infuriate Cnservatives as the conference season opens. Many Tories are beginning to resent profoundly the way the Lib Dems are already watering down Tory changes on health and education and blocking Cameron from developing a more hardline approach on Europe.

Clegg and his ministers are now convinced they can claw back some of their pre-election popularity if they can demonstrate that they are reining in the Conservatives and stamping their own mark on government. Deep division between the coalition partners will surface in Birmingham over tax, welfare, health, pensions and last month's riots.

The party leadership will announce it will veto the abolition of the 50p tax rate for people earning over £150,000 – a key demand of the Tory right – unless and until other measures, such as a mansion tax, are imposed. It will also unveil plans to exempt the first £12,500 of earnings from tax, raising the target from its current level of £10,000.

Hughes says the party has to make the fight against wage inequality in the private sector a key theme. He said he is pushing hard for measures to limit the gap between the highest and lowest paid staff in the private sector. "The differentials are obscene and you really cannot just stand by," he said. "Liberal Democrats have to be clear. If Labour is really relaxed about the stinking rich, some of us are not relaxed about it."

Hughes also insisted that reform of party funding was essential to stop the Conservatives running ruthless campaigns – as they had against electoral reform. "The Tories can be nastier – with a result – if they are allowed to collect more and more money legitimately," he said.

On tax, he said the UK properties of wealthy non-domiciled individuals should be hit. "It would be entirely reasonable to say that if someone is not domiciled in this country but has six mansions they should be paying more into the system." Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, will announce the commitment of £600m to boost infrastructure projects and will attack bankers who fail to lend to businesses. "Our judgments about what needs to be done should be driven by the liberal economy we want to build," he will say.

On Saturday night, the Lib Dem equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, dismissed suggestions that Cameron had been a major force behind the move to legalise gay marriage when she claimed ownership of the policy. "Conference, this is a Liberal Democrat policy," she said.

Clegg said his party had shown courage entering a coalition that was now shaping policy by "cutting taxes, not for the rich, but for millions of people on low and middle incomes". The Lib Dems could have "bottled" the chance to govern but instead "rose to the challenge", he said, "and we did it knowing it meant working with our political enemies and almost certain short-term unpopularity".

The party leadership was celebrating the failure of former health spokesman Evan Harris to force a vote on the NHS. The Lib Dems believe they are making more progress to dilute the reforms behind the scenes.

Coalition Braced For Boundaries Revolt

MPs may mutiny over changes to constituencies.










George Osborne's Tatton seat is among those that could disappear in the boundary change.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg are braced for a collapse in coalition discipline when dozens of MPs learn this week that their constituencies are to be axed.

The redrawing of parliamentary boundaries, which will cut the number of MPs from 650 to 600, will ignite a political storm tomorrow, with government whips fearing that the prospect of being kicked out of the Commons could lead some MPs into rebellion for the next three years.

"Trying to control Lib Dems is like herding cats at the best of times," said one party source. "If a dozen are de-mob happy, counting down till polling day when they know they'll be out on their ear, it will be a nightmare."

Senior ministers including George Osborne, the Chancellor, Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, are among those whose seats are under threat.

It raises the prospect of more junior MPs being shunted out of safe seats to make way for key government figures. "It will be every man and woman for themselves," a Tory backbencher said. "It will be piranha pool-time," said another. There is even speculation that some disgruntled MPs could quit within weeks, sparking a wave of by-elections.

MPs will be briefed on the plans tomorrow, before they are published officially by the Boundary Commission on Tuesday. They will only cover England, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland following later this year. In England there will be 502 new seats. Two will be on the Isle of Wight, but the remaining 500 will have to have between 80,473 and 72,810 voters. There have already been rows about planned constituencies spanning county borders, with Devon and Cornwall MPs refusing to countenance the idea of straddling the Tamar.

In Leeds a tussle is being predicted between Ed Balls, Labour's Shadow Chancellor, and Hilary Benn, the Shadow Leader of the House, while in north-west Scotland, Mr Alexander could be pitched against former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy for a berth.

Analysis by Rob Haywood, a former Tory MP, suggests that Labour stands to lose 25 seats, the Tories 15 and Lib Dems 10, while Lewis Baston, a senior research fellow at the University of Liverpool, predicted that Labour would lose 18 seats, the Tories 15 and Lib Dems 14, with other parties losing three.

