Some tips for Labour

It might be a good idea if the Labour party doesn't pick up its copy of the New Statesman this week again.

Fisrtly Martin Bright has been to a morning star fringe meeting at the TUC conference and heard Derek Simpson of Unite, Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union and Bob Crow of the RMT,conclude that

The Labour government has alienated the party's core supporters by adopting a neoliberal, pro-business agenda of privatisation, deregulation and low taxation. It is no surprise that it is proving difficult to get the working-class vote out for Labour, they said, when the government has allowed the gap between rich and poor to widen so greatly. In times of growing economic uncertainty, ministers need to demonstrate that the Labour Party is still prepared to look out for those people who stand to lose most from the economic downturn.

and then looks forward to the next conference where Nick Clegg

will argue at his party's annual conference in Bournemouth that Brown's version of new Labour is the last throw of the social-democratic dice.

Meanwhile Dennis McShane look to the continent to see how the left are dealing with the crisis of socialism where in Germany

In a fit of despair at its slumping popularity, the main centre-left party in government decided to replace its burly party leader, whose poll ratings hovered around 25 per cent. A cerebral member of cabinet - best known as a staffer for the previous leader, a proven election-winner - was chosen in his place