Saint Tony has ordained Sir Keir as the new high priest of New New Labour, saying the party is now politically competitive again. Not necessarily the endorsement Starmer will have been craving…

Blair praised the new party leader’s performance over the last three months, saying he’s done “a good job – a very good job actually – and I think he has put Labour back on the map.”, giving a mere nod to that lingering question of any solid policies from team Starmer. After the settling in court over the Panorama whistleblowers, it’s like New Labour is having a competition to see just how much they can wind up the TrotsApp collective…

This morning Liz Kendall has got four more public declarations from Chuka Umunna, Emma Reynolds, Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Twigg which together with the weekend’s backing from Simon Danczuk now puts her on 20 public nominations – 3 ahead of Cooper and only 4 behind Burnham. They’re well known high profile names…

Full list of declared supporters can be found here: order-order.com/labdec send updates to team@order-order.com.

Michael Dugher was until recently Ed Miliband’s PPS, he wants to be “Ed’s Mandelson“ and is clearly keen on enforcing “the line”. However implausible it may be.

https://twitter.com/#!/PeterHain/status/147246904655351808

Yesterday’s Post-PMQs collective head-in-hands moment by the left-wing commentariat really has upset the dwindling Miliband true-believers. LabourList editor Mark Ferguson, who yesterday implicitly called for Ayesha Hazariki to be sacked (PMQs Verdict: Cut the Gags, Ed), is only reflecting what the Labour grassroots are saying in private. According to YouGov only 8% of Labour voters think Ed Miliband is a natural leader. Enforcing New Labour style discipline on propaganda isn’t going to change that fact.

Mandelson told a Progress faction seminar at Portcullis House last night some home truths. “People will not support further tax and spend unless they can see clear value for money. Further enlarging public sector employment is not an option in the coming decade and we need to look to the real economy, to the private business sector, to deliver sufficient numbers of decently paid skilled jobs.”*

Among the Blairite acolytes (Rentoul was in the chair) was Guido’s old friend Dolly Draper. Westminster is seeing too much of Dolly. Mandelson told the Progress crowd “If I talk about the past it is to learn from it, not to go back to it.”

We can but hope…

*A co-conspirator points out that in an oddly Orwellian piece of censorship this “money quote” is missing from the official report on the Progress website.

Liam Byrne says that the “squeezed middle” are those on between £16,000 to £50,000 and Labour’s task in reviewing policy is to help them. Guido is glad to hear it. Presumably he would therefore support those struggling on middle incomes being taken out of the higher-rate tax bracket, which kicks in at a ridiculously low £37,401? That is smack bang in the middle of the range he defines, surely it should kick in at £50,001, above the income levels of those hard squeezed middle classes. C’mon Liam, review that policy…

Red Ed’s speech is going to be, in the words of one who had seen a draft of it yesterday, “vacuous” and full of talk of a “new generation”. It will be a saccharine speech sharing not just a slogan with Pepsi, its content will also be sugary and vague, without New Labour’s ideologically bitter edge. Red Ed is the synthetic taste of New New Labour…