Ed miliband

If the new Labour HQ was meant to reflect a reinvigorated party then the blank white walls made for an obvious joke. With hacks and hackettes assembling for Ed Miliband’s summer drinks Labour command and control was going strong – red wine was banned, lest some spill it on the pristine new grey carpet. Expertly manoeuvred around the room by his spinners ex-Mirror man Bob Roberts and part-time standup comic Ayesha Hazarika, Ed looked like a man who knows he’s had a good few months. He’s got a long way to go to achieve the potential PM aura though. Sneaking out at the end unaccompanied does not really fit the

Ed Miliband used his speech this morning on policing to attack the shambles on Olympic security staffing created by G4S. That was a sensible thing for an opposition leader to do, and he managed to give quite a sensible speech, all in all. He did not fall into the trap of saying that all outsourcing is bad – which would have been a strange thing for the Labour leader to say, anyway, given it was under his party in government that firms like G4S flourished. But he did point to what many across the political spectrum agree is a problem: that G4S effectively holds a monopoly on security and policing

What’s the best way to deal with a full onslaught against your industry? A damn good party of course. ‘Despite the dismal financial outlook, Square Mile magazine held their annual Summer Party on Friday 13th for 1,000 City bankers,’ proclaims one of the most gloriously offensive press releases that Mr Steerpike has seen in long time. There were apparently ‘no signs of the dismal economy’ as bankers ‘quaffed free Iceberg Vodka and Louis Roederer champagne and were entertained by fire-breathing strippers and snake charmers’. And, as if that was not enough, ’ex-city trader Anton Kreil, set to become the first person to execute a financial trade in space, was the

When Ed Miliband gave his speech to Labour’s autumn conference last year, he rather tied himself in knots about how to end predatory capitalism. The Labour leader was trying to make it clear that he would stand up to vested interests, but the message was lost under a row about whether he was pro- or anti-business. Today Miliband managed to put that speech into context a little more, by announcing Labour’s plans to change the culture of banking in this country. Instead of predator banks, he wants ‘stewardship banking’, which builds ‘a long-term, trusted relationship with their customer’ and serves the real economy as well as the industry itself. The

In my Observer column today I say that a judicial review into the banking scandal would have achieved little unless the judge could have persuaded the politicians to change the law. As if on cue, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls popped up to demonstrate that they have no desire to change banking law in any way that might make a difference. Their proposals to expand the number of banks and make it easier for customers to switch accounts, amount to more of the same. Instead of five big banks running on taxpayer guarantees, we will have seven big banks running on taxpayer guarantees. Neither Labour nor the Tories is willing

Low party interest parading as high political principle. That was the theme of today’s PMQs as the party leaders clashed over the scope and nature of the inquiry into the Libor scandal. David Cameron’s pungent language was intended to reflect public anger at the banks. He spoke of ‘spivvy and illegal activity’ in the City, and he promised that crime in financial centres would be pursued as rigorously as crime on the streets. One of the grandest of Tory grandees, Nicholas Soames, warned him that new regulatory mechanisms mustn’t be allowed to damage the City, ‘which remains a vital asset for our country.’   And he was followed by the

It’s hard to believe that executives at Barclays had much confidence that the resignation of Marcus Agius as the bank’s chair would place a stopper on the Libor scandal. Ed Miliband drove those doubts home this morning when, appearing on Daybreak, the Labour leader reiterated calls for Bob Diamond to resign. He said: ‘I don’t think that he can carry Barclays forward, Bob Diamond, because he was there, he was actually in charge of the part of Barclays where some of these scandals took place years back and we will obviously hear what he has to say at the Select Committee on Wednesday but I really don’t believe that the

The momentum for a public inquiry into banking is growing. The Daily Mail front page demands ‘Put Bankers In the Dock’. While Ed Miliband has given an interview (£) to The Times in which he calls for an inquiry into the ‘institutional corruption in the City’. Miliband thinks that this inquiry should be tasked with drawing up a code of conduct for investment bankers equivalent to the one governing solicitors. Bankers who breached this code would be struck off.   Now, many will say that Labour have a cheek lecturing on banking regulation given the total failure of the new system they introduced. James Chapman also reports that ‘government sources

The Libor scandal is both a threat and an opportunity for Labour. The threat is that the abuses took place under a regulatory system that was devised by the last Labour government and by a Chancellor who both Eds worked for. As I said yesterday, the Tories are determined to hammer Balls — a former City minister — on this. But the opportunity is that it offers Ed Miliband a chance to act as if he is the tribune of the people, the leader brave enough to take on the powerful. So as with News International and phone hacking, we’ve seen Miliband getting out in front in terms of calling

Ed Miliband was spoilt for choice at today’s PMQs. Scarcely a week goes by without the government reneging on some budget promise, so Labour’s  leader had a whole fistful of blunders to consider. Wisely, he took the simplest option and quoted an apologia made by David Cameron on April 11th. ‘I will defend every part of the budget,’ the prime minister told some interviewer somewhere. ‘I worked on it very closely with the Chancellor. Line by line.’ That was pure gold for Miliband. And pure poison for the prime minister. ‘What went wrong?’ asked the Labour leader casually.   Cameron flipped into full denial mode. ‘I cannot be a U-turn!’

Here we go again. Ed Miliband gave another speech about immigration this morning proving yet again that this is a subject about which no-one is ever permitted to talk. Any time a Labour politicians talks about immigration and the party’s record in government I am reminded of Evelyn Waugh’s acid observation on hearing the news that Randolph Churchill had successfully endured an operation to remove a benign tumour. This, Waugh wrote in his diary, represented  “A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.” Comparably, it seems a typical triumph of modern politics that Labour should disown one of

Ed Miliband must be livid. He has a sizeable lead in the polls, has taken ground on the economy and watches the government lurch from one self-authored disaster to the next. And then, and then, the trade unions engineer a very public row with the centrist think-tank Progress (which is funded by former Labour donor Lord Sainsbury) over the ‘soul’ of the Labour Party. Jackie Ashley observes in today’s Guardian that this silly spat has grown out of all proportion. Lord Mandelson was asked about it on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday, and he reiterated many of the points made by Denis MacShane in this Coffee House post of the

The attack on Progress by the GMB union at its annual conference is odd and reflects the uncertainty of trade unions as they try and work out their role and status in a 21st century which is proving very unfriendly to trade unions across the world. In the United States, only 7 per cent of the private sector workforce is unionized. The figures in France are similarly low. In Britain, TUC membership has shrunk for the fourth year in succession.   Union bashers may rejoice, and certainly there are Tory MPs who think the last great bit of Thatcherite unfinished business is the extirpation of organized labour. But workers are

It was back to the future at the Leveson inquiry today, as Sir John Major suggested how the press might be regulated. He was calm and confident, launching the odd softly-spoken salvo at former enemies, among them Rupert Murdoch. He said: “Certainly he [Murdoch] never asked for anything directly from me but he was not averse to pressing for policy changes. In the run up to the 1997 general election in my third and last meeting with him on 2 February 1997 he made it clear that he disliked my European policies which he wished me to change….If not, his papers could not and would not support the Conservative government.’

Ed Miliband’s speech last week, in which he grappled with questions of Britishness, identity and Unionism, was a worthy effort. By which you will grasp that it was also, in the end, not quite good enough. The Labour leader spoke as though he had only recently appreciated — or had brought to his attention — that national identity on these islands is often a matter of choice and that — insert obligatory Whitman reference here, please — many people have multiple, layered identities that may, at times, even seem to contradict one another. Gosh, you think?   And, alas, he foundered in the Q&A when he told one inquisitor: ‘People