Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
Yesterday ‘Gareth’ was just the bloke from a software company, but Ed Miliband helped transform him into an internet sensation and telly star in a matter of hours after mentioning him in his lamentable conference speech. Normally politicians prefer to keep quiet about their encounters on Hampstead Heath. Hats off to Newsnight for this one…
Andy Burnham has just delivered the best speech from a Labour MP at conference. Taken from the autocue, it was emotive, stirring, tribal, and just what delegates needed. It seemed to have taken rather a number of lessons from the ‘Yes’ campaign in Scotland in that it was relentlessly negative about the threat that the Tories pose to the NHS and framed not voting Labour as an active threat to the health service. Burnham got a number of standing ovations – the first was just a few words into his speech – and had the audience captivated throughout. Why? He spoke with a passion and a sense of purpose. When
Ed Miliband is not having much luck this conference. First, there’s the fact that it has come straight after the Scottish referendum, making it feel a bit small. Second, other stories have kept intruding on and overshadowing conference. Finally, Miliband’s managed to forget two of the most important sections of his speech, the parts on the deficit and immigration. The missing paragraphs dominated, to Miliband’s audible irritation, his interview on the Today Programme. Miliband explained that he hadn’t meant to cut them out from the speech, but that they had just got lost as he delivered it. Now, to some extent, this is a process story. But it does allow
Why does Ed Miliband think memorising a speech is more important than convincing voters that Labour really can be tough on the deficit? It wasn’t just his performance yesterday, in which the Labour leader failed to communicate key passages on the economy and immigration (James has them here), but the lack of candour from anyone on the stage about the scale of the challenge facing a Labour government if it came to power next year. Ed Balls said Labour was facing difficult, unpopular decisions, but then undermined his bad cop routine rather by announcing two relatively uncontroversial cuts. On the Today programme Miliband tried to argue that his speech had
Parliament is expected to be recalled on Friday to discuss British military intervention against Isis. David Cameron will hold talks with his Iraqi counterpart today, with Haider al-Abadi expected to make a formal request that Britain join the military action. Labour is staying supportively non-committal at the moment, with Ed Miliband saying again on the Today programme that Labour hadn’t yet been approached, but that it would consider anything the government put on the table: ‘I think the situation in Syria is somewhat different, in that’s it’s not a democratic state, we’ve got the Assad regime in Syria, we called yesterday, we supported the American action, but we called yesterday
Have you met Ed Miliband recently? Then he probably namechecked you in his speech earlier today. Unless you talked about the deficit or immigration, that is. Here’s the full list of people he met: 1. Josephine – a cleaner who hadn’t decided how she would vote in the Scottish independence referendum. I was on my way to a public meeting. I was late as politicians tend to be. And just outside the meeting I met a woman and I was supposed to be going into the meeting but I wanted to stop and ask her how she was voting. I did that to everybody on the street. One vote at
No notes speech have been Ed Miliband’s political party trick. His One Nation speech two years ago ended speculation about his leadership and last year’s energy price freeze effort knocked the Tories off their stride for months. But today, the no notes speech hurt Miliband rather than helped him. Without an autocue, Miliband skipped bits of the speech. This has happened to him before, one year he missed out the section on the environment. But this year, Miliband missed out the bits he could least afford to: forgetting the sections on the deficit and immigration. listen to ‘Ed Miliband’s speech: podcast special’ on audioBoom
Professor Tom Gallagher, a Scottish Catholic historian, wrote a post here yesterday accusing the Catholic hierarchy of Scotland of covertly supporting the Yes campaign. Now there are two pieces of evidence to support his claim. The first is a letter from Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow to departing First Minister Alex Salmond. Never have I witnessed a senior cleric suck up to a politician so shamelessly. Truly he has earned Private Eye’s Order of the Brown Nose (OBN). Dear First Minister, You have announced your decision to step down as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party. On behalf of the Bishops Conference of Scotland, I
James Forsyth interviews Defence Secretary Michael Fallon in this week’s Spectator. You can read the full interview here. Here are five key points from the piece: 1. A ‘new Battle of Britain’: ‘We’ve had attacks on the streets of London, on our transport system, at Glasgow Airport, the murder of Lee Rigby – how much more evidence do you need that this is a very clear and dangerous threat to our way of life and to all the democracies of the west. This is a new Battle of Britain.’ 2. MPs need ‘courage’ to vote for military intervention: ‘I hope parliament now will have the courage shown by our
Ed Miliband has spoken – for 65 minutes – snarling at Tories, while laying out his 10-year plan and presenting himself as the man who can shake up the complacent Westminster elite. James, Isabel and I were all there in Manchester and we met up straight afterwards to compare notes. Here’s our combined verdict: listen to ‘Ed Miliband’s speech: podcast special’ on audioBoom
Whether or not Ed Miliband’s speech was a success depends on what sort of aim he had for it: heave Labour over the general election line using his party base, or reach out to wavering swing voters by arguing that Labour has the ability to govern in the challenging circumstances that it finds itself in after the 2015 election, that it has a vision for aspirational voters, and that it really understands why its working class voters deserted it in 2010. listen to ‘Ed Miliband’s speech: podcast special’ on audioBoom Let’s address the second aim first. It was not a good speech. It did not have a sufficiently well-crafted message.
