Tom Griffin (London, OK): If The Scotsman is to be believed, Gordon Brown is set to take the advice of Iain MacWhirter rather than Martin Kettle over the fortcoming by-election in his Fife backyard: A final decision has not yet been taken, but it is understood Labour leaders favour either Thursday, 30 October or Thursday, 6 November for the contest. The November date is the favourite simply because it comes only a day after the expected result of the American presidential election, and if Labour was to lose, party managers believe the bad news would be partly buried by the US coverage.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): OK's summer limerick competition (details here) has reached the halfway mark. There still a week to go until August 30th for anyone who wants to trying their hand at bringing out the latent poetry in Liam Byrne's prose. Here are some of the best entries so far: Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Scottish press is full of speculation this weekend that former First Minister Henry McLeish has been sounded out for the Labour candidacy in the Glenrothes by-election.  The Sunday Times reports: Senior party figures are alarmed that Henry McLeish, the former first minister who resigned in disgrace in 2001, has emerged as a frontrunner for the vacant Glenrothes seat, following the death of John MacDougall, the Labour MP, last week. Some local activists and members of the British government believe McLeish may be the party’s only hope because he is a popular figure locally, having represented the area as an MP and MSP.  Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Following my post about the fabulous call to modernity, fraternity and Britishness by Borders and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne, we are launching OK's summer limerick competition. The limerick must begin with: "I met an eloquent lady in Edgbaston." and end with: "if we only put our minds to it." As I report, Byrne writes about how he met "an exceptionally eloquent lady from Edgebaston" who convinced him that all we needed to to so sort out Britain for the best is to: "put our minds to it". The Minister describes how he was immediately convinced. The winner will get a free copy of The Athenian Option. Competition closes Saturday, 30th August.

Geoffrey Bindman (London, BIHR): The interesting OurKingdom debate on Labour After Brown risks becoming too remote from actual policy needs as it discusses general strategy. Of course, government needs to be fairer and extend justice in a way that supports individuals while building shared values. If this is what David Miliband and Sunder Katwala mean by combining social democracy with liberalism, who could disagree? Except that it runs the danger of phrase-making. What I am looking for is a much more principled approach to endorsing the need for public values that explicitly face down the marketisation of government that has been the tragic hallmark of New Labour. After a lifetime of support, I have witnessed this process at first hand, as the legacy of 1945 is systematically undone. What is happening is wrong. We need the new generation to identify that it is wrong and pledge to reverse it. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): For the first time since the advent of devolution, the Scottish Labour Party is going through a competitive leadership contest, and it's proving to be an invigorating debate. In an incisive analysis in the Sunday Times, former First Minister Henry McLeish argued that the party's Holyrood leader needs greater powers: The current leadership debate in Scotland has given Labour a unique chance to address five key areas: the need for the party in Scotland to have much greater autonomy; the need for the Scottish Labour leader to have more power and a wider authority; the need for a radically reformed and flexible Union fit for the new purposes of the 21st Century; the need, to embrace a coherent, modern post-devolution strategy for the constitutional future of our country; and the need for Labour in Scotland to reconnect with its base with a new narrative of what it stands for in this new era.   Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Sunny Hundal suggested last month that the debate about the direction of the Labour Party could be cast as a confrontation between two party pressure groups, the Blairite Progress and the centre-left Compass. If that's true, then Friday's Guardian exchange between Progress director Robert Philpot and Compass chair Neal Lawson may be a useful guide to the parameters of the argument. Read the rest of this post...

David Marquand (Oxford, oD author): I notice some respondents to my comment on Glasgow East have queried my statement that the UK was the first modern state. On reflection, I think I was wrong. The Netherlands was the first, I now believe. As to when the UK achieved that status, I think you can make a good case for saying England and Scotland both became modern states in 1688/9 when they drove the Stuart dynasty from the throne. But I still think the United Kingdom as such, rather than Scotland and England separately, really became modern at the time of the Hanoverian succession - a succession determined by Parliament, remember, not by descent. Perhaps the best date would be 1715, when the first Jacobite rebellion was defeated. Or perhaps you might prefer 1746 when Bonnie Prince Charlie was finally routed. Of course another possible line of argument is that the UK is still not a modern state, since sovereignty is still not firmly located in the people. Read the rest of this post...

James Graham (Quaequam Blog): I'm probably one of the most pro-Labour Lib Dems you are ever likely to meet. A Georgist and an electoral reformer, I'm very conscious of the fact that I am likely to meet more fellow travellers within Labour than the Conservatives (although not as many as I'd like). Despite spending the day knocking up voters in a hopeless (for us) Lib Dem-Labour marginal, in the evening on 1 May 1997 I cheered as loudly as anyone when it became apparent that the Tories were finally on their way out. What, then, should I make of the prospect of a Miliband Premiership, given his stated aim of uniting the traditions of social democracy and radical liberalism "into a single narrative"? - an approach that like other matters appears in a transparently clear but nonetheless coded form in his Guardian article. Read the rest of this post...

