Fighting Fit

Better services without reform?

This is a time for creative innovation, not rigid belief that statistics can show us answers to our problems

Since when was debt a vote-winner?

It is absurd to think the Tories, rather than Labour, face a political dilemma. The answer is easy

Objects of hate thin on the ground this year

Clubs near the bottom of the Premier League are making it an unpredictable campaign in one of the tightest tussles seen

Disney and his Mickey Mouse critics

We should celebrate the cartoon's creator - a genius and one of the best arguments for capitalism

Triumph of those who resist violence

Obama's is a victory not just over the white supremacists, but also the black separatists

Four reasons why this is a landmark

The old politics has gone because Americans have changed: they are richer, smarter and less white

Four reasons why America went for Obama

The old politics has been swept away because the voters themselves have changed: they are richer, smarter and less white

Fickle voters fill pollsters with dread

Might John McCain be pictured on Wednesday triumphantly holding a pile of incorrect polling data? Watch video

Sometimes it's best to do nothing

We tend to overestimate big reformers and forget rulers who embraced compromise

A triumph? I'd hate to see a disaster

Gordon Brown can only avoid blame for the bust if he admits that his boom was always an illusion

If he looks like a cop, it's a problem

The police want to be independent of politicians; the important thing is to be independent of each other

State Leviathan must be controlled

The vast jamboree of special interest groups in Birmingham illustrates its malignant growth

Labour thinks the voters are wrong

The party is in denial. Its unpopularity is nothing to do with the ailing economy; it goes far deeper

Abolish pointless party to save the Left

As the Lib Dems meet for their conference, a fundamental question has to be raised

End bogus lines on fictitious figures

No opposition can make detailed promises about how much they will spend. Now the Conservatives shouldn't even try

Mass chattering class changing the US

The racist South was always Democrat. But Obama may be able to shake party's legacy of shame

Would you pass the Kinnock Test?

The British voter never gets it wrong. At every election in the past 80 years the right party has won

We're beating crime - believe it

Tougher sentences and policing are working. Denying the facts only makes the Right look stupid

Under way: an intellectual revolution

Go and look in your bookshop: new thinking is seeping into politics

Justice can't be done in secret

We will always try to twist the evidence to fit our theories. Especially when we are wrong