He ran for the California assembly and scored an upset victory, and then successfully led the charge to overhaul that state's chaotically corrupt regulation of the liquor industry, to reform its inefficient, labyrinthine water system and to save San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts.

FORBES: Fact and Comment

Well Peter Hain is in charge of the project to overhaul the Labour Party and he joins us now.

BBC: Transcript of Peter Hain interview

Also weighing on Obama and his aides as he decides how to proceed is the unpleasant memory of previous dust-ups over contraception, including an election-year spat over an element of Obama's health care overhaul law that required most employers to cover birth control free of charge to female workers as a preventive service.

WSJ: Obama faces choice on morning-after pill limits

The BBC's political correspondent Carole Walker said the overhaul of the welfare system was the government's biggest priority, especially as it attempts to shake off the charge that it is out of touch with those struggling to make ends meet.

BBC: Welfare system reforms are fair, says Iain Duncan Smith