Ed does some explaining

Always keen to explain himself to the faithful is Ed

For example "On the welfare sanctions revolt"- For the benefit of those who may not know what "the welfare sanctions revolt is" that is a reference to 40 Labour MPs defying the party whip and voting against the jobseekers (back to work schemes) bill when it got its second reading in the Commons in the middle of March, when the Labour Whips, on Ed's say so, had ordered Labour MPs not to vote against this emergency government legislation aimed at blocking compensation payments for people who were illegally sanctioned for not taking part in work experience programmes.
  
    I think it’s useful to explain the decision we made.

Explain away Ed ....
  
    I’m concerned, Liam is concerned, about the people who are wrongly sanctioned.
 
"Wrongly sanctioned - as in "had a sanction applied to them that was say, illegal, because there was no legislative basis for it"?

    We’ve got to protect that – we did that by protecting people’s appeal rights.
 
So you made sure that anyone who felt they had been wrongly, unfairly or even illegally sanctioned "could appeal against it".  By not voting you did that?  Well done you.
  
    Secondly there’s an issue around the massive increase in sanctions. Iain Duncan Smith denies there’s targets – it turns out there are targets – we’ve got to have an independent review of that.
 
So you are determined to get to the bottom of this "targets" business;  are there, or aren't there explicit or even implicit targets whereby "any excuse will do as a reason for dishing out a sanction"? ... By not voting you ensured there would be that fully independent review? Well done you.

    But then you come to the question “Should we vote against all of the sanctions that have been applied under the work programme?”, almost all of them since 2011, and I didn’t think that was right.
 
Now I am not entirely sure I follow that line of thinking Ed - In the Appeal case that you are apparently referring to the Judges didn't say "sanctions per se are illegal" they said "the sanctions issued under this particular scheme were illegal, because the scheme hadn't been correctly drafted".

You have said it was important to ensure there was a right of appeal for people who are sanctioned, you said you are concerned about the rapid rise in the number of people being sanctioned and believing this is the result of operating to some "sanctions" target yet, when it came to the matter of someone having appealed against the way the system was used against them, and the Courts having sided with that person and declared that their being sanctioned was illegal, because the scheme hadn't been properly and legally drawn up, and actually anyone sanctioned under those non existent powers had been illegally sanctioned and would be entitled to receive any JSA that had been withheld from them, illegally, you and your party obligingly "abstain" - never mind vote against - so a government Bill can be rushed through to make sure all those illegally sanctioned people get nothing, and then excuse that by claiming that it was important to endorse the idea of sanctions and their use.
  
    And I take full responsibility for the decisions we made. I think Liam [Byrne] is doing an excellent job. I think he is both emphasising responsibility – which does matter to us – but also showing the importance of compassion in the system. And that’s why he’s campaigning as he is on the bedroom tax. As for the colleagues who took a different view, I understand why they were angry about what the Tories had done, but I felt we took the right decision and I still feel we took the right decision.”
 
Righty oh Ed.  So just to be clear - people can appeal against being sanctioned and having their benefits removed, and the Labour party is fully behind them having the right to appeal but if they succeed the Labour party also fully supports the appeal judgement being ignored, and if necessary changing the law retrospectively to make sure it is, and they still get nothing.  Yeah, come to think of it, that is cockeyed enough to be immediately recognisable as a well thought through policy line.
   
If Labour do get in in 2015 I think we can safely assume they'll take up and run all these schemes they are forever declaring are wrong and unfair much more effectively than the present shower.