Labour party

There’ll be no second parliamentary vote on Syria, George Osborne stressed this morning. There had been speculation that following President Obama’s decision to go to Congress before using military force, meaning that strikes won’t happen before the week of the 9th of September, there could be a second parliamentary vote on UK military involvement. But Osborne scotched that idea on the Andrew Marr show this morning. listen to ‘Osborne – No second Syria vote’ on Audioboo Obama’s decision, though, has eased the political pressure on David Cameron. Judging by some of the coverage this morning, he’s not a bungling leader who couldn’t get his way with his own parliament, but

Conservatives have been returning to their Westminster offices this week to find the wind behind them. Something suddenly seems to be going right: there’s good news on the economy, jobs and immigration and Labour seems to be in gentle meltdown. The idea of an outright majority in a 2015 election suddenly seems a lot more plausible. Which is why ministers and advisers are so dismayed at reports last week that David Cameron was planning for a second coalition after 2015. Just when a Tory election victory seemed possible, the Prime Minister has been mulling over a change in party rules so that MPs could vote on a new coalition agreement.

There is now so much advice coming in for Ed Miliband that it needs classifying. There’s the Miliband-must-behave-like-this advice from all and sundry: he should talk more about the economy, talk less about the economy, shout a lot about things, talk more about policy, complain more about this and that and so on. The advice is so diverse that Miliband would end up looking like Francis Henshall in One Man, Two Guvnors if he tried to fulfil it all. But there’s a second species of advice, which is on what big policy issue Miliband should back or oppose, partly out of principle and partly to make life very difficult for

I have never quite understood Ed Miliband’s appeal. He always reminds me of Cuthbert Cringeworthy from The Bash Street Kids. I find it hard to imagine him becoming Prime Minister. Something just feels wrong about that. I’m not alone in wondering about this. Brian Wilson, the former energy minister, wrote yesterday that Miliband still has a kind of credibility problem. People just don’t think he’s quite ready for the top job. They may not be able to say exactly why they’re unimpressed by Miliband; they just know they are. Not so fast my friend, responds John McTernan today. Ignore all the chattering and blethering about Labour’s slide in the polls and

If David Blunkett fancies being a kindly older mentor for the current Labour shadow cabinet, perhaps he could start by getting them all on television a little more, if only to say how great they think Ed Miliband is as party leader. As the summer has worn on and the Labour leader’s troubles have thickened like a sauce, the shadow cabinet seems to have evaporated, according to this analysis of the last time any of them pitched up on the airwaves: · Maria Eagle appeared on BBC News (13 August 2013) · Caroline Flint appeared on Daybreak (9 August 2013). · Owen Smith appeared on the Today Programme (7 August

Ed Miliband has already managed to steal a big pile of clothing from the Tories by pinching the One Nation tagline for his own party. But this weekend Chuka Umunna offered the beleaguered Labour leader another Tory tag that he might not be quite so keen on. Trying to defend the party, the Shadow Business Secretary said: ‘The Shadow Cabinet and the leader of the Labour party are doing a huge amount already to sell Labour to the electorate which is why we’ve won back almost 2,000 councillors since Ed Miliband became leader of the party and of course as we move to the general election we will be turning

Decca Aitkenhead has a history of producing revelatory August interviews that make tricky reading for the Labour leadership. Her 2008 interview with Alistair Darling involved the journalist following him around during the August recess and unleashed the ‘forces of hell’ against the then Chancellor when it was published. Her interview with Tom Watson in today’s Guardian fits in with that tradition. Watson argues that there is no case for Unite to answer over Falkirk: Watson thinks on all three counts his party got it wrong. “I thought it was silly to report the allegations to the police, bordering on wasting police time.” The whole affair, he insists, is “a storm

Unless you’re as optimistic as Jon Ashworth, it’s pretty clear that messaging-wise, Labour have had a pretty bad summer. There are many reasons for this that many wise people have examined in quite some detail and at quite some length, but one of the major strategic errors is that the party appears to have made entirely the wrong assumption about what the Tories had planned for recess. Labour was clearly just lying in wait for more mistakes and bad news to come crawling out of the woodwork over the holidays. But they’d reckoned without the months of careful planning that the Conservatives had put into this slower season. I understand

During silly season, bored journalists often entertain themselves by reading rather than deleting the slew of pointless press releases that land in their inboxes. Today’s winner was going to be a pitch that opened with the dangerous phrase ‘Good Morning, I hope you are well?’ (always a sign the PR is sending this release to a very long list of hacks they’ve never spoken to) went on to suggest a story about grooming and beauty tips for Coffee House. But then Labour’s press office sent through a  release full of such wisdom and careful crafting that it could only have gone through several committees and possibly even PLP votes to perfect. From

Listeners to the Today programme were treated to some comedy this morning, when noted Ed Miliband fan-boy Sunny Hundal tried to claim that Labour’s summer of discontent is part of a grand plan. Hundal was supposed to be countering the view that Ed is not doing enough to get to Downing Street, but ended up conceding the point live on air — and not before gentle Jim Naughtie spoke for the nation by telling the spluttering Hundal to ‘shut up’. The laughter on the face of fellow guest Jenni Russell says it all. Mr Steerpike feels sorry for little Ed. With friends like Sunny… listen to ‘James Naughtie vs Sunny Hundal’

Last December, after one of the most brutal PMQs this Parliament has seen, David Cameron was walking through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to address a 1922 Committee meeting. Ed Miliband had subjected the Prime Minister to a real savaging, and Labour backbenchers had loyally joined in, raising a constituent’s suicide and describing Cameron’s government as ‘grandeur for the few, the workhouse for the many’. It had been a bleak session. Heading for Committee Room 14, the Prime Minister bumped into a junior minister, who was keen to reassure him that everything would come out in the wash. He told Cameron that ‘they can go for the emotional