Labour party

Before Christmas, David Cameron tightened up the rules about ministers going overseas. He wanted them in this country campaigning as much as possible. But, unsurprisingly, his visit to President Obama in Washington this week hasn’t fallen foul of his edict. This trip to Washington is the source of much satisfaction at the heart of government. There are some serious issues on the agenda—the world economy and cybersecurity—but as one of those involved in preparing for it admits, ‘‘There’ll be some crunchy stuff, but it’ll be a very nice photo op, too!’. Indeed, Cameron standing next to Obama at the White House will be a useful way of reminding voters of

On 19 June 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington declared that ‘nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won’. Two hundred years later, David Cameron or Ed Miliband might feel the same way as they sit in Downing Street. Any elation over victory will be quickly overshadowed by the thought of troubles to come — in all likelihood insurmountable troubles for either man. Everyone has known for years when this election will take place, with the result that the campaign starting gun has been fired even earlier than usual. Cameron is busy prophesying economic chaos if Labour wins; Miliband is

Andy Burnham has put in a request for an urgent question on the A&E crisis, I have learned. The question, which the Speaker has yet to decide whether or not to grant, is as follows: URGENT QUESTION Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the major incidents that have been declared at a number of hospitals and on A&E performance in England. This might seem rather unsurprising at first glance, and it would be on any other day of the week. Today Ed Miliband will face David Cameron at PMQs and as I blogged earlier, it would

Ed Miliband’s office has complained that no-one told them about Angela Merkel’s visit to London, which takes place tomorrow. They are apparently very irritated about no-one telling them, even though the Foreign Office isn’t required to flag up visits like this anyway. But worse than that, they were given warning: in the newspapers. Here are the first few paragraphs of a story published by the Times on 27 December, entitled ‘Merkel puts culture and G7 on agenda for visit’: ‘Angela Merkel will make Britain her first overseas visit of the year in a sign of the importance that she attaches to her relationship with David Cameron. ‘The German chancellor, named yesterday as

Ed Miliband today promised that Labour will offer ‘hope, not falsehood’ in its General Election campaign. It’s a bold pledge given the party is making so much of the claim that the Tories want to reduce public spending to levels not seen since the 1930s – a claim that has foundations made of something oddly similar to sand. Similarly the Tories have today produced an interesting dossier that Miliband’s party has interestingly called ‘dodgy’ because it contains a number of ‘assumptions’. As James explains, that’s part of the plan, as Labour now has to say which cuts it wouldn’t reverse and which it would. But one of the central tricks

In 2010, David Cameron stumbled in his first New Year broadcast interview over the Tory plans for a married couple’s tax allowance. This slip-up knocked him and his party off course and was a harbinger of the disastrous Tory campaign to come. Today, there were no such mistakes from Cameron as he appeared on Andrew Marr. Instead, he stuck to his competence versus chaos message and tried, fairly successfully, to avoid making any other news. In this campaign, we will see a more disciplined Cameron than the one who fought the 2010 election. The Tories are this time, in contrast to 2010, certain of what their message should be. One

Almost exactly five years ago, the Conservatives fired the starting gun for a general election — and shot themselves in the foot. ‘We can’t go on like this,’ said the poster, next to a picture of an airbrushed David Cameron. ‘I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.’ What on earth did it mean? No one seemed sure. As early as January 2010, it was horribly clear: here was a muddled party, preparing to fight an election campaign with a muddled message. Little wonder it ended in a muddled election result. This time, it should be different. The Tories have a professional, Lynton Crosby, running their campaign. He should be able

Politicians really are quite unfortunate people, aren’t they? Always being misinterpreted. It’s almost as though they speak another language (some Commons debates suggest they do, anyway) and journalists wilfully translate them wrongly. Today Tony Blair has claimed that his remarks about a lefty Labour party losing to a right-wing party have been ‘misinterpreted’. This is what he told the Economist: – There could be an election ‘in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result’ and when asked if that means a Tory win, ‘Yes, that is what happens’. – ‘I am convinced the Labour Party succeeds best when it is in the

How has Labour managed to make such a mess of its response to the leak of a document on dealing with Ukip that came out on Monday that it’s still having to talk about it on Friday? I’ve been baffled by the poor crisis comms this week – until I heard Lucy Powell, vice-chair of the party’s General Election campaign, trying to field questions on it today on the Daily Politics. Her tactics were to tell the interviewer that the origins of the report were ‘irrelevant’, an old but useless tactic of spinners that generally encourages the journalist to think the story even more relevant than they did when they started the

How much of a threat is Ukip to Labour? The tanks of the people’s army have been on the Conservatives’ lawn for some time but we now have an idea why Labour has been preparing to fight the kippers on the doorstep. Lord Ashcroft has carried out his final round of marginal seats polling this year, focusing on eight seats where the Conservative majority is between 7.1 and 8.1 per cent — plus another four seats where Ukip are threatening Labour. The results aren’t too bad for the Conservatives: out of the seven seats polled on Labour’s target list, they are ahead in just two of them (Ealing Central & Acton