She argues that if it fails to do so then the party would be putting tactics before strategy.

If only the decision the Labour party faced on whether to put their full weight behind a yes vote was so simple.

There is another scenario that needs to be analysed also. At the moment, the Tories and Liberal Democrats will find it difficult to strike an electoral bargain without a backlash from their parties. With AV a deal becomes legitimate. Parties can still campaign ferociously for their own candidate then second preferences could be exchanged between each other.

Though the Labour and Liberal Democratic vote has interchanged to a certain extent for a considerable time we may have reached an inflection point. AV could catalyse that effect and it could do so with formal or informal official sanction- much to Labour’s detriment.

So there is a big risk that Labour could end up being dupes in all this. They could campaign for AV and then have the Lib Dems turn round and do a formal or informal deal with the Tories. It is likely to be done with signals and rhetoric rather than anything more crass than that. We’ve worked well together and the mission of this Coalition isn’t complete. Nick has been an excellent deputy who deserves the opportunity to continue his good work.

You get the picture. Left leaning Liberal Democrat voters would have long departed; they have done so already.

This is a massive issue that, unfortunately, can not be rectified by the Liberal Democrats giving their word. They should nonetheless go on record to say that they will not cooperate electorally with the Conservatives in any way.

In addition to Jackie Ashley’s point there is a better argument than self-interest for Labour campaigning in favour of the Alternative Vote. It is a better and more democratic system. This is not about what happens in Westminster. It’s about what happens at the constituency level. If a candidate or representative needs 50%+ of the vote they have to build a deep relationship with a wider cross section of the local community than under either First Past the Post or multi-member proportional systems.

That is a good thing and backed up with a system of primaries for the selection of candidates it would weaken one of the greatest obstacles to democratic influence: the power of incumbency. It also means that the candidate/ representative has to serve the interests of a greater number of constituents: some MPs are currently elected on less than 30% of the vote which is a scandal.

There is a second good reason for Labour to support the referendum: its leader has promised to. With the Liberal Democrats completely indifferent to the promises they made at the election, it is important that Labour conducts itself with a more consistency.

Ed Miliband has pledged to support the yes campaign (Labour’s manifesto is ambiguous on this point and faintly incomprehensible.) He should follow through on that promise. Trust in politics is at breaking point; someone has to act with a degree of honesty.

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Anthony Painter’s Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/anthonypainter

It is unequivocal. Our criminal justice system is in crisis. A decade and a half of penal excess means that we lock up too many people with too little impact and consequently we are failing make communities safer.

By calling for an end to a mindset that is stuck in a ‘prison works’ groove, the Commission challenges us to fundamentally reverse this path of failure. It calls for a radical reform of our penal system:

• Reduction of the prison population and the closure of prisons.
• Justice reinvestment which shifts resources to communities with high levels of offending with a view to avoiding the problem in the first place and managing more effectively when it does.
• The break up of the centrally managed offender and prison service- NOMS.
• Devolving the management of criminal justice to the local level bringing together the criminal justice, education, health and social services with prison and probation budgets completely devolved.

The underlying ethos of the report is judicial restraint as opposed to excess. It passionately argues that restraint is more ethical, humane and likely to work.

What evidence is there for such confident claims? They’ve tried it in New York. Yes, New York. It has reduced their prison population and enabled the closure of prisons. Canada has reduced its prison numbers by 11% since 1997. Finland did a similar thing after the war. And guess what? The Scottish minority SNP administration has instituted similar reforms to those recommended by the Commission. Prison numbers have yet to come down but it’s early days and progress will be viewed with interest.

Actually, this report is startlingly original in the way that it combines ethics- linked to national character traits- and a pragmatic approach. How do you make communities safer? You give them the finance, support, and encouragement to manage their own issues in the way they see fit and is most likely to work.

Will this lead to a spread in vigilantism? The Commission’s message is trust people, engage them, explain and they will respond with restraint and maturity. That is a truly radical notion and requires us to have a degree of faith. That may be no bad thing after the shortcomings of administrative systems based on central, bureaucratic planning have become so clear across public services. We have to try a radically different approach.

However, it is the ethical message that is the most powerful. Britain has actually enjoyed two significant periods of penal restraint and, indeed, decarceration. Winston Churchill initiated the first in 1908 and it lasted until 1938. The second? It was under the Thatcher government in the 1980s. Churchill and Thatcher? I bet you didn’t expect that.

There is a set of national characteristics- decency, pragmatism, reserve, restraint, fairness- to which penal reform can appeal. The everyday grind of sensationalist media coverage and knee-jerk politics drag us away from these elements of the national character. It is time that they were reasserted.

It is time to radically reform our system of criminal justice. Now, let’s see where we can find the political courage to make it happen.

The Fabian Society’s Change We Need launched with self-conscious irony in Millbank Tower last night. Though excellent in many respects, it falls into this trap to a degree.

There is a strong emphasis on the technological aspects of the campaign, with Nick Anstead and Will Straw declaring that, “The 2008 election will be remembered for Barack Obama’s mastery of the internet.”

I’m willing to bet a crisp ten dollar bill that won’t be in the top ten reasons for why this last election will be remembered. Actually, even if we only focus on the campaign itself, the internet was a mere fraction of the Obama ’08 story.

