Ed miliband

It is easy to make a case for why all three main parties should do badly at the next election. After five years of austerity, who will vote for the Tories who didn’t in 2010? And how will they stop those dissatisfied with the compromises of coalition from sloping off to Ukip? As for Labour, why would the public want to put them back in charge just five years after booting them out? This question has special force given that the Labour leadership is so identified with that failed belief that boom and bust had been ended. Then, there’s the Liberal Democrats—they’ve alienated their left-leaning supporters and lost their status

The Tories are chuffed with yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (the knockabout, that is, not the serious bit), and with Labour’s continuing struggle to make any impact in the polls. Earlier this week, Lynton Crosby spoke to the parliamentary party about how they should aim to beat Miliband. He told them that while Miliband is a weak leader, the way to beat him is to highlight his areas of weakness, rather than his personal flaws. This means that the party will be focusing on how Labour is faring on welfare and the economy, rather than mocking Miliband for making his colleagues coffee (which is a line David Cameron really should drop).

Oh dear. Another lousy day at the races for Ed Miliband. It began as soon as he stood up at PMQs. The mournful angularities of his face settled into a frosty grimace as the Tories greeted him with ironic whoops and cheers. And on they went, yelling and braying. Miliband seems to believe that adopting a look of injured decency will bring the house to order. But the more he glowered at the Tories the more they crowed back at him. It was awful to behold. He stood there, immobile, like a man returning from a difficult hour at the dentist only to find his house is on fire. His

Ed Miliband thinks a contributory principle in welfare is the way to show voters that his party supports a ‘something-for-something’ approach. Yesterday he proposed to restore that principle, with higher entitlements for those with good records. This was at the heart of the Beveridge settlement, but has been diluted by successive governments, the current one included. Labour has to show that it can pay for this sort of system, though, and Miliband’s answer is to raise the hurdle for contributory welfare, so that claimants must have worked longer than the current two-year period to qualify for the contributory benefit. The implication is that more people will go straight through the

For months, right-wing politicians and commentators have been licking their lips waiting for the Labour party to face up to reality. We all assumed that the sort of speeches delivered by Ed Balls and Ed Miliband this week, in which the two men abandoned the party’s commitment to universalism and promised to cap welfare spending, would send Labour into orbit. There was even a revolt in the Commons which appeared to be a harbinger of doom about Labour and welfare. So where’s the open warfare? Sure, Peter Hain spent most of Monday having a grump into various cameras and microphones about the winter fuel payment. But the party has stayed

Thwack! That was the sound of Ed Miliband being knocked for six at PMQs. He didn’t stand a chance. Even before he could get to his feet, David Cameron had put a question to him. Against the rules. But so what? Cameron wanted to know if the Labour leader would withdraw his constant attacks on Tory plans to remove child benefit from high earners? Miliband stood up midst a barrage of Tory jeers, (and a few supplementary squawks from LibDems too). The humiliation of Labour’s U-turn showed on his face. He looked like an elevator-boy with his conk caught in the closing doors. The chamber was in full cry and

It’s fashionable to say Downing Street isn’t very good at strategy. So fashionable, in fact, that sometimes journalists worry they’re being unfair to the Tory leadership. But today we saw yet another example of the Prime Minister leaving an open goal for not just the opposition party but also his own Coalition partners to score. On Monday, Google’s Eric Schmidt visited Downing Street for the regular Business Advisory Group meeting. He was allowed to leave by the back door, and the Prime Minister’s aides were adamant that David Cameron wouldn’t ‘confront’ the Google boss on his company’s tax arrangements. All he planned to do was to take the group through

There is always something quietly devastating about a pronouncement from Lord Mandelson. Today more polls reveal the Labour party is failing to make headway when the Tories are in an almighty flap, and the New Labour peer gave his tight-lipped, politely-delivered prescription on the Marr Show for how Ed Miliband can salvage things: ‘I think that Ed Miliband has two tasks. He has one, to continue building up his economic credibility and confidence people have in Labour’s ability to manage the public finances and people’s own money. He has made a very good start at doing that. Secondly he has got to do something even harder, what he has got