Labour has accused the coalition of gerrymandering, while No 10 insists the high number of seats with relatively small electorates favours the Labour Party. At the last election, the average Labour seat had an electorate of 68,487 compared to 72,418 in Tory-won constituencies and 69,440 for Lib Dems. Downing Street argues the policy will save £12m a year.

"By making constituencies more equal in size, the value of people's votes will no longer depend on where you live, and with fewer MPs the cost of politics will be cut," a source said.

A 12-week consultation will be followed by a second phase allowing parties to respond to each other's complaints.

UKIP Appeal To Tory Supporters, While Greens Target Lib Dems

You can tell it's autumn not just by the change in weather and threat of storms... but because the party conference season is under way.











Party conferences are under way with UKIP meeting in Eastbourne and the Green Party in Sheffield.

The first two have already started with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) meeting in Eastbourne and the Green Party, led by the Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas, in Sheffield.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage is using the conference to appeal to disaffected Tories.











Nigel Farage is appealing to people unhappy with Conservative policies.

He describes his party as having an "open door" and believes the bulk of new support for his party will come from those unhappy with Conservative policies.

'Mass deception'

Never one to shy away from controversy, he's used strong language to describe the three main parties at Westminster as "a group of college kids".

But his main target has been the Conservatives who he said were engaged in a "mass deception", claiming they promised one thing about Europe yet delivered another.

Elsewhere, despite the fact the Green's only MP represents Brighton Pavilion and the Brighton Council is the only Green-run administration in the country, the party is meeting in Sheffield.

Given the party's achievement at the local elections in May, this year's conference is particularly significant for its leader Caroline Lucas.

On national issues she's blamed "unrestrained capitalism" for the riots last month.

She told her party conference that underlying issues, such as lack of jobs and wage inequalities, must be tackled.

And she criticised David Cameron's "repressive crackdown" on those responsible for the disorder.

Just as UKIP want to appeal to disaffected Tories, Caroline Lucas hopes to appeal to disgruntled Liberal Democrats.














Caroline Lucas became Green MP for Brighton Pavilion in 2010.

In her speech she mocked the Lib Dem leader and Sheffield MP, Nick Clegg, as "the minister for meeting angry people and being shouted at".

The party recently celebrated its first 100 days in power at Brighton & Hove City Council.

However, not all its pledges have been a resounding success - the idea for a "meat-free Monday" had to be dropped after a council official proposed piloting it with bin men.

But some of the pledges the party has introduced have fared rather better.

They've introduced an extra 60p on the minimum wage for 340 council workers to meet their living wage pledge.

They've also attempted to tackle the council's pay gap, with chief executive John Barradell taking a 5% pay cut.

They may have only been in power in Brighton for a few months but there is clearly still a lot of work to do - such as tackling Brighton's housing shortages and the lack of school places.

"National support for the Green Party in opinion polls has not increased significantly"
Louise Stewart

Despite Caroline Lucas' high profile as party leader and the election breakthroughs in Brighton, national support for the party in opinion polls has not increased significantly and remains in single digits.

So while the conference is a good time to take stock of the party's achievements, it's often a time when delegates - and the public - start looking at whether their leader is really delivering.

Over the next few weeks we'll see how Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron all fare.

With the Liberal Democrats conference next, in Liverpool, Nick Clegg will be hoping he does not, in Caroline Lucas' words, end up "meeting angry people and being shouted at".

The Liberal Democrats Aren’t Especially Liberal – Or Even Democratic

The junior Coalition partner’s policies have made a mockery of its historic name.












What is Sarah Teather's party actually delivering for Britain?

If the Liberal Democrats didn’t exist, under what circumstances would you choose to create them? I’ll assume that it’s the “Liberal” bit of their historical accident of a name that matters (not many anti-democrats run for election these days). If we did feel the need for a Liberal Party, I guess it would be because neither the Labour nor Tory organisations were being sufficiently, well, liberal in their policy-making.

