Ed needs to clear the decks, so he can be heard on jobs and growth.

It’s been a good week for Ed, his best since the shadow cabinet reshuffle.

He set the tone of the week on bank bonuses, he’s won a key election and he’s been boosted by Labour’s best polling numbers for years.

Now his team should take the credit he’s earned and use it to be an alternative, as well as an opposition.

The big issues are job creation and how tight money is for millions of us. Addressing them means talking about economic growth.

On these essential issues, Ed needs to talk about the problems of the past if he is to be heard clearly on the future.

He can do this honestly, because if we need a more diverse economy now, we needed one four years back
Hopi Sen, Labour blogger

With the government announcing that it will collect data to monitor happiness, Ed Miliband’s first Labour party conference speech outlined a vision in which he stated ‘we are the optimists’.

There have been signals that the new leadership considers the pre-emptive ‘liberal interventionism’ of the Iraq war to have been wrong. A rethink on this policy offers a chance to rebuild bridges with centre-left intellectuals that deserted Labour in the 2005 general election onwards which resulted in the loss of university towns like Manchester Withington and Cambridge. Lots of successful Tory policies historically (eg council house sales, privatising utilities) have been about popular capitalism. A detailed policy review allows the possibility to fashion policies that embody popular socialism – we’ve arguably come up with very few since the foundation of the NHS. Affordable housing and employee share options could be part of this. We need to reclaim and thoroughly decontaminate the S word (as we did with the union jack) but to temper the battle of ideas with electoral logic.
Rupa Huq, Labour blogger

In this New Year, even before the gratuitous cuts bite, the public mood is bleak. Britain is marked by demonstrations, unrest, even riots by prisoners, students and trade unionists. The Tory-led government by their rhetoric, policies and approach are creating the ‘Broken Britain’ which they said they opposed. What a contrast to the prosperity and social content that pervaded the Labour years in office. Ed should capture and reflect this mood in all his dealings with Cameron and the government. They are to blame for the harm that is being done to our country and they should be held to account for it.
Sam Townend, PPC Bristol North-West 2010