Ed miliband

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Miliband hopes to put a cap on his welfare policy problems

A-ha! Labour have hit on a line on the benefits cap, and Liam Byrne is peddling it in the Daily Telegraph this morning. ‘Now, there are some people who are against this idea altogether,’ he writes, ‘Neither I, nor Ed Miliband are among them.’ The way he sees it, he goes on to explain, is that there should be a cap but it should be set locally, so that it could be higher than £26,000 in more expensive areas such as London, and potentially less in other areas. Bryne adds that there should be an ‘an independent body like the Low Pay Commission to determine the level at which it

Friday

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband Surpasses Himself

Miliband Attacks Cameron Over Chocolate Oranges might win a prize for the headline that best summarises Ed Miliband’s stewardship of the Labour party. In case you still can’t believe this is the case, let me repeat it: Miliband Attacks Cameron Over Chocolate Oranges. It is so dire, so naff, so excruciatingly hilarious that I thought it had to be a joke. But no, this is the BBC not the Daily Mash. Here’s what Brave Sir Miliband told the House magazine: Ed Miliband has attacked David Cameron for failing to stop the sale of cut-price Chocolate Oranges – something the PM complained about in opposition. In 2006, Mr Cameron criticised WH

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband delivers for once, but Cameron’s left unharmed

Incredible events in the chamber today. An absolute sensation at PMQS. For the first time since last summer, Ed Miliband got through the session without triggering talk of a leadership crisis. There was gloomy news aplenty to dwell on. Debts soaring; growth flat-lining; dole queues snaking back through blighted high streets and bankrupt business parks. The Labour leader chose to wallop Cameron with a well-prepared attack on the NHS. Quoting the prime minister’s vow, ‘to take our nurses and doctors with us’, he asked why the government had stopped listening. The prime minister’s reply was frivolous and desperate. He giggled and smirked like a teenager at the despatch box and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Both leaders left smiling after PMQs

Today was one of those PMQs when you sensed that both sides were fairly happy with how it had gone. Ed Miliband turned in one of his stronger performances, cleverly splitting his questions and so allowing himself to have a go at both the economy and the coalition’s troubled NHS reforms. Cameron, for his part, got through what was always going to be a difficult session for him after this morning’s negative growth numbers.   Strikingly, there were four planted Tory questions on the benefits cap. The Tories know that Labour’s vote against it compounds one of their biggest vulnerabilities, the sense they are the party for people on benefits

Monday

James Forsyth

Benefitting the Tories

The longer the row over the benefit cap goes on, the better it will be for the Tories. The cap chimes with the public’s sense of fairness. Polls show massive public support for capping benefits at £26,000 a year for non-working households (the cap won’t apply to the disabled or war widows), and if Labour oppose it, they’ll be handing the Tories a stick with which to beat them. Chris Grayling has already declared that tonight’s vote in the Lords is ‘a test of Ed Miliband’s leadership’. Those who argue that the cap isn’t fair because it will force people to move out of their house are missing the point.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Labour’s confusion is the Tories’ advantage

Today’s polls make grim reading for Labour. Even three months ago senior Labour or Tory people wouldn’t have thought that the Tories would be five points ahead at this point in the cycle. Part of Labour’s problem is that its positions require too much explanation. As one Number 10 source jokes, ‘Ed Miliband can do a Rubik’s cube in less time than it takes him to explain his position on the cuts.’ A prime example of these overly complicated policy positions is Labour’s approach to the benefit cap. The leadership says that it is in favour of a cap in principle but against this one in practice. But, I suspect

Friday

Peter Hoskin

From the archives: Brown, the opera

Perfect for Friday evening is this: the Gordon Brown-themed version of Ko-Ko’s ‘little list’ from The Mikado that Jeff Randall wrote for us back in 2007. The chorus should be sung, according to Jeff, by three people who have been quite prominent this week: Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper… The clunking fist, Jeff Randall, The Spectator, 3 March 2007 Britain doesn’t do Lord High Executioners, but if it did, Gordon Brown would probably be the best in the world. The prospect of the Chancellor in this role occurred to me while listening again to Gilbert & Sullivan’s masterful satire, The Mikado. Ko-Ko makes his entrance with ‘a little

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Off with their Eds! Yvette’s in town

This week’s Spectator cover has achieved a rare distinction: it’s going to be hung up on the wall chez Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. Or at least that’s what the shadow chancellor told Sky’s Jon Craig when quizzed about it earlier. You can see the cover image itself, by Stephen Collins, to the left. And below are a few extracts from the article by Melissa Kite that it illustrates. ‘Can Cooper save the Labour party?’ it asks. ‘Is she Labour’s Iron Lady?’ And the answer… well, you’ll have to read the full thing for that. In the meantime, here are those extracts to whet your appetite: 1) Office space. ‘In

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s proximity problem

Ed Miliband is on unusually assertive form this morning. His observation in the FT that ‘my speech to Labour’s annual conference was not — I think it is fair to say — universally well-received’ is not, I think, intended self-deprecatingly, but rather self-congratulatory, as though he were the only politician calling for a ‘responsible capitalism’ at the time. And he’s repeated that suggestion elsewhere: in a short statement for Which?, and in a Labour briefing document — entitled Who is he trying to kid? — that has been filtered around the crowd at David Cameron’s speech. Ed is trying to crash Dave’s party, and bring it crashing down. Like I