Ten years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown making illegal anything that moved, while repeatedly trying to give the state the power to lock us up without charge for longer and longer periods? Yes, I can see a need for some more liberalism; that there could be a useful role for a party to react viscerally against Labour’s criminalising tendencies. Ten years of Margaret Thatcher? I’m hardly one to criticise my political hero, but I can’t deny that prolonged exposure to her governing style might make a voter yearn for something a little less prescriptive; a little more laissez-faire in matters social. Regardless of your own political disposition, then, I don’t think it’s hard to make the case that political space could exist for a party which prioritised the autonomy of the individual over either stateist or corporatist collectivism.

Now imagine that you are a Liberal Democrat. Your organisation has been in the wilderness for 80 years, since the time of Lloyd George. The general election of 2010 gives you the chance to share government with the Conservatives; this is the first time in recent history that an administration will have a serious Liberal presence. How would you behave? Me, I would be bending over backwards to demonstrate that not only is a liberal instinct a useful one to bring to the art of government, but that it also makes sense to have that instinct embodied by my organisation. Anyone anyone can call themselves a “liberal”. The trick is to convince voters that such an instinct requires a party to carry it.

Instead, what has happened? Andrew Lansley’s Health Bill, which made a tentative step towards liberalisation of health provision in the UK, is first of all postponed, and then watered down, largely at the behest of the Lib Dems. Even after the Bill passed the Commons this week, Baroness (Shirley) Williams and the dis-elected ex-MP Evan Harris continued to mutter darkly and publicly about their inability to support it. Lib Dems ensured that the planned GP consortia – supposed to act for us, the patients – will include hospital doctors and nurses; a prioritisation of the producer over the patient. Unelected peer and dis-elected ex‑MP – I withdraw my opening remarks about the party’s name: they’re not even democratic, let alone liberal.

Also this week, Nick Clegg gave a speech about the Coalition’s flagship free schools. These schools are the last, best hope of those children failed by local education authorities. Academic excellence through freedom of choice: what could be more liberal than that? Instead, Mr Clegg chose to focus on the importance of preventing anyone running such a school from making a profit – profit is bad, apparently, because successful schools might use the money to expand – and went out of his way to support an even greater role for councils – the LEAs – in controlling access. In a straight choice, the Lib Dem leader prioritises the producer interest.

I could go on. Lib Dems also want to delay the election of local police commissioners. Anti-democratic again; and when was denying a voice to the people a “liberal” characteristic? And I’ve not mentioned the party’s support for the Human Rights Act, largely because it defies parody, let alone analysis. “Votes for prisoners”, say Lib Dems. It’s not quite the heady fight of the People’s Budget of 1909, is it?

Ah yes, say Lib Dem activists, but think of all the good we bring to the Coalition. When pressed, they trumpet the lack of recognition of marriage in the tax system. I’m not clear why it’s liberal to penalise the natural pair-bonding affinity of human mammals, but there you are. They also claim to have secured the increase in the personal allowance for the poorest taxpayers, as well as the retention – thus far – of the 50p top rate.

The 50p top rate is economically illiterate, and needn’t detain us. Symbolism does matter, though, and if keeping it there for a few months longer means that those such as Simon Hughes (“Champion of University Access”, no less) continue to vote with the Government, so be it. But did we need the Lib Dems to make the case for the increase in personal allowances? Tories have campaigned against the complex and inefficient recycling of income from the poor, to the government, and then back to the poor, for years. More importantly, the Right-wing view of tax (to reduce it wherever possible) is truly liberal, because it seeks to free people from state dependency. Lib Dems view tax as an instrument of social engineering; hence the posturing over 50p.

Eighty years in the wilderness, 80 years protecting the flame, and they can’t even mount a coherent case for electoral reform (“AV is a miserable little compromise” – Nick Clegg. But then: “Vote for AV” – Nick Clegg). Measured as the opportunity to show that British liberalism deserves the vehicle of its own party, coalition has been a disaster for the Lib Dems.

We have to face up to this political category error. Just because we can all agree that there’s a need for some liberalism in our politics, just because some unpopular politicians have given themselves that name, we’ve taken the Liberal Democrats at their own valuation. But Shirley Williams and Evan Harris are not liberals, and nor are the other former leaders and big Lib Dem beasts who haunt the media airwaves with a greater prominence than the paucity of their electoral support could ever justify.

