Ed miliband

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

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

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

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

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

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

In his Guardian column tomorrow, Jonathan Freedland writes that Ed Miliband reckons he’ll “get a kicking from the Daily Telegraph” for his lurch to the left, but his ‘gamble’ is that he’ll survive it. The Times and the Daily Mail have not given his remarkable speech much of a better reception (above). All three newspapers can see what’s at stake here: a very dangerous principle, dug out of its 1970s grave and held up for applause at the Labour Party conference. It is now okay for a PM to govern by issuing edicts to private companies and having them do what he wants. Today, Miliband has said his government would issue