When researching Barack Obama: The Movement For Change, I met people like Al Kindle, who was Obama’s ‘street heat’- the guy who registered the voters and got out the vote street by street- in the new president’s Senate run in 2004. He was quite clear: the origins of the Obama’s campaign were actually in Chicago’s independent Democratic politics in the 1970s and 1980s which coalesced around getting Harold Washington- Chicago’s first African American mayor- elected in unlikely circumstances in 1983.

They built a movement outside traditional Democratic party structures, raised cash through tens of thousands of small donations, constructed innovative coalitions, made the public policy argument to shift resources to deprived neighbourhoods, and delivered change. Sound familiar?

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, wrote the blueprint for Harold Washington’s re-election campaign in 1987. Barack Obama himself saw it at close quarters as a community organiser in some of those deprived neighbourhoods. As Al Kindle said, “What we did for Barack in Iowa is exactly the same as we did for Harold and as we did for Obama’s run for US Senate. We played the rules, registered the voters and built a coalition.”

Obama ’08 projected that style of personalised, movement campaigning onto a national scale- the internet helped sure but that’s not the core lesson. Ben Brandzel speaking at the event last night cautioned that the Ken Livingstone campaign had all the technological tools that the Obama campaign had. Why wouldn’t they? They are straightforward after all but that didn’t instantly transform it into an Obama-esque movement based campaign.

So we are learning many incomplete lessons from Obama ’08. A crucial difference is also under-estimated. The Obama campaign was constructed outside of the Democratic party- it’s almost as if he built a new political party then conducted a hostile takeover of the Democrats. Certainly in the case of the Labour party, the question is being asked about how these changes can be adopted inside the party. The institutional and cultural barriers are significant. They are not insurmountable but a pretty good pole vaulting technique will be a basic requirement.

Perhaps there is a more basic and fundamental question that the Obama campaign provokes for the Labour party. What sort of Labour party is desirable? What sort of party do the British people want and then how do we get there?

Let me take a crack at it as a starter for ten: Labour should be a movement based party that is grounded in local communities, responds to them, provides political leadership, and identifiably makes a difference to people’s lives on every level of government. As a basic starting point, the number of people who are actively involved- on a number of different levels- with the Labour party has to increase ten-fold.

Such a party would bring many people, so long alienated form politics, back in from the cold. This will mean designing institutions around objectives rather than vice versa.

The answer is not in the internet- though that will help to a degree – and it’s not in building unstable coalitions of special interests. Obama ’08 can’t provide all the answers ultimately though it can give us hope that it can be done. Rather we have to completely re-think the Labour party’s role in relation to people, communities and their relationship to the political process.

It will be doing some things right already but falling short elsewhere. It will need the sort of extraordinary local leadership demonstrated by those Chicago pioneers thirty years or so ago. Ready to step up to the plate?

First to Cruddas’ contribution. He counselled that the Conservatives have changed, not just in terms of style but in terms of philosophy as well and Labour underestimates that at its peril. Moreover, and anyone who followed the London Mayoral elections can vouch for this, they have adopted a new emotionalism to their political language. Labour’s language by contrast is managerial and aloof.

Cruddas has read and absorbed ‘The Political Brain’ (which is emotional rather than rational) by Drew Westen and ‘Words that Work’ by Frank Luntz. He also pointed to Danny Kruger’s article in Prospect on ‘fraternity’ and the new conservatism. I will re-read today but what it all amounts to is that Labour is confronting a formidable and new challenge which has to be fought with new tools and a new narrative (I’m going to ban myself from using this word soon.)

Cruddas explains how the new Labour coalition is fracturing. As someone who spent election day ward hopping in a typical English marginal seat, Rugby, I can vouch that he is right. The suburbs are moving away decisively. More worrying was the core Labour ward where I was knocking doors last Thursday afternoon.

My colleague and I got to the end of one street and looked at each other in horror as we realised just how soft our vote was. We won the ward but only having put in an unprecedented amount of work over the previous six weeks (we normally just tread water there but this year we treated it as if it was a marginal ward.)

But Cruddas’ analysis was by no means a counsel of despair. Labour can re-connect (another word I’m going to ban myself from using….) It needs to acknowledge the insecurities that people are feeling.

Another American book that is worth a read is the ‘The Great Risk Shift’ by Jacob Hacker who explains how it is not just those at the bottom end of the income tree that are facing insecurity, it is the majority. A similar situation could well be happening in the UK but that will require further analysis. If my impression is right then therein lies an opportunity for a strong Labour argument.

There is no doubt that these insecurities exist and that is a natural corollary of globalised finance and corporate investment. And that is why, as Steve Richards eloquently argued, the prevailing political mood actually offers an opportunity for Labour. When your job, household income, housing costs are inherently unstable you then need active and interventionist government to counter-balance wider and unpredictable economic forces.

Richards argued the fact that Northern Rock has been nationalised without obvious political cost demonstrates how the mood has changed. He’s right and there is a discussion to be had about the appropriate level of regulation of financial markets and the need for consideration of how we can create more proactive financial watchmen.

Richards and Cruddas were on to something last night. Most importantly, the overarching messaging was that there is no clever set of tactics that will get Labour out of this. There needs to be a more fundamental re-think. And fast.

Wandering away from the event through Westminster Hall with a spring in my step, who should march in my direction? None other than the Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron. If there was any danger of running away with the enthusiasm of the moment, this brought me quickly back down to earth. Game on.