Ed miliband

Thursday

Toby Young

Miliband’s fight with the Mail is cold political calculation

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference in Manchester, but it’s Ed Miliband I want to discuss. In particular, his objection to Saturday’s article in the Daily Mail about his father Ralph. I felt a smidgen of sympathy for Ed when I saw the headline (‘The Man Who Hated Britain’) because a similar piece could be written about my father. May be written about him, in fact, if I pursue a career in politics. Like Ralph Miliband, he was a left-wing intellectual and, while he didn’t renounce parliamentary democracy, he was at one point a member of the Communist party. He left in 1936 after the first of Stalin’s

The Spectator

The week: ‘Land of opportunity’; Obama phones Iran; glow-in-the-dark robber

Home Shares in Royal Mail are to be sold by the middle of this month, before postmen can go on strike; the company is valued at between £2.6 billion and £3.3 billion. The Church Commissioners, an investment arm of the Church of England, became part owners of the resurrected Williams and Glyn’s bank which will open branches relinquished by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The minimum wage for those aged 16 or 17 rose by 4p to £3.72 an hour; for those aged 18-20 by 5p to £5.03; and for those older by 12p to £6.31. Poundland, which has 458 shops in the British Isles, said it wanted to open

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Charles Moore’s notes: At last! Reds under the beds again

 Manchester For those of us of a certain age, Ed Miliband’s speech last week was exhilaratingly nostalgic. His promise to freeze energy prices reminded us of happy times when Labour policies were patently, shamelessly idiotic. At last, after a generation of loss, we began to hope to find reds under the bed again. In its understandable excitement, the Daily Mail made the mistake of finding only a dead red — Mr Miliband’s late father, Ralph. It then compounded its error by saying that Miliband senior ‘hated Britain’, on the basis of some angry remarks he made when aged 17. So the Mail managed to offend against taste and decency on

Steerpike Steerpike

Geordie Greig was in Manchester during Miliband memorial

Just as the Miliband/Mail row was dying down, along comes the next tranche of fury — and more justified this time. Mail on Sunday editor Geordie Greig has gone into full damage-control mode (suspending two journalists and issuing a grovelling apology) after Ed Miliband complained that a MoS reporter had infiltrated a family memorial service yesterday to ask guests what they thought of the row with the Mail. Grieg was one of the many editors pressing flesh at Tory conference while the dirty deed was being done, wining and dining cabinet ministers. He may now wish that he stayed at home to keep an eye on his hacks. Greig is rumoured

The Spectator

Ed Miliband’s letter to Lord Rothermere – and the Mail on Sunday’s apology

Dear Lord Rothermere, Yesterday I spoke at a memorial event held at Guy’s Hospital in London for my uncle, Professor Harry Keen, a distinguished doctor who died earlier this year. It was an event in a room on the 29th floor of Guy’s Hospital which was attended only by family members, close friends and colleagues. I was told by one of my relatives late yesterday evening that a reporter from the Mail on Sunday had found her way into the event uninvited. I also discovered that, once there, she approached members of my family seeking comments on the controversy over the Daily Mail’s description of my late father as someone

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

Why are Marxists and Soviet apologists regarded as harmless jokers?

I rather like Ed Miliband, and for what it’s worth I don’t think he has inherited much, if any, of his father’s rancid political views. Nevertheless the fact that Ed Miliband has often referred to his father’s thought makes Miliband Snr fair game in a way that other politicians’ parents might not be. But in the row over the Daily Mail / Ralph Miliband affair two things remain to be pointed out. The first relates to war service. Contra Emily Maitlis (among others) on last night’s Newsnight, it is perfectly possible to fight for a country in a world war and still hold values (then or subsequently) inimical to the country you fought

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who’s united the Tories? Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage

The Tory party has been at peace with itself this week. Eurosceptic backbenchers have given Nigel Farage a verbal kicking on the fringe, Cabinet ministers have stuck resolutely to the ‘hard- working’ conference script, and even Boris Johnson has behaved himself. Gay marriage, which so divided the leadership from the grassroots, has barely been mentioned, and you’d never know that just a month ago David Cameron lost a Commons vote on Syria. The new harmonious mood has come about in part because the leadership has moved towards the rest of the party. Tory conference was once decorated with posters extolling the benefits of ‘the big society’. Now, there is a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s speech shows he wants a re-run of 1992

