Do you have a question you would like to ask Chancellor Alistair Darling? Now is your chance.

At 1:30pm British time on Wednesday, October 21, Reuters is hosting an exclusive Web 2.0 interview with Darling and we want you to send us your questions to put to the top man from the Treasury.

From the crippling global recession to the debate over bankers’ bonuses, it has been a tumultuous year at Number 11 Downing Street. You may want to quiz the Chancellor on one of these topics, ask him about the government’s plans to prevent another downturn or how Labour plan to defy the polls and win the upcoming general election.

During the interview we will put as many of your questions as possible to the Chancellor and will be running a liveblog of the event, much like we did during this social media interview with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

Leave your question in the comments box below or via Twitter (using #askdarling) and join us on Wednesday for our Web 2.0 interview with the Chancellor.

-Justin Fisher is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Magna Carta Institute at Brunel University. The opinions expressed are his own.-

With the election now just under seven months away, the starting guns for the campaign were fired at the party conferences. This general election looks like the most eagerly awaited since 1997, and could lead for some significant changes for each of the three largest parties.

The Conservatives have led in the polls since October 2007 (following “the election that never was”) and throughout 2009, the lead in YouGov’s polls has never fallen below 7 percent. On the face of it, it could appear that the Conservatives are home and dry. Yet, recent polls and the party conferences have thrown out some out some conflicting messages.

Labour’s conference, for example, appeared to demonstrate a surprising degree of party unity, buoyed no doubt by Peter Mandelson’s conference address. The party may be deeply concerned about its predicament (and some may be resigned to its apparent fate), but there was little of the obvious in-fighting that has characterised Labour over the past few years. Indeed, there seemed to be more of that at the Liberal Democrats’ gathering.

The Conservatives were surprisingly measured. Presumably they wanted to avoid charges of triumphalism. Ever since Neil Kinnock’s exuberance at the pre-1992 election rally, parties have feared such a charge (even though there is no real evidence that Kinnock’s behaviour made a jot of difference to the 1992 result).

The Conservatives also made the surprising decision for George Osborne’s speech to be fairly downbeat – promising significant cuts. This was an exercise in “telling it how it is”, they claimed, which would generate public support. They may be right, of course, but it could be a risky strategy.

Perhaps the trump card for the Conservatives, however, was leaving the leader’s speech until the last day of the conference, thereby maintaining interest in the conference and creating an air of expectation. What the Conservative conference also did was create much clearer water between the parties. Until now, the party has presented itself as occupying the middle ground without going into great detail.

Yet, David Cameron’s speech in places was more reminiscent of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in her pomp. Out went the warm platitudes about environmentalism and in came savage attacks on “big government” and its apparent culpability in the current economic difficulties. The coming election may then have a more overtly ideological air than recent contests.

If the conferences gave us some slightly surprising messages, the polls too suggest the next few months are going to be a very interesting time. During the conference season, YouGov produced daily polls, which showed some fascinating trends.

As expected, the Lib Dems’ poll rating moved upwards during their conference (heightened exposure is usually beneficial to this party), and in days before the beginning of the Labour conference, the Lib Dems were very close to Labour. Indeed, one poll put Labour in third place. But the Lib Dem gains soon died away and they ended the conference season on the same rating as they began it.

Labour’s rating also rose during its conference. But critically, it also rose steadily during the Conservative one following Osborne’s speech, suggesting that the public may be squeamish about “telling it how it is” – even if they say that’s what they want. The Conservatives, by way of contrast, pretty much flat-lined until Cameron’s leader speech, which went down very well and restored the Conservative poll lead from 9 percent to a healthy 17 percent.

All of this suggests that the Conservative lead may be a little “softer” than has been commonly assumed. Polling data on the economy is also sending out some slightly conflicting messages. Generally speaking, incumbents have tended to benefit from rising levels of economic optimism. And the so-called “feelgood factor” is rising rapidly in Britain. Bearing in mind that the net score of “optimists minus pessimists” rarely rises much above zero – even in boom periods - it is significant that the YouGov index has risen from -63 in September 2008 to -16 in September 2009.

