Peter Hoskin

A grim turning point for Ed Miliband

Yesterday’s PMQs already feels like a turning point. It wasn’t so much the nature of David Cameron’s victory – comprehensive though it was – but rather the way  Labour MPs have reacted to Ed Miliband’s defeat. Whatever doubts some of them held privately about their leader have suddenly spilled out, mercilessly, across the snow. In his Daily Mail sketch, Quentin Letts describes Miliband’s excrutiating exit from the chamber yesterday; Guido and the Telegraph are carrying remarks from disgruntled Labour figures. The volume of hostile radio chatter has risen considerably over the past twenty-four hours.

Of course, there are several caveats to be slapped across all this – not least that Labour are bobbing up above the Tories in the polls. But it does seem that Ed Miliband’s honeymoon period, such as it was, is crumbling fast. If his troops’ unhappiness becomes, and remains, the story, then he will find it difficult to gain any sort of momentum over the next few months.

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