Ed miliband

Before the eurozone crisis, Greek elections didn’t receive much attention in Westminster. At the moment, however, the polls from Athens are being studied by every politico from the Prime Minister down. How Greece votes on the 25 January could determine the result of our election. If anti-austerity Syriza triumphs, the eurozone crisis will move from a chronic phase into another acute one. For the second election in a row, the backdrop to a British poll and possible coalition negotiation would be talk of debt defaults and bank runs, as Athens struggles with the eurozone straitjacket. Syriza does not want Greece to leave the euro. But it does want the ‘fiscal

Even though they ended up walking through the lobbies together (though not hand in hand, skipping, sadly), Ed Balls and George Osborne still managed to have the sort of Commons showdown that would fit right in to the script of Bridget Jones. On and on their furious fighting went, over whether the long-term economic plan was working, over whether Labour had a long-term economic plan, over whether Britain would get its AAA credit rating back, over whether Balls would borrow more and whether Osborne was cutting the deficit slower than he’d intended. On and on and on. Both looked as though they were enjoying tearing chunks out of one another

Ed Miliband’s popularity may be at an all time low, but the leader of the Labour party is at least now moving in A-list circles. The Telegraph reports that Miliband recently enjoyed a supper at the mansion of Geoffrey Robertson QC, the human rights barrister, which both George and Amal Clooney attended. Mrs Clooney is a barrister at Doughty Street, Robertson’s chambers. While the quality of Miliband’s general dinner party chat remains unknown, he is thought to have discussed with the Hollywood couple proposals for ‘fresh sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime’ following the case of Sergei Maginitsky,  the Russian whistleblower who died after months of beatings in prison. And while the menu

I don’t always agree with Peter Hitchens but this is by far the best piece I’ve seen on the political reaction to the Paris attacks. As far as Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are concerned, we must all sign up to these shibboleths: The attack was nothing to do with Islam. Almost all Muslims, here and abroad, found those attacks repugnant. The attacks were perpetrated and supported by a minuscule number of people who can simply be defined as ‘terrorists’. Immigration and multiculturalism were in no way contributory causes of either the Paris attack or the attacks which we might experience in the future or have suffered in the past. All

Defeat in May would be dire for either Cameron or Miliband. It would end their political career in ignominious failure. But winning would not be much better: they would be the weakest PM in living memory. Here’s why it won’t be easy for either of them: Miliband would be a prisoner of his own MPs: The best that both Labour and the Tories can hope for is the narrowest of outright victories. The 21 seat majority that John Major ground out in 1992 is, probably, beyond either of them. Miliband would then find himself having to steer swingeing cuts past a party that is simply not prepared for them. It

Before today’s awful events in Paris, the meeting between David Cameron and Angela Merkel was going to be the big news of the day. The German Chancellor does not always observe the usual rules of neutrality when it comes to foreign elections. In 2012, she endorsed Nicolas Sarkozy in a joint TV interview, declaring that it was ‘natural’ to back a fellow Conservative. Now, there was no indication that Merkel was going to offer Cameron similar backing today. But senior Tories were keen to talk up what they were calling ‘das snub’, the fact that Merkel is not meeting with Miliband. (It is also worth remembering that in 2012, Miliband

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

According to a recent YouGov poll, Nick Clegg has an overall rating of minus 54, making him more popular than the hapless Ed Miliband by just one point. While that wouldn’t appear to be much to celebrate, the Deputy Prime Minister seems to actually be in denial about his own standing amongst the British public. In the first ever joint interview he has given with his wife Miriam, Clegg is asked whether his wife’s ‘huge fanbase’ ever causes an issue given that his own reputation has ‘taken a kicking over the past four years’. ‘I also have a great fanbase,’ Clegg replies, looking rather hurt. In the interview, which appears in