Uk politics

The stage was set for Ed Miliband at PMQs today. Just before the session, The Guardian revealed the names of various Tony donors who allegedly had accounts with HSBC’s Swiss bank. Miliband duly went for Cameron over the matter with some of his most personal attacks yet, accusing Cameron of being a ‘dodgy Prime Minister’ and ‘something rotten’ at the heart of the Tory party. But the attack failed to hit home in the Chamber. Labour did salvage the situation somewhat by, at what looked like Miliband’s own instigation, getting several of its MPs to ask Cameron again, the question he hadn’t answered: did he ever have conversations with Lord

Labour is launching its women’s campaign tomorrow, and Guido has discovered that part of this special campaign is a special battle bus. A pink bus. A pink bus with ‘Woman to Woman’ on it. This is odd, from a party whose MPs are quite keen on campaigning for gender neutral toys and which lent its support to the Pink Stinks campaign. Where will the pink van go? To shopping centres and nail bars? Perhaps it will offer manifesto manicures, where the party’s pledge card is stuck onto acrylic nails so that women can’t forget about what Labour is offering – because as the No campaign in the Scottish independence referendum

After the Scottish referendum campaign, the Union could probably have done with a period of calm. But it is not going to get it. Who gets to form a government at Westminster after the next election could turn on what happens in Scotland and how many seats the SNP wins. This fact is making both Labour and the Tories behave in ways that are damaging to the Union. Jim Murphy, the new leader of Scottish Labour, has decided to try and show that he is prepared to pick fights with London too, in the hope that will take some of the wind out of the Nationalists’ sales. Hence his deliberately

With every week that goes by, the more likely it is that the next election could result in a stalemate with neither Labour nor the Tories able to put together a deal that gives them a majority in the Commons. One Downing Street source, who has crunched the numbers, predicted to me last week that, because of what is going on in Scotland, the Tories will be the largest party on 280-odd seats. But if the Tories have only 280-odd seats, even deals with both the Liberal Democrats and the Democratic Unionists wouldn’t give them a majority. But Labour wouldn’t be able to stich one together either. For, as I

Andy Burnham’s interview in The Times today lays down several markers. He praises Len McCluskey, declares that trade union funding is best for Labour, slates Alan Milburn, criticises Peter Mandelson for being relaxed about people getting filthy rich and distances himself from the Blairite mantra that ‘what matters is what works.’ It will, to put it mildly, do nothing to discourage speculation that he is preparing to run for the leadership on a left-wing ticket if Labour loses the election. To be fair, Burnham is frank in this interview that he has changed his mind on various subjects. As he puts it, ‘There was a period in the 80s and

So far in the run-up to this election, we’ve had Ed Miliband saying he feels ‘respect’ whenever he sees a white van, and now Tristram Hunt clarifying that he didn’t want to offend nuns. Damian covers the Labour Shadow Education Secretary’s comments here, and today Hunt did the inevitable and clarified his comments. On BBC QT I was trying to make a generalised point about the use of unqualified teachers in schools. I obviously meant no offence to nuns. — Tristram Hunt (@TristramHuntMP) February 6, 2015 Which other groups can we think of that politicians might have to apologise to following social media outrage? In an election campaign where tiny

If you want an illustration of just how damaging tribalism can be in politics, look no further than this Westminster Hall debate, held yesterday. Labour’s Lisa Nandy had organised it, which was on ‘effects of government policy on UK poverty’, partly, it seems to raise some stories from her constituency about benefit sanctions that had been unfairly applied, and partly, presumably, to take a few party political pot shots at the Tories. That’s fair enough with an election coming up, and it would have been fair enough for the Tories in the debate to defend their record robustly. What doesn’t seem to be fair enough or indeed at all sensible is

How did he get away with that? We’re assured that somewhere inside Labour HQ there toils a crack team of sleuths, analysts, Cameron-watchers, policy-fetishists and high-IQ saboteurs who spend all week devising Miliband’s Wednesday assault on the prime minister. And yet these world-class strategists seem to get beaten every time by the most predictable of dodges. Cameron doesn’t even prepare his defence. He just makes it up on the spot. Today Miliband went for the big one: hit Cameron with corruption charges. Or as near as damn it. The government has spared hedge funds from the duty payable on share dealings which is levied on all other financial players. The