There is generally a lag between upturns in optimism and upturns in incumbent support, so this should benefit Labour closer to the election (though equally, we might have to have seen Labour’s poll rating rise more already). Coupled with this, the government is receiving increasing credit for its action over the financial crash.

According to YouGov, a growing proportion is of the view that the government’s measures are working. Again, this should benefit Labour in the coming months. Yet, one of the other key economic indicators in elections is that of economic competence – who do you think will run the economy most successfully? Here, the gap in favour of the Conservatives is widening, suggesting electoral trouble for the government.

These difficult circumstances have prompted Gordon Brown to call for televised leaders’ debates. We’ve been here before, of course. But previously, the calls have always come from the opposition. In many ways, Brown has little to lose but everything to gain if these debates occur.

Cameron is a much more popular leader, so if Brown “loses” the debate, it will make little difference. But if he outperforms Cameron, he could do his party’s prospects significant good. David Cameron is the Conservative’s trump card – he is a very popular leader.

But, the Conservative Party is not as popular as him, and if Brown makes some ground in these debates, the election may just be a little less predictable than current polls suggest. Gordon Brown and Labour are still well on the back foot, but with just under seven months to go, there may be still be some surprises come next May.

-Member of Parliament Stephen Timms is the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The opinions expressed are his own.-

I’m heading to Brighton to join colleagues from across Government, the Parliamentary Labour Party and grass roots Party members from across the country.

Exhibitors, media teams and lobbyists make up the remainder of those who attend the Labour conference each year. I’m especially grateful to the hotel staff, volunteers and police officers whose services ensure this event runs smoothly and safelty.

The conference brings the Labour movement together.  Delegates can question Ministers face to face, offer suggestions and explore policy options.  Ideas discussed on the conference floor or in fringe meetings may find their way into a White Paper or manifesto pledge.

Every Conference is unique but this year will highlight key decisions facing the country.  We need to remember where we were a year ago.  Lehman’s had collapsed, credit was drying up, major banks threatened, with the world facing its biggest economic crisis for over 60 years.

Bold decisions since then have had a clear effect, with signs the economy is beginning to recover.  Due to decisive action taken by the Government and the Bank of England, up to 500,000 jobs have been saved.  Labour delegates, however, will demand we continue to provide more help for people to get back to work.

Alistair Darling has been at the forefront of these historic decisions.  On Monday, he will speak about our commitment to cut the deficit in half over four years. On recovery and growth, he will argue it must be delivered through targeted and sustainable low-carbon investment.

Gordon Brown will speak to Conference on Tuesday. His action has helped guide both the UK and other G20 nations during this crisis. So he will now set out plans for a post-crisis society.

In education and health, he will say that reforms must ensure high standards are a guarantee and not a gamble. On family life, he will say affordable childcare and care for the elderly will be protected.

Of course Party Conference is about policy - but its also about politics. Delegates will highlight the risk the Conservatives represent. Their proposed immediate, and ideologically driven, £5 billion cuts will threaten our fragile recovery. Meanwhile, the same ideology offers a £200,000 giveaway to the 3,000 wealthiest estates.

Labour however will fight hard for ordinary working people. We will, on their behalf, tackle crime and the fear of crime. The Tories talk tough on crime but they would weaken the use of DNA evidence and make cuts to the Home Office budget equivalent to 3,500 fewer police.

That kind of change is risky change and will not be acceptable to delegates or ordinary voters. Conference this week gives Labour the opportunity to set out its vision for a post-crisis recovery, while highlighting how the Tories would put it all at risk.

Chancellor Alistair Darling set out new plans to strengthen regulation of financial markets on Wednesday. The white paper proposes enforcing higher levels of capital for banks and increasing liquidity to prevent a re-run of the credit crunch.

Darling wants banking pay packages to be policed and for a new Council for Financial Stability to bring together the work of the Bank of England, Financial Services Authority and the Treasury.

Although the "tripartite" setup under which the finance ministry, Financial Services Authority and Bank of England supervise the financial markets was widely seen as failing to spot problems at Northern Rock and other banks early enough, Darling has decided not to scrap it.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne called the Labour plans "more of a white flag than a white paper" in a rebuttal in parliament.

"The next Conservative government will abolish the tripartite system and will put the Bank of England in charge of the banks . . . and other financial institutions because you cannot separate central banking from the financial supervision system," he said.

