PMQs sketch: Ed Miliband, the political vulture

PMQs today revealed just how dependent Ed Miliband is on Britain’s future performance. The public finances have shaped his entire career. In government, he watched Gordon Brown screw the economy. Then he watched the economy return the compliment. Now he hopes the economy will wreck the Coalition and propel him into Downing Street.

But there’s a snag. The economy has to tank, and to carry on tanking, for Miliband’s Mission Zero to succeed. And today, in defiance of all the soothsayers, the economic news is good. Employment figures are rising. Nearly 30 million Britons are in work. And those tricky youth unemployment totals are moving into sunny territory too. Ed Miliband, the political vulture, will starve without fresh corpses on the savannah.

To turn the happy tidings into sorrow and gloom, he tried tracking back to last week’s Autumn Statement. He wanted to embarrass the PM with the shocking revelation that ‘60 per cent of those hit by the welfare cuts’ are in work.