Ed miliband

Ed Miliband’s interview with The Times today is striking for the language he uses about the Liberal Democrats. There’s no attempt to follow up last week’s Clegg, Miliband outflanking of Cameron with a love bombing of the deputy Prime Minister. Instead, there’s an emphasis that it would be ‘very difficult to work in a future Labour government with somebody who has taken the opposite position in a Tory government’. There are no warm words for Vince Cable either: “He flirts with the right position but doesn’t consummate it.” I think this reveals two things. First, Miliband knows that the coalition is surprisingly solid; it is not going to collapse anytime

So it looks as though a deal has been struck on Leveson after late night talks. Oliver Letwin, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman were holed up in Miliband’s office until 2.30 this morning, and Labour is now confident that it is close not just to an agreement on press regulation, but an agreement on its own proposals for a Royal Charter, rather than the government’s draft. As Coffee House reported on Friday, David Cameron was facing a rebellion of around 20 Tory MPs and a defeat in the House of Commons on his Conservative amendment which introduced the Royal Charter. That threat appears to have concentrated the mind

There comes a moment in a PM’s journey when he crests the ridge and starts on the downhill leg. David Cameron made that unhappy transition today. PMQs began with a gag from a Labour backbencher. Tom Blenkinsop: ‘The prime minister may believe there’s no alternative to the double dip. But some in the cabinet believe there is an alternative. To him!’ Cameron replied by listing his usual trinity of attainments. Lower deficit, more jobs, interest rates at record lows. Then Ed Miliband had a go. Instead of raising an issue, he went for Cameron’s reputation. ‘Given the government’s U-turn on alcohol,’ he said, ‘is there anything the prime minister could

I think it is fair to say that Dr Liam Fox has never been one of David Cameron’s chief chums. The former Defence Secretary has, as Paul Goodman notes, been closer to George Osborne. Be that as it may, his speech today is a fine reminder of Dr Fox’s political limitations. This is the kind of stuff – and the kind of man, frankly – that helps explain why the Conservative party has not won a general election majority since 1992. Think on that and think on how much Britain has changed these past 21 years and how little the Tory party has. Dr Fox ignored all this, delivering a

Further to Isabel’s post this morning, I understand from a senior coalition source that the two parties have now reached an agreement on how to handle Tuesday’s vote on Labour’s mansion tax motion. The Liberal Democrat leadership has assured their coalition partners that they’ll back a government amendment to it. This amendment will concede that the coalition parties have different views on the issue. The only question now is whether the speaker John Bercow will call it. I suspect that this agreement has been helped by a desire to limit coalition tensions post-Eastleigh and pre-Budget. There is also reluctance on the part of the Liberal Democrats to get dragged into

For a few hours this morning it looked as though Ed Miliband might do something uncharacteristically courageous. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the Labour leader had described himself as a Zionist at a meeting organised by the Board of Deputies. It may be sad that this would need to be considered, as Dan Hodges put it, ‘a brave and welcome statement’ but that’s the modern British left for you. Mr Hodges wondered if Miliband would ‘stand by’ this statement. His scepticism was sensible. And sure enough, word comes that Miliband’s views have been ‘misinterpreted’ by the Jewish Chronicle. As Hodges relates the story: ‘Asked at the event whether he was

Whooo that was nasty. Today’s was the most vicious PMQs of the last twelve months. Easily. Ed Miliband started by quoting the case of a Londoner called ‘John’ who was concerned about living standards. ‘John’, however, wasn’t a disabled pensioner but a City fat cat concerned that next year’s bonus might be capped at two million pounds. ‘What’s the prime minister going to do to help him?’ Nifty tactics from Miliband’s team. Cameron might have floundered here but his reply matched the full force of Miliband’s attack. His government, he declared, had cut bonuses to a quarter of what they’d been under Labour. ‘And we aren’t going to listen to

Panic, once let loose, is hard to corral. And there seems to be plenty of panic on the Tory benches at Westminster. The Eastleigh by-election result, the stagnant economy and the rising sense that the Prime Minister has somehow lost his way all contribute to this. Each fresh setback – or perceived setback – now has an impact disproportionate to the actual size or importance of the problem. These things are no longer measured on a linear scale. Read, for instance, Ben Brogan’s analysis in today’s Telegraph and you will perceive an under-current of deep panic presently afflicting the Tory tribe in London. Similarly, when Paul Goodman is writing –

