Ed miliband

In the few days since Conservative defector Douglas Carswell gave Ukip its first Westminster MP and John Bickley scared the pants off Ed Miliband by almost snatching Heywood and Middleton from Labour, there has been much talk of a broken mould and a new age in British politics. listen to ‘John Bickley: ‘If there was an Olympic medal for hypocrisy, Labour would win gold’’ on audioBoom Election geeks have posited half-a-dozen or more governing permutations in the event that Ukip makes big gains next May. Among the more obvious are these: A Labour majority, facilitated by Ukip gains from the Conservatives (Cameron’s bedtime with Farage and reveille with Miliband); a

It is easy to inflate the importance of speeches made at party conferences. Particularly when those speeches are the last such set piece events before a general election. But they are still, in the end and at bottom, a distillation of what matters most to a leader. A guide to his priorities; a demonstration of his faith. Somewhere along the line David Cameron has lost that faith. He was elected leader of the Tory party in desperate times and became Prime Minister in dismal times. In both instances he triumphed, at least in part, because he persuaded his audience that though he might look like a traditional Tory he was

The hall may have been half empty during his speech, but New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said lots of nice things about Ed Miliband during the closing session of Labour Party conference in Manchester. And the similarities between the two politicians are copious. They’re both metropolitan lefties who are far more ideologically radical than they let on. Both face hostile media and talk about the rising cost of living. But that’s mainly because Ed’s strategist are ripping off large parts of the winning Democrat’s playbook: Ed even recreated de Blasio’s widely mocked campaign gaffe of being photographed eating awkwardly. At least he didn’t take a fork to his bacon sandwich (eating

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