David Cameron’s Chequers speech writing session was held hours after Ed Miliband had finished speaking at Labour conference, and it showed today. This was Cameron’s passionate, sometimes angry, response to the Labour leader. He wanted to make the case that Miliband’s move to the left would endanger the British economy. His message was give me the time and I will finish the job. What’s the job, building a ‘land of opportunity’. This seems to mean an enterprise economy with an education system good enough to enable social mobility. It is a very Tory message. But Cameron was keen to show that he’s still a compassionate Conservative. As he discussed his

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why didn’t the Daily Mail stick to the ‘red angle’ when it came to Ralph Miliband?

For those of us of a certain age, Ed Miliband’s speech last week was exhilaratingly nostalgic. His promise to freeze energy prices reminded us of happy times when Labour policies were patently, shamelessly idiotic. At last, after a generation of loss, we began to hope to find reds under the bed again. In its understandable excitement, the Daily Mail made the mistake of finding only a dead red — Mr Miliband’s late father, Ralph. It then compounded its error by saying that Miliband senior ‘hated Britain’, on the basis of some angry remarks he made when aged 17. So the Mail managed to offend against taste and decency on multiple

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Sorry, Ed Miliband, your dad hated Britain

It doesn’t matter how much Ed Miliband’s lip quivers, his dad was, as The Daily Mail suggested, a far left wing intellectual whose gratitude to the country which took him in extended only to wishing it might be dismantled, root and branch. That Ralph Miliband was also an urbane north London émigré does not alter, either, the fact that he was, like so many academics, seduced by Marxism. Our universities are virtually the only places in the civilised world where this absurd and discredited creed continues to prosper; much of it today is simply attitudinalising nonsense; when Miliband began his work, under the tutelage of the horrible Harold Laski, it

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Tax cuts R us! Ten points from David Cameron’s Marr interview

Here’s what jumped out at me from David Cameron’s interview with Andrew Marr in Manchester this morning: Tax cuts: the Tory weapon ‘As this economy has started to recover, it’s very difficult for people to make ends meet. Their wages are relatively fixed, and the prices are going up. That’s why cutting people’s taxes is so important. That’s why lifting people out of the first £10,000 of income tax is so vital. That’s why freezing the council tax matters.’ So Cameron acknowledges Miliband’s premise, that the cost of living is an issue, then presents tax cuts as the solution. Precisely the right strategy, as tax cuts are bankable and Miliband’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory pale ale fail

Are the Tories a little bitter about Ed’s conference speech last week? Well, if their annual conference stunt is anything to go by they’re up for a bar fight. The Red Ed Lion Pub has opened in Manchester serving up such comedy capers as ‘Miliband Brown Ale’, ‘Extra Strong Union Ale’ and ‘David’s Bitter’. Party fund-raisers will be hoping that the delegates tuck in, and they’ll be on hand on to take donations, like modern day versions of Napoleonic era army recruiters conscripting drunks in pubs. Mr Steerpike will report back on how they taste when he arrives at the conference; but he suspects that they might be a little flat.

Friday

Jeremy Browne

Ed Miliband needs to get out more

They say travel broadens the mind, and Ed Miliband needs to travel more. To China, India and Brazil, but also to South Korea, Mexico, Turkey and Indonesia. If he did he would see the evidence before his eyes of a global revolution taking place. This revolution, and how Britain can best be a contender in the global race, is the biggest fact of life in politics today. To dismiss this phenomenon as a ‘race to the bottom’ is so breathtakingly arrogant, parochial and ignorant that it demonstrates Ed Miliband’s lack of seriousness and suitability as a national leader. The whole world order, that has existed since at least the Industrial

Ed West Ed West

Ed Miliband ducks the question. If squaddies are victims, who or what is threatening them?