What do you think, are the new plans more of a white flag than a white paper? Are the Conservatives on the right track or should the tripartite system be retained?

- Justin Fisher is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Magna Carta Institute at Brunel University. The opinions expressed are his own. -

It’s fair to say that the results of the European elections in Britain were something of a shock. Of course, it was evident that Labour was going to do badly and the BNP’s success in winning its first European seats did not come entirely out of the blue. But the collapse of Labour’s vote exceeded what most had predicted, and the realisation that the BNP now has 2 of the UK’s 72 MEPs is more dramatic than the possibility that it might occur.

Now the dust has settled, however, it’s worth reflecting a little on what the results may tell us about the future for British politics. The first point is that performances in European elections have rarely been a solid predictor of subsequent general election performance - especially since the introduction of a proportional representation voting system in 1999 (the 1994 elections are perhaps the sole exception).

Take 1989, for example, when the new Liberal Democrat party came a distant fourth behind the Greens. In the subsequent general election, the Liberal Democrats performed reasonably well, whilst the Greens fell back. And, in 1999 and 2004, the Conservatives beat Labour into second place. Yet Labour won both subsequent elections comfortably.

European elections are very different from General Elections, then. First, despite their clear importance, voters do not take them nearly as seriously as national elections.

Second, the electoral system allows smaller parties to perform much better than they would under the system used for Westminster elections. Thirdly, and linked very much to the first two, there is a clear appeal for parties such as UKIP given that these elections are about the very things that they oppose. All in all, European elections are much more multi-party affairs than Westminster ones. And as a consequence, extrapolating clues about the next general election can be hazardous.

But these elections may matter more than previous ones for three reasons. First, the results confirm that that Britain has a very strong Euro-sceptic core amongst its electorate – nearly 27 percent of those who voted in Britain, cast their ballot for one of the several anti-European parties. And, of course, UKIP claimed second place in terms of vote share and joint second (with Labour) in terms of seats. Given the opportunity that European elections afford the voters, this Euro-sceptic support cannot simply be dismissed as protest votes.

Secondly, and notwithstanding the points above, the elections have nevertheless confirmed the problems that Labour faces. Labour’s poll ratings, of course, have been poor for some time, as has been the party’s performance in local elections. But the European elections are the only truly nationwide contests other than the General Elections. So whilst local elections and polls have suggested that Labour is in a bad way, these election results have certainly confirmed the depth of the party’s problems, including a collapse in Labour’s vote in core areas such as the North West, the North East and Wales.

The collapse wasn’t uniform – in London, for example, the fall was a relatively modest 3.5 percent - but all in all, a near 7 percent fall in Labour’s vote share and a 12 percent gap between them and the Conservatives does not bode well, given that the caveats of a second order election and the effects of proportional representation also apply to the other main parties.

Thirdly, the election of two MEPs from the BNP confirms the party’s growing electoral status. Of course, the BNP have elected representatives elsewhere at local government level as well as one member of the Greater London Assembly (GLA). But these are the first on the national stage. The support for the BNP is significantly lower than for far-right parties in other parts of Europe.

However, British politics has successfully resisted the electoral advance of such parties for many years, so the effect is still significant. And the consequences may be far-reaching. It may first harden resistance amongst the political elite against proportional representation. Somewhat surprisingly, the election of a BNP member of the GLA under a form of PR (the additional member system) did not create much of a stir. But this, combined with the European elections – held under closed list PR - reveals one of the apparent advantages of first-past-the post at Westminster – it helps exclude extremists.

So while the Prime Minister has indicated that there should be a review of the electoral system, early reports suggest that the Alternative Vote (AV) is preferred. AV is not a form of PR – it is majoritarian, requiring only that the winner of a constituency secures more that 50 percent of preferences (it is very similar to the system used to elect the London Mayor).

So the election of the two BNP MEPs may have sounded the death knell for PR at Westminster for the time being. After all, who wants to argue for a system that could more readily see the election of BNP MPs?

The other implication of the BNP’s success may, paradoxically, help Labour. The BNP’s electoral successes came in Labour’s heartlands and have provided a huge wake-up call. Labour supporters and waverers might be less concerned if voters switched to the Liberal Democrats or the Greens through a desire to protest against the government. But voting BNP is a wholly different proposition.