David Marquand (Oxford, oD author): From 600 miles away, British politics seem more than usually dismal, and more than usually petty. The sight of Labour MPs running around complaining about Brown's faults only a year after they gave him the leadership on a plate is deeply unedifying, to put it at its lowest. Nothing new has happened to his character or style since he became leader. He is still the person he has been for the last 20 years and more. If his MPs have now changed their minds about him that tells us more about their gutlessness than about his inadequacies. If he's unfit for the job now, he was unfit a year ago. If he was fit then, he's fit now. But Brown's personality is not the real issue in any case. The first and most obvious point to make about Glasgow East is that it happened in Scotland, and that the Scottish National Party won! I don't think it was a vote against the Union, but I do think it was a vote against the way in which the devolution legislation was framed. New Labour was trying to have its cake and eat it - to appease the manifest Scottish demand for Home Rule, while maintaining the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament and the inequitable absurdities of the Barnett formula on finance. It was always likely that this would blow up in Labour's face sooner or later; and in Glasgow East it did so with an almighty bang. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): In today's Sunday Herald, former Labour Scottish Finance Minister Tom McCabe delivers a brutally frank assessment of Labour's diminished place in Scotland's political landscape, and one of the starkest calls yet for the Scottish Party to set its own agenda: So how can Scottish Labour respond? First, with a leader who is seen to be in charge, taking responsibility and being prepared to say and do what is best for Scots, no matter who it might upset. Read the rest of this post...

Mike Small (Fife, Bella Caledonia): One of the problems for Labour in Scotland is that daily civic society experiences some cultural debate about our future. This week those compiling the next Scottish census proposed that people should be asked to choose between Scottish or British in the section on ethnic background. On Wednesday it was announced that, in a cost cutting measure, all Scottish rolling stock would be re-branded in a saltire livery whatever their parent company, to stop expensive makeovers. Read the rest of this post...

The Armchair Socialist (Glasgow): When Wendy Alexander issued her challenge to Scotland's SNP government to 'bring it on' over their plans for a 2010 referendum on the future of Scotland in the UK, she unleashed a political storm the like of which has not been seen north of the border since Blair unilaterally announced that Labour would not consider victory in the 1997 general election as a mandate for devolution, much trumpeted until that point as 'the settled will of the Scottish people', but would instead require a two question referendum on both a parliament and it's fiscal powers.  The current Scottish Labour leadership election in which nominations close today, has already seen the front-runners to follow Alexander say that they will abandon Labour's recently acquired enthusiasm for letting the people decide sooner rather than later. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London,OK):We were confidently told by Steve Richards on last night's Newsnight that David Miliband is "100 per cent" preparing to stand when there is a leadership contest - but that he will not plunge in the knife. Perhaps another David is not to your taste. Or perhaps he does not represent the change you want to see. The prospect of three heirs to Blair fighting it out when the many countries of Britain want change is not immediately attractive. Or perhaps he is is your man but you also want some added spice at the top of his team. Over an early breakfast I wondered who would I like to see win the Labour leadership contest who would arguably be so fresh yet experienced he or she could well storm to power?  Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London,OK): Following up on yesterday's post the sense grows that Labour is girding what remains of its loins to insist that Brown resigns. The signal of deterrence from his Norfolk seaside bunker was fired by George Pascoe-Watson, the political editor of the Sun. Why doesn’t he just succumb to the assassins lining him up in their sights? Life would be so much easier. He could take a lucrative international job and to hell with the plotters, the “pygmies”. But the plotters had better watch out. The PM is in no mood to welcome a delegation of “men in grey suits” telling him his time is up for the good of the party.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Former Europe Minister Denis McShane made a particularly interesting contribution to the post-mortem on Glasgow East in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday: "After Glasgow," he wrote, "Labour has to do more than debate its leadership and see off excited calls by union leaders for challenges to Gordon Brown. Instead the party has to confront an existential problem of its own making: the question of England."  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon):Today is the final day of campaigning in the Glasgow East by-election. Initial speculation about a Labour meltdown that could spell the end for Gordon Brown has largely died away, but Alex Salmond has refused to back away from predictions that the vote would be a 'political earthquake'. Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a meditation on the fate of "Big Player" Unionism in Scotland, in today's FT, John Lloyd fails to register that this is now an argument taking place in England - the really big change from ten years ago. He looks forward cautiously to a Labour win in Glasgow on Thursday and at the same time considers what the argument for the Union needs to be now in Scotland. He asks, "And what, indeed, would a renewed Unionism look and sound like? Mr Brown has sought to equate Britishness with "a passion for liberty anchored in a sense of duty and an intrinsic commitment to fair play", as he put it three years ago, when still chancellor of the exchequer." Read the rest of this post...

 Rosemary Bechler (London, openDemocracy): responds to Anthony Barnett's coverage of the campaign against 42 days: Thanks for the cogent reading of this important moment in the decline of the Westminster hall of mirrors. Doesn’t one need to include in a third episode in this drama? – the refusal of the two main political parties challenged in this bye-election to participate in debating the issues. For all the commenting and blogging, as in the case of the Iraq war and an ever-lengthening list of crucial decisions for the UK, we still have not been told why 42 days is deemed to be necessary to our national interest. All the talk simply obscures this ominous silence.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Labour finally selected its candidate for the Glasgow East by-election last night, former Holyrood Minister Margaret Curran Conservatives should be hoping that Curran succeeds in holding off the SNP, according to former Telegraph leader writer Richard Ehrman.   Read the rest of this post...