Colour coding

It's all about colour apparently (unless you're Dick Best).

In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland says that Labour's route out of the black hole has to be green with just a hint of blue, arguing not so much for cross-party cross-dressing as cross-party cross colour coding. Freedland is one of many people who think Labour's backing for the third Heathrow runway undermines its credibility on environmental issues:

it's hard to believe ministers are sincere about reaching targets - set for dates long after their political lifetimes - when they, to take the most neuralgic example, give the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow. Instead it encourages the belief that Labour is a lush shade of green when it's in the realm of rhetoric and the distant future - but the colour of concrete and tarmac when it comes to the now.

Meanwhile the IPPR calls for a package of "red and green" taxes in the budget, jumping the gun on a report it will publish in the summer.