A country’s laws say much about its people’s character, though not in the way its lawmakers intend. Perhaps the oldest written law in English history, dating back to King Ethelbert of Kent, decreed strict punishments for anyone who attacked Church property, which suggested that either they were very pious folk or, more likely, quite a few people were stealing from churches. The idea of sacrilege predates Christianity; in ancient Rome violence against some officials was punished more severely because their positions were sacred. The modern advent of hate crimes has reinvented this idea, with certain people granted protection because of group victim status, victimhood being the closest thing we now

Carola Binney Carola Binney

Take it from a teenager: 16-year olds shouldn’t be able to vote

Like Charles Moore in this week’s Spectator, I am inclined to wonder whether there is ‘any conceivable good reason’ why 16-year-olds should have the vote. As a teenager interested in politics, I found not being eligible to cast a ballot until this year frustrating but reasonable. The idea that, at 18, I would become an adult, and as an adult I would be able to vote, made perfect sense. Departing from this principle by picking an arbitrary voting age is, as Moore points out, a slippery slope: what about all those politically oppressed 8 year olds? It is never argued that 16-year-olds should have the vote as part of a

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

To see off Ed Miliband, the Tories need to do better than an Alan B’stard stimulus

A banker of my acquaintance went to Switzerland skiing this winter. A luxury he normally could not afford, but he’d just remortgaged thanks to George Osborne’s Funding For Lending scheme and saved a packet. To his amazement, he was being bailed out by the Chancellor – he didn’t need the money but thought he’d take it if it was going. The cash certainly tricked down – to the après-ski champagne bars of Verbier. The Chancellor’s stimulus makes the cheapest loans only available to the rich (ie, those with at least 40 per cent equity in their house) and like all of the Treasury’s cheap debt wheezes it was just another

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Even if Miliband really has shifted left, the Tories are staying in the centre

Is Ed Miliband a lefty, or isn’t he? That’s the big question occupying anyone who isn’t trying to sleep off Labour conference before the next political brouhaha begins in Manchester on Sunday. But since the Labour leader appeared to abandon the centre ground and back his own instincts, little has been written about the effect this will have on the Tories’ electoral positioning. James argued yesterday that Ed Miliband had done politics a favour by making the 2015 election about competing philosophies. Does this mean the Tories can move to the right too? The answer to that question, is, I’m told by Number 10 sources, very much no. The Conservatives

Steerpike Steerpike

Gordon Brown’s gossip girls

Brown’s boot boys had a reputation for political assassination, karaoke, and curry and lager. But if Damian McBride is to be believed, they’re really just a gaggle of gossiping girls. ‘How much of an appetite for gossip does Ed Miliband have then?’ Fraser Nelson asked of McBride for this week’s Spectator podcast. ‘He’s a bit like Gordon Brown,’ replied the repentant sinner/spinner: ‘He wouldn’t declare that he was interested in that kind of thing. But if you started saying to him ‘well I think so and so is going out with so and so’ amongst his officials he would go ‘really’ and want to hear about it.  …the worst of

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s second conference message: ‘bring it on’

If you’re looking for two phrases to summarise this year’s Labour conference, they’d be ‘Britain can do better than this’ (in case you missed its fleeting reference in Ed Miliband’s speech) and ‘bring it on’. Ed Miliband has decided that even though he doesn’t poll above his party like Cameron, or have a history of impressing in broadcast and question-and-answer performances like Nick Clegg, he can still enter a presidential-style 2015 election without fear. Yesterday he told delegates that he would ‘relish’ a battle about character and leadership, today he told his conference during a question-and-answer session that he wanted TV election debates in 2015, saying: ‘It’s time for David

Ed West Ed West

The insanity of ‘votes for children’: who cares what adolescents think about politics?

Should people who comment under YouTube videos be deciding the fate of our country? That’s the frightening scenario proposed by Ed Miliband, who wants to give 16-year-olds the vote because, as he put it, it will make them ‘part of our democracy’. Or, in other words, the electorate’s opinion is no more important than a child’s. There is nothing progressive about allowing children to vote, any more than it is progressive to allow kids to sit on juries or take out mortgages. These things all involve the ability to make judgments, which is not sufficiently developed in adolescence. Voting isn’t just a right that makes you feel ‘part of democracy’;