‘Red Ed’ invited the great and good of the media into his Westminster den for hummus and natter last night. No one knew what they were celebrating. Poor local election results? His rescue of a cyclist? Christmas? Who cares; no hack ever passed up a free drink. Ed glided through the room, flirting with friend and foe in an easy manner that does not translate to television. And, unlike Cameron and Clegg, Ed is not one for an early bed. He stayed right to the bitter end, even after the wine and beer had dried up, just as he did at last year’s Spectator summer bash. Incidentally, the Labour leader

The dust is settling from the County Council elections and, crucially, the Tory party seems to have stayed steady. Yes, David Davis has had a pop at the number of Old Etonians surrounding the PM and 20 MPs have called for a mandate referendum. But there is no sense of mass panic or revolt. Partly this is because David Cameron had already started doing the things he was going to be told to do after this result. As one Downing Street source remarks, ‘the shift is already well under way.’ He points to the tougher measures on immigration and welfare coming up in the Queen’s Speech and Number 10’s new

Even though there has been some reeling back today from the suggestion that David Cameron is on the brink of wowing his party with a bit of legislative red meat on an EU referendum, it won’t stop Tory backbenchers trying to force the leadership’s position on this matter. The problem is that Conservative MPs are starting to see themselves as psychic agents. They vote for something that their party doesn’t want to happen and get called a rebel. A few months later, that rebellion becomes official party policy. One rebel joked to me earlier this week that ‘I don’t rebel against my government, I just vote two or three weeks ahead

It’s not a case of will they, won’t they when it comes to whether Labour would borrow more, but will they admit it and try to sell this plan to voters? In the past few days, we’ve seen the party trying to work this out in public. Ed Miliband, in his awkward World at One interview, knew that saying ‘yes, we’d borrow more to fund the VAT cut’ would provoke triumphant howls from his opponents, and so ended up nervously jabbering away as Martha Kearney asked the same question over and over again. But yesterday he told Daybreak that ‘I am clear about this: a temporary cut in VAT, as

The Labour Party is most exercised by the news, broken by the Spectator, that Economist journalist Christopher Lockwood has been appointed to the Downing Street Policy Unit. Poor old Lockwood is charged with being a bit posh, knowing David Cameron personally and attending a good school. This amounts to a crime against humanity in Labour land. Rent-a-quote Rachel Reeves, who moonlights as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, took time off her maternity leave to lambast the elitist chumocracy at the heart of Dave’s government. All of which is a bit rich because the Labour Party indulges this particular establishment vogue to a tee. Rachel Reeves’ sister Ellie is on

Whether you like Ed Miliband’s latest party political broadcast depends very much on whether you’re the sort of person who openly weeps while listening to Coldplay. It’s got plenty of the Chris Martin playing Wembley factor: emotional piano music, people saying things like ‘please, give people some hope’, and the Labour leader leaning comfortingly against luggage racks, nodding knowingly. He talks about ‘a country that comes together, a country that joins together, a country that works together’, and even employs a ‘yes, we can!’ theme. But what do we learn about what Labour is going to do to address this hunger for hope? Well, firstly that the Labour leader represents

There has been a distinct shortage of PMQs recently and after today, there’s only one more until June. This will add to Ed Miliband’s disappointment that he didn’t shift the political mood today, nothing happened to interrupt the mini-Tory revival. Though, tomorrow’s GDP figures will be crucial in whether it continues. Miliband went on the NHS, one of Labour’s strongest subjects, only for David Cameron to counter that if Labour got in again there would be another Mid-Staffs. This was a distinct change of tone from Cameron’s initial response to the Francis Report, when he went out of his way to avoid trying to blame the previous government. The questions