The Green Box

There are some parallels between Labour now and the Tories in 1997. The leadership contest is dominated by a deeply ingrained angst about the internal divisions of the years in power, and a slow but sure slide back to the party’s comfort zone. The danger for the party is that its members and the trade unionists who are choosing the next leader will prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises required by being in power. Too often in the leadership debate, Labour seems to be talking to itself and it will never win power again unless it learns to speak a language that the voters can also understand.

The Home Office abandoned plans to establish an independent inquiry into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal last year after a senior official warned that the Metropolitan police would "deeply resent" any interference in their investigation, according to a leaked government document. As Alan Johnson came close today to accusing Scotland Yard of having misled him over the scandal, a leaked Home Office memo shows that the last government decided against calling in Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary after intense internal lobbying.

Does the public care if some denizen of Fleet Street’s gutters managed to snoop on John Prescott’s mobile telephone calls? Maybe. But how could any snoop understand a word Prescott said? And there is surely a limit to how much newspaper copy can be generated from the former Deputy Prime Minister ordering a quick injection of monosodium glutamate from his Chinese takeaway.

It does transcend party politics, this News of the World hacking crime. It's more than a consensus there on both front benches, it's a coalition. Maybe the fear of Rupert Murdoch really is "a universal human value" (© Tony Blair). At any rate, the Labour government decided last year nothing more needed to be done about Murdoch's modus operandi, and this year the Tory government agrees. The police will look at it again, Theresa May says, only "if there is any new evidence". Allegations don't count as evidence (a distinction that would have been admired by Ms May's old enemy Stephen Byers).

Tony Blair was dragged into the phone-hacking row surrounding David Cameron’s communications chief last night, amid mounting Tory unease over the affair. MPs were told that the former prime minister has asked detectives whether his mobile phone messages were intercepted by the News of the World while it was edited by Andy Coulson.

You can’t keep an investment banker down, especially if he is near the top of of a European universal bank. That is the moral of Bob Diamond’s emergence as the next chief executive of Barclays, despite having been declared the “unacceptable face” of banking by Peter Mandelson.

Britain has a new political hero. His name is Ed Balls. Please do not choke on your cornflakes, for the rise of Mr Balls has been brewing for some time. His trademark pummelling of the Coalition reached new heights in a bravura speech denouncing George Osborne as a "growth denier" whose cuts imperil the recovery. As praise flowed in from expected and odder quarters, one Right-wing newspaper squared up to the grisly notion that Mr Balls might just be correct. Buoyed by compliments, he has dispensed with past coyness to admit that he, not Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, had the idea of granting independence to the Bank of England.

If Ralph Miliband were still alive, which of his two sons would he be backing for the Labour leadership? The most probable answer is neither, since it is doubtful that he would even be eligible to vote. Indeed there was a leadership election about to get under way when he died, on 21 May 1994, and he was not eligible to vote in that – though, even if he had been, we can be sure that he would not have voted for Tony Blair. Had he lived for another two decades, it is still quite likely that he would have refused to join the party now dominated by his sons.

The Liberal Democrats have lost the support of almost four in 10 of the people who backed the party in May, according to an opinion poll for The Independent. More than one in five people who voted for Nick Clegg's party at the general election say they would now vote Labour, the ComRes poll shows. Only 62 per cent of those who voted Liberal Democrat would do so again were another election held today.

Michael Gove yesterday announced plans to introduce an English baccalaureate - a certificate awarded to pupils who pass five or more GCSEs at grade C or above, including English, maths, a science, a foreign language and one of the humanities. The intention is to recognise and reward students who take a broad range of subjects and stem the exodus from traditional subjects, such as foreign languages and history. While the aim is noble, the means are deeply flawed. An English baccalaureate won't solve the issue of grade inflation, nor will it simplify England's cumbersome and overcomplicated exam system. A baccalaureate is a fudge and little more than a fig-leaf for inaction.