Ed miliband

The papers are full of Blairite warnings to Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham about the way Labour is campaigning on the NHS at present. Alan Milburn’s World at One interview gets a great deal of coverage, and just to twist the knife a bit further, the former Cabinet minister joins John Hutton to write in the FT that ‘if Labour is to win in May, the two Eds need to set the record straight and reclaim ground foolishly bequeathed to their opponents’. They’re talking about the economy, criticising the current Labour leadership for apologising too much for New Labour’s spending when the Tories supported it (a pithy line in the

The House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee wants a moratorium on fracking so that what it calls the ‘huge uncertainties’ of its impact on the environment can be resolved. If they hadn’t noticed, we already have had a moratorium on fracking. All activity ceased in 2011 after a couple of minor earth tremors near Blackpool were linked to exploratory drilling by Cuadrilla in the area. What the company now wants to do – and in which it is being frustrated at present by Lancashire’s planners – is to resume exploration, having changed their procedures in response to the tremors. If there are ‘huge uncertainties’ over fracking, how would they ever

Even by the standards of the Conservative and Unionist (sic) party this is an impressively stupid poster. Do they really want to encourage Scots to vote for the SNP? Evidently they do. Of course we know why. Every seat Labour lose in Scotland makes it less and less likely Labour will emerge from the election as the largest party. Consequently, every SNP gain makes it a little more likely David Cameron will have a chance of cobbling together a second ministry. But, my god, think of the price at which that comes. In their desperation to stop Miliband the Tories are prepared to risk the future of the United Kingdom.

It’s another election Monday and the three parties are still hanging about in their comfort zones, even though they appear to have moved on to other topics. David Cameron is talking about the economy, but with a softer, nicer-sounding edge that has riled some on the Left because it involves him talking about full employment, which is something Beveridge was a fan of, and pay rises, which is something Labour says it wants more (while backing the public sector pay freeze).The Prime Minister will give a speech promising to expand the start-up loans to help 50,000 more entrepreneurs set up business using a £300 million pot. The Prime Minister wants

For most of this parliament, Downing Street has been thoroughly paranoid about Boris Johnson and his intentions. Any attempt by the Mayor to reach out to Tory MPs was met with deep suspicion. But now, the Tory leadership is actively pushing Boris to see Tory MPs — he was even invited to join the Whips for a Whips Supper at Boisdale last week. This is all evidence of the unspoken deal between Boris and the Tory leadership. He will be loyal and campaign hard for Cameron. In exchange, it will allow him to cultivate Tory MPs; helping him to rectify his biggest weakness ahead of any Tory leadership contest. These

Before the eurozone crisis, Greek elections didn’t receive much attention in Westminster. At the moment, however, the polls from Athens are being studied by every politico from the Prime Minister down. How Greece votes on the 25 January could determine the result of our election. If anti-austerity Syriza triumphs, the eurozone crisis will move from a chronic phase into another acute one. For the second election in a row, the backdrop to a British poll and possible coalition negotiation would be talk of debt defaults and bank runs, as Athens struggles with the eurozone straitjacket. Syriza does not want Greece to leave the euro. But it does want the ‘fiscal

Even though they ended up walking through the lobbies together (though not hand in hand, skipping, sadly), Ed Balls and George Osborne still managed to have the sort of Commons showdown that would fit right in to the script of Bridget Jones. On and on their furious fighting went, over whether the long-term economic plan was working, over whether Labour had a long-term economic plan, over whether Britain would get its AAA credit rating back, over whether Balls would borrow more and whether Osborne was cutting the deficit slower than he’d intended. On and on and on. Both looked as though they were enjoying tearing chunks out of one another

Ed Miliband’s popularity may be at an all time low, but the leader of the Labour party is at least now moving in A-list circles. The Telegraph reports that Miliband recently enjoyed a supper at the mansion of Geoffrey Robertson QC, the human rights barrister, which both George and Amal Clooney attended. Mrs Clooney is a barrister at Doughty Street, Robertson’s chambers. While the quality of Miliband’s general dinner party chat remains unknown, he is thought to have discussed with the Hollywood couple proposals for ‘fresh sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime’ following the case of Sergei Maginitsky,  the Russian whistleblower who died after months of beatings in prison. And while the menu

I don’t always agree with Peter Hitchens but this is by far the best piece I’ve seen on the political reaction to the Paris attacks. As far as Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are concerned, we must all sign up to these shibboleths: The attack was nothing to do with Islam. Almost all Muslims, here and abroad, found those attacks repugnant. The attacks were perpetrated and supported by a minuscule number of people who can simply be defined as ‘terrorists’. Immigration and multiculturalism were in no way contributory causes of either the Paris attack or the attacks which we might experience in the future or have suffered in the past. All

Defeat in May would be dire for either Cameron or Miliband. It would end their political career in ignominious failure. But winning would not be much better: they would be the weakest PM in living memory. Here’s why it won’t be easy for either of them: Miliband would be a prisoner of his own MPs: The best that both Labour and the Tories can hope for is the narrowest of outright victories. The 21 seat majority that John Major ground out in 1992 is, probably, beyond either of them. Miliband would then find himself having to steer swingeing cuts past a party that is simply not prepared for them. It

Before today’s awful events in Paris, the meeting between David Cameron and Angela Merkel was going to be the big news of the day. The German Chancellor does not always observe the usual rules of neutrality when it comes to foreign elections. In 2012, she endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy in a joint TV interview, declaring that it was ‘natural’ to back a fellow Conservative. Now, there was no indication that Merkel was going to offer Cameron similar backing today. But senior Tories were keen to talk up what they were calling ‘das snub’, the fact that Merkel is not meeting with Miliband. (It is also worth remembering that in 2012, Miliband