Who are the Conservatives? No, really, who are they and what do they stand for? Once upon a time – as James Kirkup points out in a typically astute post – we had a pretty decent idea about David Cameron. He was young. Polished. Presentable.  Dutiful. Unthreatening. Fiscally-conservative-but-socially-liberal. Modern (whatever, as Prince Charles might say, that means). Above all, he was neither Michael Howard nor Gordon Brown. Ah well. That was all a long time ago. Let sunshine win the day is the soundtrack to another era. Such are the trials of government. Time – and power – tarnish everything. What does David Cameron believe in now? He remains more popular

A couple of reflections upon Eastleigh. Firstly it was indeed an appalling night for Labour; midterm the party came second in this constituency in the early 90s. It received the votes a joke candidate might expect this time around. Maybe that’s because they put a comedian in the seat. I have no objection to John O’Farrell’s writing at all; but maybe one reason for Labour’s failure – and probably not the most important – was his candidature. He is the sort of thing London Labour loves; metropolitan, cool, ever so witty. Ever so PC. Does any of that play outside the M25? I don’t think so. And the result would

While the Tories are taking a public beating for their performance in Eastleigh, Labour also have little to be proud of. Despite the party currently floating around 11 points ahead of the Tories in the national polls, they only managed to add 0.2 points to their 2010 general election result and came in fourth place. Their candidate John O’Farrell blames voters being anti-politics, not anti-Labour. Either way, the result is disappointing for Ed Miliband. Although it was unlikely Labour would ever take the seat, the party still threw its weight behind a full campaign. Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling suggests Labour were putting in similar effort to the main contenders. 89

Today’s PMQs should have been a tricky one for David Cameron. Ed Miliband had the ratings downgrade with which to attack the Prime Minister. But Cameron sailed through the questions about the loss of the triple A rating. Following George Osborne’s lead from Monday, he mocked Labour for its ‘policy to address excessive borrowing by borrowing more.’ This failure to capitalise on the undoubted embarrassment for the government of the credit downgrade should worry Labour. listen to ‘Cameron vs. Miliband at PMQs, 27 Feb 13’ on Audioboo

How can Labour win back voters in the South East? At the 2010 general election, Labour took ten southern seats outside of London, compared to four times that in 1997. Like the Tories in the North, Ed Miliband needs to offer policies that will ease the concerns of these lost southeastern voters; to convince them Labour is once again on their side. Miliband has tried to address the problem. The catalyst came from John Denham, who urged Miliband, as Giles Radice did with Neil Kinnock in 1992, to remember the ‘6:14 from Basingstoke’ voter and avoid using ‘north-south’ language. Instead, Denham suggested Labour should present policies that appeal across the whole country. The Labour leader

Like grief, stupidity has a hierarchy. So, on balance, Ed Miliband’s response – if it can be so dignified – to Hilary Mantel’s essay about the mystery and magic attraction of royalty was even dumber than David Cameron’s. Neither, plainly, had read what Mantel had written. The Leader of the Opposition at least had the advantage of playing second. Having seen the Prime Minister make a chump of himself, Miliband would have been wise to resist the temptation to demonstrate his own chump credentials. This was beyond him. In modern British politics you cannot allow the existence – or even mere appearance – of a Chump Gap. Then again, it

So Labour is going to force a vote in the House of Commons on the mansion tax. It’s the key announcement trailed as part of Ed Miliband’s visit to Eastleigh today, and yet it’s the sort of thing that only really excites people who look forward to hearings of the Public Accounts Committee rather than the average voter who has a more normal perspective on life. The idea behind these Opposition Day debates is that Labour flushes out any rebels or unhappy Lib Dems, or that its MPs can later tweet ‘Lib Dems voted against their own policy in the Commons tonight #evil #nevertrustalibdemagain’. Miliband says that very thing today:

Here’s an interesting thing: Number 10 has released a statement on Ed Miliband’s 10p tax rate pledge. The Downing Street press machine hasn’t been in the habit of doing this sort of official reactive spinning, although this may be in part because Miliband’s speeches thus far have been pretty light on anything you can actually react to. This is what a No 10 spokesman said: ‘This is a stunning admission of economic incompetence from Ed Miliband and Ed Balls – that their decision in Government to scrap the 10p tax rate hurt millions of working families. People will never trust Labour again. The low income working people who lost out