Ed miliband

It has been pointed out (possibly by me, among many) how hypocritical Ed Miliband is in complaining about energy prices since he was responsible, as Energy Secretary, for driving them up through green levies. We critics have been slow to realise that it is exactly because of his history that Mr Miliband is pushing his price freeze so hard. He knows — because he helped preside over it — that rises in the levies are inevitable, since they are written into the law of the land and of the EU — not just for now, but for many years ahead. He has calculated, with the same background knowledge, how he

First Ed Miliband was papped with a teenager holding a ‘bong’ (above). Now the Labour leader is being offered dope on the street by passing fans. According to the Ham & High, little Ed and his team believed that builder Robert Quinn had offered them his ‘last Rolo’ on a walkabout in Camden. In fact, Quinn had offered his ‘last rollie’, referring to a joint. And there was Mr Steerpike thinking that they must be smoking something already.

The Clangers are back. And not just on television. At PMQs, both the party leaders tried to embarrass each other with solecisms, exaggerations – and, yes, clangers – which they’d dropped in the past. Ed Miliband led with the cost of living crisis and said ‘record numbers are now working part-time’. Cameron retaliated with a Miliband prediction from October 2010. ‘The government programme will lead to the disappearance of one million jobs,’ Wrong! A million jobs have been created. Miliband brought up his pet-policy, the energy bill freeze, and accused Cameron of supporting the Big Six fuel giants. A price con, not a price freeze, said Cameron. And why had

Len McCluskey is doing Conservative HQ’s work for them. The emboldened Unite leader is welcoming the return of socialism under Red Ed. Last night at the annual Jimmy Reid lecture, McCluskey spoke passionately of Miliband’s bold new agenda: ‘Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour conference was – some would say – the most genuinely radical we have heard from a Labour leader for nigh on 30 years.’ He also welcomed the end of New Labour’s ‘neo-liberal’ dogma (you know, the policies which resulted in three general election victories). In reference to Ed’s energy policy: ‘that is not just a break with the coalition’s policies, it also represents Labour turning its

Here’s a favourite Tory joke. Question: What does ‘BBC’ stand for? Answer: Buggers Broadcasting Communism. David Cameron seemed tempted to try this gag at PMQs today. He mentioned the Beeb four times in sardonic asides. ‘Let’s praise the BBC for once,’ he said, bitingly. He woke this morning, he said, to a BBC report stating that public satisfaction with council services had risen despite the cuts. ‘I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’ He berated Ed Miliband for wanting to introduce new decarbonisation targets. ‘Even the BBC doesn’t agree with that.’ And he attacked Milband’s promise to freeze energy bills as evidence that ‘he’d like to live in a

Diane Abbott’s exit from the Labour frontbench has come later than the former Shadow Public Health Minister imagined. She had planned to resign over the Syria vote, only to find, rather to her dismay, that her party leadership had taken the position she supported in the end. Behind the scenes, the briefing is that she wasn’t sufficiently loyal: she has always been in her own party rather than pulling for the team. LabourList has a fantastic quote from a party source about Abbott ‘pissing all over the tents’, rather than ‘pissing out of the tent’ as had been hoped. She did get rather cross about Syria, but she also publicly

If this conference season is remembered for anything, it will be for Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices. This pledge might be economically flawed but it has given the Labour leader a retail offer to voters and rebutted the charge that he doesn’t have any policies. Initially, the Tories were uncertain of how to respond. But, as I write in the Mail on Sunday, the Tory leadership has now decided what it wants to do. In George Osborne’s autumn statement, they want to remove some of the seven green taxes and levies that are driving up energy bills. Not only would this reduce the salience of Miliband’s pledge but

My first job in journalism was with the Glasgow Herald, which then had a bar built in to the complex. I was taken under the wing of the legendary James Freeman, who taught me the ways of the jungle. ‘You see that journalists always drink in groups of three?’ he told me in the bar one lunchtime. ‘That’s so, when one goes to the toilet, the other two can slag him off.’ And it’s true: my profession is notoriously bitchy. I was reminded of this when switching on the BBC news to find, yet again, that the transgressions of the Daily Mail and its spat with Ed Miliband is deemed