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Believe it or not, Labour’s party conference has finally ground to a halt. Here are the key lessons from the past six days in Manchester: 1. Ed Miliband is no longer a joke leader of the opposition. The Labour leader’s speech showed that he can now talk a good game, and even though much of
Labour leave Manchester today with a 14-point poll lead over the Conservatives, according to YouGov. That’s their biggest lead in a YouGov poll since June, although one last week showed them 13 points ahead, so we shouldn’t rush into declaring a big conference bounce for them. It does seem, though, that Ed Miliband himself did
A Labour conference delegate was heckled from the floor when she mentioned her school. Joanne, an immigrant who came to this country seeking political asylum and is about to read law, came face to face with the vested interests that blight education reform: the hall did not like the fact that she went to an
There was plenty of panto on the conference floor this week in Manchester. Ed Miliband encouraged delegates to boo several villains in his speech, and one of them was Michael Gove. In fact, Michael Gove popped up as the villain on Tuesday and in the Labour leader’s question-and-answer session yesterday, too, and again when Stephen
Mr Steerpike is now available weekly in the magazine. This one’s been getting them talking today: It’s a hat-trick! Word reaches me that Dave may be about to lose his third spin doctor in a row. First Andy Coulson left to spend more time with his Fingertip Guide to the Criminal Law. Then Steve Hilton
It’s been quite a week for weird would-be national leaders. First we had Ed Miliband deliver the best speech of his life in Manchester. And, last night, Mitt Romney bettered Barack Obama in the first presidential debate. The two men are at very different stages of their political cycles – Romney has 30 days until
The West Coast rail franchise balls up is a remarkable kettle of fish, isn’t it? I remember when the successful tender was announced by the government being surprised at the ferocity of old beardy’s rage, and also astonished at the figures he was quoting. Can this be right, I wondered to myself at the time?
‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ That was the question Ronald Reagan told Americans to ask themselves when choosing their President in 1980, and it’s a line Mitt Romney’s campaign has been hoping would work for them this time around. ‘The president can say a lot of things, but he can’t
Some dog-munching old thug from Pyongyang has been addressing the United Nations, warning that his country is the ‘world’s hotspot’ and a spark could trigger a thermonuclear war. It’s quite possible I’m wrong about this, as I am wrong about a lot of things, but North Korea worries me far less than one supposes it
It doesn’t seem entirely fair that Stephen Twigg’s speech has been left to the final day of the Labour conference, when many have packed up and left Manchester already. But today Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary is to announce more reforms to education as part of the party’s new One Nation project. The idea is to
If we learnt nothing else from this afternoon’s question-and-answer session that Ed Miliband held with delegates, it’s that Labour delegates are quite as eccentric as Liberal Democrat members, if not more so. The junior coalition partner has long enjoyed the reputation of having an eclectic following, but those gathered in Labour’s hall had bought an
The good thing for Labour about Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday was that he didn’t talk about the deficit, or welfare or other thorny issues which make certain sections of the party very grumpy indeed. The Labour leader made only fleeting references to cuts to public services, too. So there was little to disagree on. It
Talking to senior Liberal Democrats and Conservatives about Ed Miliband’s speech, it is striking how similar their analyses of it are. Despite coalition, we’re entering into a period of stark government, opposition dividing lines. Pretty much everyone admits that Miliband has put to bed the question of his leadership of the Labour party and moved
The Labour party’s love-in with great Tory statesmen continues. Yesterday Miliband went all Disraelian; today Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, has raised the spectre of Robert Peel in an attempt to paint modern Tories as out of touch with the police service in the wake of the Andrew Mitchell ‘pleb’ scandal. However, it seems that
With Labour conference winding down, attention shifts to the Tories. They will head to Birmingham facing several challenges. First, the loss of the boundary changes means that winning a majority requires them to be on, at least, forty two per cent — six points up on where they were in 2010. Second, Ed Miliband has
In this week’s Spectator James Forsyth interviews new Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt about how he will continue Andrew Lansley’s legacy on NHS reform. He says his ‘burning mission’ is to ‘demonstrate that we have as much to offer the NHS as Labour ever did’. But while Hunt is keen to praise the work of his
