Ed miliband

Cameron versus Balls

The real clash at PMQs today was between Ed Balls’ heckling and David Cameron’s temper. Balls was in a particularly chirpy mood. He started off his impression of an Australian slip fielder as soon as the Prime Minister arrived at the despatch box. The flat lining gesture made an early appearance, along with his signals telling Cameron to calm down.   But the moment when Balls seemed to really get under Cameron’s skin was when he pointed at the overwhelmingly male Treasury bench as Cameron talked about the importance of getting more women on boards. Two questions later, Cameron responded to a Balls’ heckle by saying that ‘the shadow Chancellor

Labour aren’t capitalising on the government’s woes

Ipsos MORI’s latest monthly political monitor is just out, and it doesn’t bring much good news for either the government or the opposition. 63 per cent of respondents are dissatisfied with the government and 54 dissatisfied with David Cameron — both the highest proportions since the election. On the public’s number one issue — the economy — just 36 per cent say the government’s done a good job. And even wose, a whopping 77 per cent say they’ve done a bad job of keeping unemployment down — hardly surprising considering unemployment has risen by 100,000 since the election. But while all this presents a great opportunity for Labour, other numbers show how

Miliband fails to connect

Easy-peasy at PMQs today. All Ed Miliband had to do was slice open the Coalition’s wounds on Europe and dibble his claws in the spouts of blood. But his attack had no sense of bite or surprise. And his phraseology was lumpen. He used all six questions gently stroking the issue of Europe rather than driving a nail through it.  He asked about growth. He asked about the ’22 committee. He asked about Nick Clegg’s “smash-and-grab” phrase to describe the repatriation of powers. He asked about the social chapter. He asked about everything he could think of, and it was clear he couldn’t think of the right thing to ask.

James Forsyth

Cameron battles it out

David Cameron came out swinging today at PMQs. Knowing that Ed Miliband would try and exploit the Tory rebellion over Europe on Monday night, Cameron went for the Labour leader. He called him a “complete mug” and mocked him as being detached from reality. At the end of the exchange, Osborne gripped Cameron’s shoulder in congratulation – a sign that the pair knew that they needed a strong performance today to calm their backbenches. The other notable aspect of PMQs was its emphasis on the new political battleground: women. The Labour MP Gloria Del Piero asked the PM why the government was more unpopular with women than men, which gave

Cameron outfoxed in PMQs

Alive or dead? At PMQs today we discovered whether Dr Fox is still an active toxin within Cameron’s government. Ed Miliband, using that special quiet voice he likes to try when he’s got a deadly question, described the affair as ‘deeply worrying’, and asked how on earth the prime minister could have let it all happen. Cameron, evidently relieved that Fox is already a stuffed and mounted exhibit in the Museum of Former Big Beasts, pointed out that his minister had resigned. ‘Not something that always happened under Labour.’  It turned very tetchy all of a sudden. Miliband, apparently miffed, struck out with this hoity-toity harangue. ‘Some advice for the

James Forsyth

Europe bubbles to the surface in PMQs

A particularly fractious PMQs today. Ed Miliband started by asking questions about Liam Fox which, frankly, seemed rather out of date given that Fox has already resigned. Cameron swatted them away fairly easy, mocking Miliband with the line “if you’re going to jump on a bandwagon make sure it is still moving”. But when Miliband came back on the economy, Cameron was far less sure footed. The Labour leader had one of those great PMQs facts: despite the government having issued 22 press releases about the regional growth fund in the last 16 months only two firms have received any money for it. A visibly irritated Cameron then said that

Miliband’s challenge

One of the striking things about politics at the moment is that Ed Miliband is proving adept at spotting issues that are going to become big — think the squeezed middle, energy prices — but is failing to drive home this advantage. There’s scant evidence that, for instance, the voters regard Miliband as the solution to the problem of rising energy bills. I suspect that the coalition’s plans to make it easier for people to switch tariff and supplier will cut through with the public more than Miliband’s speeches on the issue. In part, this is the natural advantage of incumbency — governments can actually do things. But the challenge

This will Occupy Boris

A few months ago I hosted a debate at my think tank with one of the key Tahrir Square leaders. After his talk about Egypt, he warned the audience: the protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak were not just an Egyptian or Middle Eastern phenomena; it could – and, he said, would – spread to the West. For the youth of today, he argued, feel disempowered, empoverished and betrayed. As protests spread from New York to London and other European capitals, it seems that Egyptian protester may have been right. Today’s efforts to occupy the London stock exchange failed but protesters remain on the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral. Whatever happens