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

The lesson from today’s PMQs? Unemployment makes Cameron uncomfortable

What’s the point of Ed Miliband? Does the Opposition leader have any purpose in life other than to provide ritual entertainment for the Tory wrecking crew at PMQs? Having spent the New Year listening to lethal attacks from his dearest supporters, Mr Miliband has now seen his leadership shrivel to a pair of policy statements which rival each other in desperation and barminess. The first, outlined by Liam Byrne this morning, is a fantasy tax on banking, ‘to create 100,000 jobs’. The second is Labour’s new position on the government’s austerity programme. This would baffle the dippiest and trippiest resident of Alice in Wonderland. We hate the cuts. We back

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron endures his monthly unemployment grilling

Downing Street is painfully aware that one PMQs in four is going to be about unemployment. Today, with the monthly figures having come out this morning, Miliband led on the subject. The Cameron-Miliband exchanges were not particularly enlightening. Miliband said ‘it really is back to the 1980s’ and Cameron mocked Miliband for being ‘so incompetent, he can’t even do a U-turn properly’. In the backbench questions, Cameron wasn’t put under much pressure. The news of the session came when he said in response to a question from Andrew Rosindell that the National Security Council had devoted a whole session to the Falklands yesterday. At the end of the session, there

Peter Hoskin

The new politics of leaning on business

Ed Miliband the consumer champion, the saviour of the squeezed classes. That, more or less, is how the Labour leader has always sought to sell himself — but this morning the sales pitch goes into overdrive. He has an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which he attacks ‘Rip-off Britain’. Not the TV show, mind, but those companies that hammer their customers with extra costs and hidden charges. Excessive savings fees, car-parking charges, airline levies, bank charges, consumer helpline costs and energy bills; all these should come to an end, says Miliband. And he has a few measures for achieving that. What strikes me, when reading the interview, is how this

Tuesday

James Forsyth

Miliband tells the unions ‘tough’

Ed Miliband has just done a TV clip full of the kind of quotes that politicians love using. In an interview with Nick Robinson (above), the Labour leader declared that ‘I’m leading this party and making the difficult decisions. And if people don’t like it, I’m afraid it’s tough, because that is the way I’ve got to lead this party’. It seems that Miliband has decided to pivot off the attack on him by the Unite and GMB unions, to use them to try and show the electorate that he’s his own man and is fiscally credible. The worry among some Labour supporters is that Unite, Labour’s biggest financial backer,

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What will Miliband do now?

The Labour leader Ed Miliband has been determined not to define himself by picking fights against his own side. He didn’t want to do a Blair or a Cameron and triangulate his way to power. Rather, his model was, in one respect, Thatcher. His team were struck by how she managed to move the political centre from opposition. But Miliband now finds his own side picking fights against him. As Pete blogged earlier, Unite’s Len McCluskey has launched an intemperate attack on him in The Guardian. McCluskey claims that Miliband’s recognition that Labour’s starting point has to be that the cuts will be reality by 2015 has ‘undermined his leadership’. He

Peter Hoskin

Labour disunited

Labour MPs didn’t pick Ed Miliband as Labour leader; they preferred his brother. Labour members didn’t pick Ed Miliband as Labour leader; they preferred his brother too. It was the union bloc that delivered the crown unto Ed — spearheaded by the votes, support and influence of the country’s largest trade union, Unite. Which is what makes Len McCluskey’s article for the Guardian today so dangerous for the Labour leader. McCluskey, you’ll remember, is the head of Unite — and he’s not happy with how things are going now that Miliband has closed the ground, rhetorically at least, between his party’s fiscal stance and the coalition’s. ‘No effort was made

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Clegg versus vested interests (and the Tories)

‘Another week, another speech about the evils of capitalism.’ So joked Nick Clegg at the start of his speech to Mansion House earlier, and there was some truth in this particular jest. All three parties are jostling to be seen as the harbingers of a new economy at the moment — one that doesn’t reward failure; that benefits everyone ‘fairly’; that won’t seize up as the old one did; that etc, etc. Ed Miliband sketched out his rather insipid vision for this economy last week; David Cameron will hope to do a better job later this week. Today, though, was the Deputy Prime Minister’s turn. So what did Clegg say?

Sunday

Jonathan Jones

Miliband beats Miliband in the polls

Ed Miliband’s poll ratings are going from bad to disastrous at the moment. Last week his YouGov approval rating dropped to its worst ever, with just 20 per cent of respondents saying he’s doing a good job, and 66 per cent saying he’s doing a bad one. And today they slip even further. Again 20 per cent say he’s doing ‘well’, but now 69 per cent say ‘badly’: And, most worryingly for the Labour leader, the number of Labour voters giving him the thumbs down (49 per cent) now outnumbers those giving him the thumps up (46 per cent). That’s compared to the 95 per cent of Tories who think

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband, dented but defiant

In the news bulletin after Ed Miliband’s interview on the Andrew Marr show, the headline was about Miliband saying he does listen to criticism of his leadership. It rather summed up Miliband’s problem at the moment: he can’t get beyond all the chatter about his leadership. In terms of the substance, Miliband’s explanation of Labour’s new economic position showed just how difficult it is going to be to explain it to the public. Miliband argued, as Balls did on Saturday, that the cuts are currently going ‘too far, too fast’ but that he can’t promise to reverse them. As one Tory said to me yesterday, Labour is saying that the