Not that a political position has to be popular in order to be worth holding; and if a party wants to act as a pressure group for the producer interest in health and education, or as a supporter of judicial activism on Human Rights, or to call for ever-greater European integration (as Danny Alexander did this week), then good luck to it. But it shouldn’t mis-name itself.

Where the Lib Dems have been politically effective in the Coalition, they have been anything but liberal. And when they claim to be liberal, they are merely copying policy which the larger party would implement anyway. Neither tactic makes them a worthwhile coalition partner for a Conservative; worse, from the Lib Dem point of view, neither tactic has demonstrated that the 80 years without them were a political loss for Britain. If the Liberal Democrats didn’t already exist, to answer my opening question, I suspect that few would contemplate breathing life into the politically unattractive, social democratic clay from which they are fashioned. We already have a party to represent the sectional producer interest. It’s called “Labour”.

Scottish Tory Leadership Candidate Rejects Call For Greater Economic Powers

Ruth Davidson distances herself from rival contender Murdo Fraser's proposal to scrap ties with UK Tory party.












Ruth Davidson the first openly gay Tory to stand for the party leadership, opens her campaign.

A contender to become Scotland's next Tory leader has rejected demands for far greater economic powers for the Scottish parliament in an open appeal to traditional Tory voters.

Ruth Davidson, at 32 the youngest of the three candidates and the first openly gay Tory to stand for the party leadership, would draw "a line in the sand" at new powers to give modest control over income tax and borrowing.

She also repeatedly distanced herself from Murdo Fraser, the favourite, by dismissing his dramatic proposal to scrap the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party and replace it with a centre-right party separate from the UK Tory party.

That was a "distraction" which would "tie the party in knots" for a year, Davidson said before rejecting the suggestion for more financial autonomy for Scotland, also supported by Fraser.

Portraying herself as the fresh-faced saviour, Davidson said: "Under my leadership, there will be no existential crisis, no wringing of hands. [The] values which made me an instinctive Conservative - that drive my politics - are shared by Scots the length and breadth of the country."

She predicted, however, that it would take a decade before the Tories were strong enough to share power at Holyrood. Her primary objective was to defend the United Kingdom in the run-up to the independence referendum being proposed by the Scottish government.

She described the measures being debated in the Lords to give Holyrood powers over income tax and new £2bn borrowing powers as a one-off "MOT" for the Scottish parliament.

She also dismissed proposals to set a second question on increased financial powers at the referendum.

"I believe that the United Kingdom is a force for good in this world. I believe that we in Scotland walk taller, shout louder and stand stronger for being part of that union," she said, as she became the last of the candidates to launch her campaign.

At the referendum, there would be "no half-way house, no second question, no march to fiscal autonomy. When the referendum is done and Scotland in the union has won the day, let that be an end to it."

Davidson is said to be the candidate most favoured by David Cameron but is the least experienced and least well-known.

Fraser has held a series of prominent party positions, been an MSP for 10 years and is deputy leader at the Scottish parliament.

Jackson Carlaw, the other contender, is seen as the most right-wing and traditional. Twice elected deputy chairman of the Scottish party and a list MSP since 2007, he has a strong base in the west of Scotland party but is seen by senior party figures as too reactionary to suit modern Scottish voters.

Davidson, a former BBC journalist and Territorial Army officer, has a female life partner was elected to Holyrood in May on the party list for Glasgow. She has attracted the fewest well-known supporters, besides John Lamont, one of the few Tories to win a constituency seat outright in May.

She said she was the only candidate who can present herself as one of a new generation of Tories who could convince Scottish voters to rejoin the party.

Younger voters knew little and cared little about Margaret Thatcher's premiership, a period many Tories concede destroyed the party's reputation in Scotland.

After losing every Westminster seat in 1997, the Scottish Tories have had only one MP for the last three elections. In Scotland it lost two seats at the May Holyrood elections, bringing their numbers down to 15.

"There's not just one but two generations of voters after me who have no knowledge of Margaret Thatcher ... Scotland has moved on. The Scottish Conservative party has moved on," she said.

Lib Dem Report Blames Nick Clegg For Debacle Over Lost AV Referendum

Deputy PM's insistence that the vote be held on the same day as local elections turned into a 'perfect storm' for his party










Nick Clegg wanted a May vote to boost the chance of a win for the Yes campaign.

