Labour party

David Axelrod jets into London this week for the first time since signing up to help Labour in 2015. Axelrod, who friends admit is no expert on UK politics, will have two days to try and get his head round the shape of the next election campaign. This trip will mark the first time that Axelrod and Miliband have met face to face. Up to now, they have only spoken on the telephone. Axelrod will also address a specially convened meeting of the shadow Cabinet. There’s no doubt that having the man who helped Obama get to the White House in town will be a boost to Labour morale. But

What a funny, contradictory week it has been for Labour’s campaign machine. First Ed Miliband told the Evening Standard that he had greater intellectual self-confidence than the Prime Minister – and won praise in the Spectator’s leading article for being someone who does indeed have the courage of their political convictions these days. Then he seemed so confident of his policies that he chose to needle David Cameron with one of them at Prime Minister’s Questions. But then he seemed to have a crisis of confidence and decided to produce a party-political broadcast that, er, didn’t mention anything Labour is up to at all. When I blogged about this latest

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_8_May_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman look forward to the general election next year” startat=766] Listen [/audioplayer]In almost a decade as Conservative leader, David Cameron has tended to avoid talking about his political philosophy. He has presented himself as a pragmatist, suspicious of anything ending in ‘-ism’ — and the very opposite of a swivel-eyed ideologue. There is something to be said for this, but it raises the great question: what is a Conservative government for? There was no clear answer at the last election and so no clear result from that election. Voters had turned away from Labour, but were not quite sure how their lives would be

One of the striking things about the next election is how what is going on at the macro level looks so different from what is happening at a micro level. On the macro front, things seem to be moving the Tories’ way. The economy is growing at a good clip and that is set to continue until polling day and David Cameron has a considerable advantage on the question of who would make the best Prime Minister. But to return to the micro, it is easier to see seats where Labour might gain from the Tories rather than the other way round. Ask even the most optimistic Tories what constituencies

Why do the Tories have a problem with black and ethnic minority voters, daddy? It is, with all due respect to Isabel and Paul Goodman, the British political question that is easiest to answer. We all know the answer too, even those of us on the right. Race might not be the Conservative party’s original sin; it’s still a pretty high-ranking sin. And, look, it’s not ancient history either. It’s not a Different times, different attitudes but, please, can we move on now? kind of thing. Nor did it die with Enoch either. (Poor old Enoch, so brilliant but a touch troubled too, don’t you think?) It remains a virus at

How the Tory party will react if, as excepted, Ukip pushes the party into third place in the European elections is one of the most discussed topics in UK politics. But overlooked in all this is how Labour will react if Farage’s party beats them on May 22nd. If Ukip come top in the European Elections, as the polls indicate they have a very good chance of doing, Labour will be thrown into a panic. No opposition has ever triumphed at a general election having not won the previous European Elections. A failure in the European Elections would be a big blow to the idea that Ed Miliband is going

In recent weeks, I have found myself defending Ed Miliband as much as attacking him. I do believe that his election would be a calamity for Britain, but that doesn’t mean I think he is an idiot pursuing a stupid strategy. On the contrary, I think what he is doing is bold, coherent, radical and chimes with the emerging populist mood. I also think that it is working – as things stand, he is on course to become the next Prime Minister. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. The rent control policy announced yesterday embodies this bold populism. Britain has a problem with buying houses – one

Ed Miliband has got the reaction he wanted to his speech on the private rented sector, which he used today to launch Labour’s local election campaign. Landlords and nasty right-wingers hate this latest stage in his ‘cost-of-living contract’. The Residential Landlords Association said rent controls ‘would critically undermine investment in new homes to rent and are not needed’ and the National Landlords Association said ‘the proposal for a three-year default tenancy is unnecessary, poorly thought-through and likely to be completely unworkable’. On Coffee House, Policy Exchange’s Chris Walker says ‘rent controls are at best misguided and at worst could be counterproductive, longer-term’. Grant Shapps suggested that these were ‘Venezuelan-style rent controls’. Which

A smart move by Ed Miliband today to put pressure on David Cameron over the televised leaders’ debates next year. Every time the Prime Minister is asked about these debates, he makes supportive noises while muttering about the ‘right formula’, but doesn’t commit to anything. He has also said that he felt the debates ‘dominated’ the coverage of the 2010 election, which is as close as he’ll come to saying that Nick Clegg’s shiny new qualities at the time rather detracted from Cameron’s own appeal which his strategists had been setting so much store by. But as the Prime Minister hasn’t agreed to anything, Labour’s trying to get ahead of

With apologies to John Rentoul, Can Ed Miliband save the Union? is a question to which the answer is God help us all. I admit to a blind spot vis a vis the Labour leader: Looks like Gussie Fink-Nottle, thinks like a Marxist Madeline Bassett. Clever enough in a droopy kind of way but, ultimately, a gawd-help-us kind of fellow. I wasn’t very impressed last time Mr Miliband came to Scotland and so I wasn’t inclined to be impressed by his most recent trip to Glasgow. Which is dandy because I wasn’t. I dare say Miliband’s belief that Scottish independence would be a bad idea – for Scotland and the rest of

When Ed Miliband goes to Scotland and declares that ‘It is Labour that’s got to win this referendum’ it is a statement of political reality as much as it is braggadocio. The Tories have only one MP north of the border and the Liberal Democrats are the fourth party in the Scottish parliament. If this vote is to be won, Labour—as by far the largest Unionist party—will have to get the No camp over the line. Ed Miliband’s decision to take the entire shadow Cabinet to Glasgow last week was meant to show that UK Labour is now engaging fully in this battle. Miliband himself thinks that he has come

At the start of the year, some of the air seemed to have gone out of the Ukip balloon. The party’s warnings about the scale of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration to Britain hadn’t been borne out by events. But the debates with Nick Clegg enabled Nigel Farage to get his momentum back. In those debates, Clegg was too passive in the first one and then over-compensated in the second with the result that he ended up losing both of them. Clegg’s decision to not engage with Farage in the first debate meant that he missed his best chance to get under the Ukip leader’s skin. Strikingly, Farage admits to Decca

Forget the European elections, which everyone (particularly those who fancy causing a bit of grief for David Cameron) expects to produce humiliating results for the Conservatives. The elections that have a longer-lasting impact that take place on the same day are the local elections. I look at the emphasis the Tories are putting on campaigning in the locals that goes over and above anything they’re doing for seats in Brussels, in my Telegraph column today. But even those areas that don’t have concurrent local and European polls on 22 May aren’t exhausting themselves on campaigning for the European elections. Last year, the Conservatives tried to manage expectations by suggesting at

Dan Hodges’ piece in this week’s Spectator on the team around Ed Miliband is a must-read (and we’ve posted an even longer version online here). As he runs through those working with the Labour leader, a clear pattern emerges. There doesn’t seem to be a Lynton Crosby equivalent working with Miliband. One of the many things that make Crosby so important to the Conservative party is his ability to swear at them and tell them they’re doing something wrong. Miliband doesn’t have a Crosby-esque character in that respect. Instead, all those around him seem keen to either demonstrate that they are the most loyal, in a Uriah Heep-esque display of