This afternoon Ed Miliband gave his last speech to the Labour conference before the general election. There’s full text and audio, and here’s the analysis from the Coffee House team: listen to ‘Ed Miliband’s speech: podcast special’ on audioBoom
I think I’m about the only journalist to have watched Ed Miliband’s speech and think it wasn’t awful. Here in Manchester, the consensus seems to be that this was as bad as a speech could be. And, admittedly, even I was tweeting rude things about it all of the way through (since when does anyone need a 10-year plan? Britain won a world war in six years). You may not like the politics but his speech was intellectually coherent, even pugnacious in parts. Sure, it was about an hour too long and had some worrying lacunas. His decision not to mention the economy was wise because he has nothing to say. There was no
The Ministry of Defence is like a sauna on Sunday. The air circulation system has been switched off and the place is hot—and deserted. Yet when you reach the Secretary of State’s floor, a small team is hard at work. As you enter Michael Fallon’s office, you see the reason why. On an easel sits a map of Iraq and Syria. Tellingly, though, this isn’t the only map on the stand. Sitting behind it are ones of Pakistan, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone. It becomes clear as the interview goes on that the one of Ukraine has gone missing. Fallon is 62, but he has the energy of a man half his age.
The more we learn about Ed Miliband’s speech (to be given later this afternoon), the clearer the dividing lines that it is drawing are. The word is that Miliband will announce more money for the NHS paid for by a combination of taxes on mansions, hedge funds and big tobacco. The message: Labour stands up for the NHS while the Tories stand up for people who live in mansions, hedge funds and tobacco companies. This might be crude politics but it will, I suspect, be quite effective. It emphasises Labour’s biggest strength, that they are the party of the NHS and social solidarity, and highlights the Tories’ biggest weakness, the
Having spent four years sticking to a wave at the end of conference and the odd photograph together with her husband, Justine Thornton has burst onto centre stage at Labour’s conference. Mrs Miliband – and she uses her Miliband name today – has written to Labour activists pledging her commitment to getting her man into Downing Street: ‘Honestly, as a young lawyer who wanted to change the world, I never would have believed that I would become a politician’s wife. It’s not a role you apply for, nor one I’ve found easy to understand. Just after Ed won, I Googled a few terms to see if there were books I
Fancy a cheeky chew on Chuka, a bite of Balls or a munch on Miliband? At last night’s Sky party at Labour conference, the Shadow Cabinet were out in force – on macaroons, presumably to help with the cost of pudding crisis for hardworking people. Those around Miliband often get sniped at for being weak, but these macaroons were crunchy and had plenty of bite. Bizarrely, Eric Pickles gatecrashed the party at one point, albeit in slightly less robust form than usual: The question is, who is the least tasty shadow minister? Mr Steerpike’s bakery source says it was the Shadow Business Secretary who ended up lingering longest on the
What will happen now that the US has launched airstrikes against Isis in Syria? Even though there is no requirement for Parliament to be consulted, it is very difficult for the British government to join without some form of debate and vote in the House of Commons. And this means that a recall of Parliament before it is scheduled to sit on 13 October. The end of this week is most likely, but there remains a debate at the top of the Tory party as to whether David Cameron could win a vote supporting British action. This is surprising, given so many of those who opposed action against Assad last
How does Labour win back the working class voters who’ve abandoned it? This question, part of the soul searching the party fell into when it lost the 2010 election, has gained even greater currency since the Scottish referendum. This evening Michael Dugher and John Denham had a stab at answering it at a conference fringe. And the answers were really quite unsettling. Denham told the fringe that ‘we’re talking to people who’ve come to the conclusion that governments are a bonus if they don’t make their lives worse’ and therefore just one policy wasn’t going to solve it. He said: ‘We have to get back into a relationship with people
Normally the default response in the Labour party to a rough couple of weeks is to blame the Shadow Cabinet. They’re not pulling together, they’re thinking about their own future leadership prospects rather than backing Ed Miliband and so on and so forth. But while the Shadow Cabinet is looking weak this week at their party conference, for once it is not their fault. They are standing under a banner that announces ‘Labour’s Plan for Britain’s Future’, but then say no more about that plan. They are all being sent naked into the conference hall. All they are being required to talk about is their values, and what they have