Nick Clegg's decision to call a referendum on the voting system on the same day as local elections backfired disastrously, the Liberal Democrat inquest into the party's crushing double defeat has concluded.

A report to the party's annual conference in Birmingham later this month says the council elections turned into a "perfect storm" because the referendum on the alternative vote (AV) also took place on 5 May.

Although David Cameron wanted to delay the AV vote until this autumn, Mr Clegg insisted it was held in May in the hope that elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and English councils would boost the turnout – and the prospects of a Yes vote. In the event, AV was rejected by 68 to 32 per cent and the Liberal Democrats lost 700 town hall seats. With hindsight, the report concludes, the double poll meant that Liberal Democrat activists were unable to give enough time to the "Yes to AV" effort. It also prevented the seconding of staff to the referendum campaign, took media airtime away from the elections and allowed Labour supporters to "kick the party twice".

The report says: "Turnout among Conservative and socially-conservative Labour voters was at general election levels, driven out in consequence of the AV referendum. A huge trade union campaign in Labour-leaning areas targeted the party leader [Mr Clegg] personally and viciously."

A simultaneous AV referendum also meant that Mr Clegg's party got little or no credit from Tory supporters. "Conservative voters satisfied with the Coalition were reluctant to vote tactically for their coalition partners in Lib Dem/Labour marginals, in no small part because of the vociferous rivalry between the two parties in the national referendum," the report says.

The review by James Gurling, chairman of the Liberal Democrats' campaigns and communications committee, will be discussed on 17 September, the first day of the party conference. Some activists claim his inquest has been kept deliberately low-key to spare Mr Clegg's blushes. Many grassroots members remain angry about the defeat and may criticise the leadership at the conference.

The document admits: "Many dedicated community activists lost their seats through no fault of their own, and in the face of exemplary records of personal service. The challenge now is to ensure that the activist base which supported them is not lost."

The report concludes that Liberal Democrat achievements in government "had not been successfully communicated... the impact of the debate on tuition fees and NHS reform undoubtedly played a part".

It appears that some voters told Liberal Democrat campaigners on the doorstep that they would back the party but then failed to do so. The report says the Liberal Democrats may have to change their approach to canvassing now that they share power nationally.

Allies of Mr Clegg believe some criticisms are out of date. Since May he has adopted a more aggressive approach inside the Coalition, distancing his party from the Tories on some issues and trumpeting Liberal Democrat achievements such as changes to the Government's health reforms.

But as MPs debated the Health and Social Care Bill yesterday, the Social Liberal Forum, a pressure group on the left of the party, called for further changes to the legislation and for a full debate at conference. Evan Harris, a former MP, said the revised Bill would not prevent the "marketisation or fragmentation" of the NHS.

Miliband Goes For His Clause 4 Moment

Ed Miliband is set to try to implement the first major change to Labour's founding principles for 17 years at this year's party conference.












In a move with strong echoes of Tony Blair's Clause Four campaign, when he scrapped the party's commitment to nationalising industry, Mr Miliband will insert a clause that brands Labour "a force for social justice".

Early reports of the document suggest there will also be a subtle but potentially important change in the party's organisational structure – Clause One.

Instead of aiming "to organise and maintain in parliament and in the country a political Labour party", the party will "bring together members and supporters who share its values to develop policies, make communities stronger through collective action and support, and promote the election of Labour representatives at all levels of the democratic process".

While the change sounds bureaucratic, it could herald wide-ranging alteration to the way the party operates. Mr Miliband hopes to introduce new categories of members, salvage Labour's economic prospects and encourage community organising.

The idea, originally proposed by Peter Hain, chair of the national policy forum, could see a registered supporters network bring in people who are non-partymembers who are willing to work on single-issue campaigns, such as local service cuts.

It could also ensure MPs demonstrate engagement with constituents via their candidate contract and trigger a wave of community campaign training.

Members of the public could also register as supporters, rather than members, and have a say in choosing party leaders. Such a move would replicate David Cameron's moves towards local primaries, by giving non-party supporters a say in which candidates are selected.

The proposals are particularly interesting, given that David Miliband had planned to reword Clause One if he became party leader.

They could anger union supporters, however, given they are already wary of the new Labour leader after he mooted plans to reduce their voting influence at party conferences.