Fraser Nelson

Salmond’s bonnie boat

Meanwhile, Alex Salmond’s journey is going depressingly well. The SNP conference starts in Inverness on Thursday and a ComRes poll today suggests 39 per cent are in favour of independence, against 38 per cent against the idea. Not a freak: a poll last month by TNS-BMRB produced the same results. Hardly an overwhelming endorsement, but a reminder that the unionists are in trouble in Scotland. The Scottish Tories are in so much trouble that one leadership candidate is suggesting the party renames itself because its official title strikes so many as oxymoronic. For all his Scottish lineage, David Cameron leaves Scots cold – as the general election demonstrated. The Labour MSPs are midway

Labour failing to regain economic credibility

Labour may have a narrow leads in the polls, but they continue to lag behind the Tories on the public’s number one issue: the economy. Today’s ComRes poll finds that just 18 per cent trust Eds Miliband and Balls “to make the right decisions about the economy”, compared to 30 per cent for Cameron and Osborne. Worse, the two Eds don’t even have the confidence of the majority of Labour voters: only 48 per cent trust them on the economy. YouGov also find Labour behind when it comes to the economy. 30 per cent think the Conservatives would handle it best, while just 26 per cent think Labour would. And

Miliband and Balls, in tandem

So, CoffeeHousers, are Eds Balls and Miliband a gruesome twosome or the most sparkling partnership since Torvill and Dean? I ask only because they’re really pushing the double-act shtick today. There’s their first-ever joint interview in the Evening Standard, for instance, in which they reminisce about the Shadow Chancellor’s 30th Birthday party, among other things. And then there was their joint appearance to officially launch Labour’s ‘plan for growth’ campaign this afternoon. They were talking policy, but there was also a strong emphasis on their personal relationship: eye contact, anecdotes, that sort of thing. Blair and Brown we are not, they seemed to be saying. As for the policy, if

Alex Massie

The Voters, Damn Them, Refute the Tory Right

At the risk of careering round an old argument, Jonathan, the graphs you’ve produced on political affiliations are yet another reminder, if ever one were needed (and it is) that the Tory right’s argument that Cameron would have won a majority if only he’d run a blue-meat campaign is dreadfully mistaken. As you can see, more voters identify with the left than the right. This was Tony Blair’s legacy and the ground upon which Cameron was compelled to fight. I suppose it is possible that Cameron could move right without alienating voters who consider themselves – accurately or not – centrists but I suggest this is not probable.  As for

The centre ground’s there for the taking

YouGov recently repeated its occassional exercise of asking people where they’d place themselves, the parties and the leaders on the left-right spectrum. Anthony Wells reported some of the findings on Saturday: Cameron is seen as slightly less right-wing than his party, while both the Tories and Labour appear to have moved away from the centre-ground since the election. One thing these YouGov numbers allow us to do is see where on the spectrum the parties get their support from. First, how people voted in 2010 and then how they say they’d vote now: This looks broadly as you’d expect, with Labour dominating among left-wing voters and the Tories doing likewise

Time to scrap the minimum wage?

Today’s youth unemployment figures are simply appalling. It’s now 21 per cent amongst the under-25s, above the peak of 18 per cent seen under the 1990s recession. For the first time since then, Britain’s youth joblessness is worse than the European average. This is a tragedy, and not one we should accept as being a grimly inevitable aspect of the recession. Ed Miliband said in PMQs that a million young people are on the dole: a statistic everyone should get angry about. And we can think of what has gone wrong. The above graph shows how Britain has nothing left to boast about in unemployment. Blair used to love heading

James Forsyth

Miliband attacks Cameron on jobs

Ed Miliband chose to ask all six questions on the economy today, making only the quickest of references to the Liam Fox story that the Westminster village is currently obsessing over. Armed with ammunition from the latest unemployment numbers, Miliband did a solid job of pushing Cameron onto the back foot. But there was one moment which will worry Miliband’s supporters: the spontaneous way the government benches fell about when Miliband claimed that Scottish and Southern Energy’s decision to start selling its electricity on the wholesale market was the result of his conference speech. Three Labour backbenchers did ask questions about Liam Fox. Cameron said he would look at publishing

Brendan Barber’s champagne habit, and other stories

The Tory conference was so forgettable that it’s hard now to remember it took place earlier in the week. But, for what it’s worth, here are my conclusions from the whole conference season: 1. The search for Osborne’s growth strategy has been called off. This ‘leadership’ theme was short for ‘leadership in the crisis, which we’ve now decided is inevitable’. Printing £75 billion will be  prelude to printing £400 billion, the inflation tax is back. Osborne perhaps thinks this new magic gold will bring economic recovery. So did the Emperor in Faust, when the devil suggested that printing money would avert fiscal crisis. This scheme ended in tears in Goethe’s