Labour party

No matter how bad the economic news, government ministers can always take heart that an attack from Labour will always be blunted by the simple line that ‘Labour would borrow more’. It’s why David Cameron managed to sail through Prime Minister’s Questions last week relatively unscathed even though Ed Miliband chose to make his attack on the loss of the credit rating. It’s a problem for the Labour leadership that Edward Carlsson Browne raises today on LabourList, but his argument is that Labour should be honest that it would borrow more as a government. He writes: We are different from the Tories. We would run the economy better. But if

A couple of reflections upon Eastleigh. Firstly it was indeed an appalling night for Labour; midterm the party came second in this constituency in the early 90s. It received the votes a joke candidate might expect this time around. Maybe that’s because they put a comedian in the seat. I have no objection to John O’Farrell’s writing at all; but maybe one reason for Labour’s failure – and probably not the most important – was his candidature. He is the sort of thing London Labour loves; metropolitan, cool, ever so witty. Ever so PC. Does any of that play outside the M25? I don’t think so. And the result would

While the Tories are taking a public beating for their performance in Eastleigh, Labour also have little to be proud of. Despite the party currently floating around 11 points ahead of the Tories in the national polls, they only managed to add 0.2 points to their 2010 general election result and came in fourth place. Their candidate John O’Farrell blames voters being anti-politics, not anti-Labour. Either way, the result is disappointing for Ed Miliband. Although it was unlikely Labour would ever take the seat, the party still threw its weight behind a full campaign. Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling suggests Labour were putting in similar effort to the main contenders. 89

By-elections are catnip for the media. But they are also, almost invariably, subject to greater scrutiny than they can reasonably bear. Only occasionally do they herald a new era or political realignment. Eastleigh is unlikely to prove an exception to that general rule. True, as Brother Payne suggests, Labour’s likely dismal showing may demonstrate that Ed Miliband’s still struggling to “connect” with southern voters but – though as a Miliband Sceptic it pains me to say so –  I’m not sure we should make too much of this. Similarly, UKIP’s good showing is likely to be over-interpreted too. So, for that matter, will the Conservatives’ (predicted) failure to win the

By-elections are notoriously hard to call. But everyone who comes back from Eastleigh says the same thing, UKIP are the party with forward momentum. This morning’s Populus poll bears that out. They are in third place with 21 per cent, with the Tories second on 28 and the Lib Dems ahead with 33. But, as the indispensable UK Polling Report points out, if you don’t reallocate some of the undecides to the party they voted for last time, UKIP are doing even better. The numbers then are UKIP 25%, Tories 26% and Lib Dems 31%. As I said in the magazine this week, UKIP are picking up support from all

The United Kingdom’s triple A rating is now lost with one credit rating agency, Moody’s. This is a politically difficult moment for George Osborne. Back in February 2010, he set keeping the triple A rating as one of the key tests of a Conservative government’s economic policy. His opponents will delight in pointing out that he has failed the test he has set himself, while nervousness on the Tory benches about the coalition’s economic strategy will be heightened by this news. Economically, though, I doubt that this will have much impact. In recent weeks, Britain’s debt has been trading more like that of France, which has lost its triple A

How can Labour win back voters in the South East? At the 2010 general election, Labour took ten southern seats outside of London, compared to four times that in 1997. Like the Tories in the North, Ed Miliband needs to offer policies that will ease the concerns of these lost southeastern voters; to convince them Labour is once again on their side. Miliband has tried to address the problem. The catalyst came from John Denham, who urged Miliband, as Giles Radice did with Neil Kinnock in 1992, to remember the ‘6:14 from Basingstoke’ voter and avoid using ‘north-south’ language. Instead, Denham suggested Labour should present policies that appeal across the whole country. The Labour leader

Labour’s current plan to embarrass the Lib Dems over its clothes-stealing mansion tax policy is an Opposition Day debate in the Commons. But, in a mark of how serious the party is to score a political point on this matter, I understand that it is also considering tabling an amendment involving a mansion tax to the Finance Bill after the Budget. Labour sources tell me that this threat will be enacted if the government doesn’t allocate time for an Opposition Day debate before the Budget. A source says: ‘We want to be clear that we are serious about this. This is a test for the Lib Dems to see if

Labour’s Nick Forbes is a great pioneer of austerity. As leader of Newcastle City Council he bravely decided to shut half the city’s libraries, close two respite centres for disabled people and cut 100 per cent of funding to arts institutes. He said he had to do it, because the Government had reduced the council’s funding (though the city still gets more per household than most areas) and he needed to protect services for vulnerable people. Forbes wrote a letter to The Observer predicting ‘the break up of civil society’. Some of us wondered though – did he really need to cut 100 per cent of the arts funding and close

The details of Labour’s mansion tax proposal remain, to put it politely, sketchy. Here’s the exchange between Andrew Neil and Sadiq Khan on the Sunday Politics on how Labour would work out which homes are worth more than two million pounds: AN: Do you rule out a re-evaluation of all properties? SK: There are a number of options to look into. AN: Do you rule out a re-evaluation? SK: If it meant those hardworking people having to pay more council tax then obviously it would be something we wouldn’t want to do, but there a number of ways of doing this, Andrew, for example, you could have a one pence

So Labour is going to force a vote in the House of Commons on the mansion tax. It’s the key announcement trailed as part of Ed Miliband’s visit to Eastleigh today, and yet it’s the sort of thing that only really excites people who look forward to hearings of the Public Accounts Committee rather than the average voter who has a more normal perspective on life. The idea behind these Opposition Day debates is that Labour flushes out any rebels or unhappy Lib Dems, or that its MPs can later tweet ‘Lib Dems voted against their own policy in the Commons tonight #evil #nevertrustalibdemagain’. Miliband says that very thing today:

Here’s an interesting thing: Number 10 has released a statement on Ed Miliband’s 10p tax rate pledge. The Downing Street press machine hasn’t been in the habit of doing this sort of official reactive spinning, although this may be in part because Miliband’s speeches thus far have been pretty light on anything you can actually react to. This is what a No 10 spokesman said: ‘This is a stunning admission of economic incompetence from Ed Miliband and Ed Balls – that their decision in Government to scrap the 10p tax rate hurt millions of working families. People will never trust Labour again. The low income working people who lost out