Ed miliband

After Labour confirmed that they would not reverse Tory art cuts, the luvvies turned on Ed. During a spending plans onslaught from the Tories earlier in the year, the party spin machine proudly boasted: p.44 of Tory dossier says Labour will cancel cuts to the arts budget. We won’t. — Labour Press Team (@labourpress) January 5, 2015 Leading to a thorough pasting from all sorts of media darlings: This is not something to brag about. RT @labourpress: p.44 of Tory dossier says Labour will cancel cuts to the arts budget. We won’t. — Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 6, 2015 @labourpress And you’re proud of that? Jesus. — Simon Blackwell (@simonblackwell)

Could Labour’s tuition fees policy be its own tuition fees moment, of the same order as the moment it endlessly needles the Lib Dems about? Well, the decision, when it’s made, won’t have the same dramatic effect as the Lib Dem about turn in 2010, because Labour candidates haven’t been posing with signed pledges and smiling students promising that they’ll do one thing while their party slowly realises that it really should do another. In any case, it does look as though the party will, in one way or another, maintain its promise to cap the fees at a lower level than the £9,000 that the Coalition raised them to,

Ed Miliband appears to have found some safe ground for his party this week, attacking the Tories whenever he can over tax avoidance claims. If he plans to continue on this note, Mr S suggests that he picks his words with more care in the future. Speaking at the Welsh Labour conference on Saturday about his plan to launch an HMRC review, Miliband went off message rather badly. The Labour leader promised to ‘stand up for all those who stand in the way of the success of working families’. That couldn’t be what he means, could it?

Last week was Labour’s best of the campaign so far and the Tories’ worst. The row over tax avoidance and Lord Fink’s comments reinforced the damaging perception that the Tories are the party of the rich. It also raised Labour morale, frontbenchers who used to be pessimistic about the party’s electoral prospects are now bullish. But there is a danger that this tactical victory could turn into a strategic defeat. For Miliband by denouncing tax avoidance—which is legal—and setting himself up as a moral arbiter on the issue, has made his tax affairs and those of his shadow Cabinet, MPs and donors a legitimate subject of public interest. They no

Ed Miliband’s party has ended up having a reasonably good week, even though it’s been a pretty tough battle. Today’s front pages have not been good at all, something the party leader’s supporters are obviously disappointed by, but given the story about a comparison between the row about Lord Fink’s tax affairs and the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone was made by an aide, not Miliband, and then reported in a way that was initially misinterpreted, the focus of the row is not Miliband himself. The line about Miliband’s own tax affairs was inevitable, too. But it depends whether anyone can find anything to continue the story. The Conservatives have

This morning, there was much Westminster chatter about whether Ed Miliband would repeat his accusation made at PMQs yesterday about the ‘tax avoidance activities of Lord Fink’. But shortly before Miliband spoke, Fink himself gave an interview to The Standard in which he said, ‘I didn’t object to his use of the word “tax avoidance”. Because you are right: tax avoidance, everyone does it.’ Instead, Fink claimed that his objection was to the implication that he was one of the ‘dodgy donors’ that Miliband was talking about. Now, Fink’s letter of complaint to Miliband yesterday didn’t mention the word ‘dodgy’. After his speech today, Miliband tellingly refused to call Fink