Ed miliband

That was a motto-blaster of a budget. George Osborne deployed half a dozen chewy new Tory slogans during this afternoon’s statement. ‘Britain walking tall again. … a country built on savings not debt … ten pounds off a tank under the Tories … Britain – the comeback country …’ It’s unclear whether: a) Lynton Crosby feeds him these soundbites b) Osborne auditions them on a freelance basis hoping to catch the great auteur’s ear. He repeatedly called the country ‘one United Kingdom’ as well, bolstering Conservative claims that Labour is ready to sell Great Britain for dog-meat in a traitor’s deal with the SNP. He doled out good news on

Sarah Vine criticised Ed Miliband in the Daily Mail after the Labour leader posed with his wife Justine in a bare kitchen for a BBC interview. Although the ‘forlorn little kitchen’ turned out to just be his ‘kitchenette’ rather than his main kitchen, Miliband has gone on to insist that it is one he uses. It’s a different story, however, for his rival David Cameron who has taken the opportunity to show off his own shiny kitchen in a video for the Sun‘s new election website. The short film, which documents a day in the life of the Prime Minister, shows Cameron chillaxing in the well-stocked kitchen which is crammed with food, equipment and recipe books. As Cameron also has two kitchens,

Labour has decreed today it won’t go into a formal coalition with the SNP, but this won’t stop the Tories from attacking Ed Miliband over the possibility. Despite Miliband’s proclamation that ‘Labour will not go into coalition government with the SNP’ and ‘there will be no SNP ministers in any government I lead’, a Tory source says ‘we’ll continue to campaign on this’. So expect more stunts and adverts highlighting the dangers of any union between Labour and the SNP. Conservative HQ has upped the ante of its Labour/SNP attacks recently, running the Saatchi pocket ad (above) in The Guardian, Independent or New Statesman during Labour’s Manchester conference this weekend, while dressing up Conservative activists in Alex Salmond masks holding Soleros lollies

Yesterday Mr S reported that Ed Miliband posed in his second kitchen for a BBC interview with his wife Justine, rather than his larger main kitchen. Now the Labour leader has come out in defence of his two kitchens, claiming that the smaller ‘kitchenette’ is his main kitchen. Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, Miliband says that he does have two kitchens but denies that he posed in the smaller one to give the impression that he was a man of the people. ‘I think Justine would probably say she wishes I’d spend more time in the kitchen. The house we bought had a kitchen downstairs when we bought it. And it is not the one

When Ed Miliband ran for the Labour leadership in 2010, his supporters boasted that he spoke human. Tonight, in a question time session with a group of young people broadcast on BBC3, Miliband showed flashes of his ability to connect with an audience. But, overall, it was a patchy performance. Miliband was very good on some subjects and dealt neatly with some left-field questions. However, he still doesn’t have the right answer to the question of whether he would do a deal with the SNP after the election in the event of a hung parliament. He dismissed the ideas as ‘a piece of nonsense from the Tories’. But, in contrast