So, the alarm with which the BNP success was greeted could well have a galvanizing effect on those instinctively closer to Labour. Coupled with the distinct possibility of the Conservatives winning the next General Election, we may just see Labour’s vote improved through a desire to avoid the alternative, since despite the clear importance of the EU, it remains the case that General Elections are the ones where the stakes are highest.

- Mark Wickham-Jones is an expert on the history of Labour over the last twenty-five years. His particular area of interest is the evolution of the party’s policy commitments since 1983, the changes to its organisational structure and the nature of its electoral outlook. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Labour’s failure to get rid of Gordon Brown is indicative of one of the taboos governing the politics of the party. This week’s decision to stick with Brown does not reflect the preferences of Labour MPs, most of whom clearly regard the prime minister as a massive electoral liability.

Far from it, the outcome is indicative of the extent to which choices within the Labour Party are determined by traditions, norms, and established practices, ones that are made regardless of what might be desirable in the prevailing circumstances.

Throughout its hundred year history, Labour has demonstrated an overwhelming loyalty to whoever has held the post of party leader, no matter how unpopular the incumbent might be either among members or voters. Such unswerving devotion is an indication of how Labour is governed by informal traditions as opposed to the formal procedures laid out in its complex rulebook.

It represents an example of what the late Henry Drucker termed Labour’s ethos: the idea that Labour politics have been dominated by established practices rather than by more rational calculations or efficient decisions.

The Conservatives, by contrast, have been far more ruthless in their attitude to the leader. Incumbents, no longer serving the best interests of the party, have been unceremoniously ejected from the post. In the Labour party, the notion that a sitting leader might actually be removed against his or her will, has been utterly taboo.

Only in the 1920s did Labour appoint a leader in the sense the term is conventionally used. Even then, the post still included the title of chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party as well as leader and only in the late 1970s did the party formally have a leader at all.

If Margaret Beckett’s brief interregnum following John Smith’s death is included, Gordon Brown is Labour’s thirteenth leader. Only once – George Lansbury in 1935 - has a sitting Labour leader stood down abruptly under pressure to go. Like Gordon Brown, Lansbury had initially been elected to the job without a contest, succeeding Arthur Henderson when the latter lost his parliamentary seat in the debacle of the 1931 general election and was unable to find a constituency thereafter.

The sole member of the Cabinet to survive that eletoral rout, Lansbury found himself in the post by default. A veteran left-winger and profound pacifist, he was spectacularly ill-suited to the post of leading a political party competing for office and making the necessary compromises. His removal was result of the machinations neither of the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party nor of its backbench members.

Indeed, Labour MPs tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to stay when he finally went following a withering assault by Ernest Bevin, then leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union at the party’s 1935 conference.

Labour has been remarkably indulgent of its leaders’ failures. Clement Attlee lost seats at three general elections in a row before finally retiring. Hugh Gaitskell in 1959 and Neil Kinnock in 1987 suffered landslide defeats at the polls. Both continued in office. To be sure, both were challenged subsequently. But until the 1980s, the Labour rulebook made such challenges easy to organise: the leader was re-elected annually and any contender needed few nominations.

Neither of the challenges to Gaitskell (in 1960 and 1961) nor that to Kinnock (in 1988) came close to unseating the leader. Indeed, the incumbent won crushing victories as many of those participating took the opportunity to demonstrate their overpowering and quite likely unthinking support for the existing leadership. Such occasions were much more about raising policy issues and stirring up debate than serious attempts to force a change at the top.

The most obvious example of the loyalty and deference that Labour tradition demands be extended to the leader is Michael Foot, incumbent in the post for nearly three years between 1980 and 1983. Like Lansbury, a veteran of left-wing causes including unilateralism, few saw Foot as a potential prime minister. Elected during the civil war that had engulfed Labour, he attempted to hold the party together with limited success as his authority steadily diminished.

As the party suffered disastrous by-election results, Foot’s opinion poll rating fell steadily such that a mere 15 per cent of voters thought he was doing a good job. Yet, extraordinarily the party took no steps to replace him with a more credible figure though there was some public debate about the possibility. At around the same time, the Australian Labour party replaced its leader with Bob Hawke, reaping immediate electoral success. The British party could not contemplate such a move.

