Work-In-Progress

Ed Milband set out to reposition the Labour Party last week with a bold, new 'realistic' approach to tackling the country's welfare bill - or so we were told anyway.

But the whole business got hijacked with news that Labour's biggest single donor this year - John Mills of xxxx - is rather keen on avoiding tax himself and that his financial support for Labour has been arranged in such a way (following discussions with the party) so as to minimise his own tax bill.

All perfectly legal of course - yet somewhat unseemly - especially when you are laying into multi-national companies about facing up to their responsibilities on this delicate subject.

Now Labour has called upon the likes of Amazon and Google to abandon the elaborate and essentially artificial schemes they use to reduce or even eliminate their tax bills in the UK - but how can the party be taken seriously when it behaves in this way.

So, I would say that - for the moment - Ed's bold new approach remains very much a work-in-progress.