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Parliament is back but for Labour and the wider centre-left it feels like nothing has really changed. Certainly the opinion polls haven't. Labour urgently needs to change the game and in this context its own party conference can only be seen as another wasted opportunity.

In just 10 days our high-profile Summer Lecture 'The Future of Social Democracy' is now fully booked: delivered by Dr Jon Cruddas MP the lecture will take place from 6pm - 7.30pm on Tuesday 8 September 2009 at the LSE Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, Aldwych, London WC2A 2AE. You can still request to be put on the reserve list for a ticket.

Jon Cruddas has today written an interesting article for debate on Comment Is Free on equality and the future of the left as part of the launch of Demos' new Open Left project. It's well worth a look.

You wait ages for a crisis to arise, and then a stack of them come along at once. But the multiple crises that Britain is now experiencing have a common thread running through them: the relationship between markets and capitalism, on one side, and society and democracy, on the other.

If these election results and the political events of the last week don't wake up the Labour leadership, nothing will. Both are truly shocking. Worse still, they are largely self-inflicted.

For those of you following the whole sorry tale of the crisis within Labour then we'd highly recommend having a read of Seamus Milne writing in today's Guardian who says "The challenge is now not simply whether Brown or Johnson should be leader, but to move beyond the failed politics of New Labour altogether".

Since coming to power New Labour has by and large kept to the same income tax policy as its Conservative predecessors - certainly when it came to the top of the income scale. Indeed let's not forget Peter Mandelson went as far as to say he was "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". Even any meaningful debate on general taxation was considered strictly taboo.

A YouGov poll commissioned by Compass has demonstrated overwhelming public support for the government to close in on personal tax avoidance which is estimated loses up to £15BN of public money each year.