Tony Blair, too, benefited from the respect that Labour offers to its leaders as of right. As his premiership continued and as the euphoria of the 1997 general election landslide wore off so his ratings fell while his policy initiatives at home and abroad generated massive discontent within the party.

Despite such clear dissatisfaction within Labour concerning his leadership at critical junctures after 2001, no significant plots to unseat him ever materialised. Far from it, those who desperately wanted to remove him from the party leadership, including his greatest rival, Gordon Brown, found themselves inhibited by the informal practices of the party. So constrained, in fact that no one proved able to wield the fatal blow.

Consider by contrast the Conservative party: Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher were successively removed as leader following challenges (something that has never happened in Labour). In 1995 John Major faced a contest that was not easily brushed aside. More recently the tenure of the party leadership has proved a short-lived affair for William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.

Brown’s survival in the extraordinary circumstances of the last week does not signify a genuine degree of support amongst MPs: it represents the importance of tradition within the Labour party. To be sure since 1994 New Labour has recast the party in dramatic terms with regard to programmatic commitments and ideological outlook. In terms of changing the norms that determine behaviour towards the party leadership, it appears to have had no impact at all.

Justin Fisher is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Magna Carta Institute at Brunel University. The opinions expressed are his own. -

The elections this Thursday are widely expected to be bad for Labour. And depending upon which poll you believe, they may not be brilliant for the Conservatives. But a familiar call will emerge nevertheless – that a loss of seats, particularly at local council level, will lead to a further decline in that party’s grassroots. This reality is, however, a bit more complex.

To be sure, local councillors are typically very active local party members, and election defeat will naturally lead to a scaling down of their own activity. However, councillors only make up a tiny proportion of local party memberships, so why does defeat matter so much? The answer is to draw an analogy with a football team. When a team is losing, the crowds that it attracts tend to fall.

Equally, when a team is winning, attendances tend to rise. The same is broadly true for local parties. Although party membership overall is in decline, election victory tends to slow decline, while defeat tends to accelerate it – especially when a candidate is well beaten. So, election results do matter for local parties because defeat in one election will tend to lower the level of human resources available to a party in the next one.

But do members really matter that much when it comes to campaigning? Again, the answer is not necessarily obvious. First, campaigning has certainly moved on from it consisting largely of doorstep canvassing and loudhailers attached to car roof racks.

A variety of modern campaign techniques - such a telephone canvassing and direct mail - have been growing in importance for some years now, such that since 2001, the major parties have been engaging in more modern campaigning than traditional efforts built on volunteer activities by members.

Modern techniques, which require fewer volunteers, are now integral to campaigns. And, techniques such as direct mail are actually more responsive to individual voters’ concerns. Built on huge databases, which combine demographic data with the results of telephone canvassing, parties are now able to respond quickly to the interests and concerns of voters.

And from a vantage point of pure electoral calculation, all these resources can easily be harnessed where they are needed most – in target seats. The same cannot always be said for members. The Conservatives, for example, tend to have their largest local memberships in strongly Conservative areas and the evidence for all parties is that members are often unwilling to campaign outside their own patch on a large scale.

Faced with these developments, it is tempting to argue that the loss of parties’ grassroots is disappointing, but little more than that. Again, however, the picture is more complex. Whilst voters do not reject modern campaign techniques, the evidence nevertheless is that they respond much better to traditional ones – voters value the “human touch”, and parties that combine well organised modern campaigns with a good dose of traditional face to face contact tend to be rewarded electorally.

So what are parties to do, given that voters seem to what want what parties are increasingly unable to deliver? Given that membership decline is an international trend that shows little sign of reversal, one solution may be to re-examine the concept of membership itself.

However easy parties may try to make it, nailing your colours to the mast and joining a party is a big decision, especially given that voters are increasingly volatile in their electoral behaviour. Better then for parties to ease up on the assumption that campaign workers are members and recruit supporters instead, who are happy to help out without having to sign on the dotted line. A more flexible approach to the grassroots then may be the best way for parties to deal with the fallout from electoral defeat.