Sir Richard Branson is not a man who takes kindly to failing to get his own way. That was why few people were surprised by the Virgin boss’ furious response to the government’s decision to award the West Coast Mainline to his rivals First Group. It wasn’t fair, he protested, and thousands of people seemed
Expect to hear Barack Obama talking about ‘economic patriotism’ in tomorrow’s first Presidential debates. The idea is a simple one: that American’s should keep their money within the United States, place their deposits in American banks, and pay the full measure of their taxes. It’s providing an effective way to undermine Romney’s complex financial arrangements
Listening to Ed Miliband’s conference speech, I was stuck by the similarity of one section of it to that of another speech given by someone else who’s taught at Harvard: law professor Elizabeth Warren. Today, in Manchester, Miliband spoke of ‘the system’ not working in much the same way as Warren — now running for
Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ conference speech will have put the populist cat amongst Downing Street’s toffee-nosed pigeons. Now young Dave’s people will have to work out how to respond to this inspired piece of political cross-dressing, even if it is essentially diaphanous. One (alleged) Tory, though, is very happy with the direction in which the national debate
One of the more sombre passages in Ed Miliband’s barnstorming speech this afternoon was when he tackled the thorny issue of what a Labour government would actually do about the cuts. While both the Labour leader and Ed Balls are keen to regain the trust of the British public on the economy, they are also
The first thing to remember about Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour conference today is that it’s not about you, it’s about us. That is, it was designed to persuade the media to give Miliband a fresh look more than it was an attempt to impress the general public, far less the Labour members gathered
listen to ‘Ed Miliband conference speech highlights, 2 Oct 12’ on Audioboo
listen to ‘Ed Miliband conference speech highlights, 2 Oct 12’ on Audioboo
A great historian has died. He joined the Nazi party in the 1930s, spurred by a fear of the communism which was then spreading through Europe. Although he survived for many decades to see the consequences of the ideology, he nevertheless remained nostalgic for, and loyal to, fascism. He also retained an active interest in
As Ed Miliband prepares to present a carefully crafted image of ‘Ed the human’ to the Labour conference this afternoon, polling out today suggests the nation still does not see him as a future Prime Minister. In a ComRes poll for the Independent, just 22 per cent of voters said they agree that Ed Miliband
At the very end of a rather long and wonkish fringe about Labour’s policy review last night, Angela Eagle started describing what she called an ‘electronic town square’. She’d already told the audience about Star Trek salutes, so this town square, which sounded rather like Labour’s answer to Trumpton, was quite in keeping with the
Ed Miliband wants voters to see a little bit more of the man he is this conference, and his speech today is expected to be very personal, giving even more vivid glimpses into the Labour leader’s life. He will draw on his own upbringing in the speech, pointing to his parents’ experience as Jewish refugees
From Peggy Noonan’s blog which, unusually for a political columnist, is almost always lovely and generous and warmly-acute: “Man needs less to be instructed than reminded,” Dr. Johnson said, but it wasn’t really a reminder I got yesterday, it was a sort of revivifier. I was at the big annual street fair in Bay Ridge,
Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour conference this afternoon was undoubtably his best speech yet and has revitalised the Labour cause.The Spectator team have gathered this evening in Manchester for a special podcast to discuss both Miliband’s speech and the Labour conference overall: The View from 22 – 2 October 2012. Length 13:24 Download audio
Tony Judt’s verdict on Eric Hobsbawm seems fair: “If he had not been a lifelong Communist he would be remembered simply as one of the great historians of the 20th century.” That if is a hefty qualification, of course, for some of the reasons Nick Cohen makes admirably clear. Any appraisal of Hobsbawm’s life and
A few years ago, I wrote a review of Eric Hobsbawm’s last collection of essays and noted ‘Hobsbawm is now 94, and although I have no wish to usher the old boy from the room, I can see his obituaries now. Conservative and liberal writers will say that his loyalty to totalitarianism disfigured his writing,
Ed Miliband will roam the stage as he delivers his leader’s speech. With negative polls about whether voters can see him as Prime Minister been giving prominent play in the papers, the stakes for this speech have been raised. I suspect that the speech will be better delivered than last year’s—Miliband is far more comfortable
Each day of the Labour conference covers a different aspect of Britain that Ed Miliband wants to rebuild, and tomorrow’s theme as the Labour leader gives his speech will be rebuilding the education system. Miliband will announce plans for a new Technical Baccalaureate which starts at 14 and runs until 18. The idea is to