Ed miliband

Even the po-faced Associated Press (video above) couldn't but describe as 'toe-curling' Ed Miliband's encounter with a homeless hijabi. Pundits agree that Ed appeared 'terrified' of the beggar in Manchester. Mr S was there, however - on unrelated business, of course - and can confirm that the opposition leader really did only have 2p in his pocket at the time. (Why on earth would he carry more?) Your correspondent was otherwise engaged, however (in discussion with my equine consultant) in the moment this photo was snapped: [caption id="attachment_8909992" align="alignnone" width="506"] Manchester, 31 October 2014 (Photo: Nigel Roddis/Getty)[/caption] What could have been on his mind?

I suspect that the Scottish Labour gala dinner in Glasgow tonight won’t feel like much of a gala. The Scottish Labour party is in crisis: its leader has quit attacking the UK Labour party for treating it like a ‘branch office’ and now an Ipsos-Mori Westminster voting intention poll has the SNP on 52 per cent to Labour’s 23 per cent. This poll is a reminder of the scale of the challenge facing whoever is the new leader of the Scottish Labour party. I argue in the magazine this week  that Jim Murphy is, by a distance, the best candidate for the job. He has what Scottish Labour so desperately needs right now: energy, no fear of the SNP and its agenda and the ability to win elections. But Murphy’s victory is, by no means, a done deal.

Ed Miliband chose one of his medleys of things that have gone wrong for today's Prime Minister's Questions. There were plenty of those to choose from, and the Labour leader started with the almighty row in the Tory party over the European Arrest Warrant. He accused David Cameron of delaying the vote because of the Rochester and Strood by-election, and offered the Prime Minister next week's Opposition Day debate to hold it, where he said Labour would support him to get the measure through. Cameron was having none of that, though, and pledged that the vote would be held before Rochester. He claimed Miliband's questions had collapsed.

The main business of the day in the House of Commons is Labour's debate on Lord Freud, a row that blew up nearly a fortnight ago. The party's motion, entitled 'Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Welfare Reform and disabled people', finishes with '. . . this House has no confidence in the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform; and calls on the Prime Minister to dismiss him.' It's not a wise move to put any money on David Cameron meeting this demand, given that Freud apologised on the same day his comments about disabled people and the minimum wage were raised at Prime Minister's Questions. Unless you've got a lot of time on your hands, it might not be wise to sit through the entire debate, both sides of which can be summarised in these three points: 1.

The House of Commons is in a febrile, nervy mood this afternoon. No-one is quite happy with anyone else. David Cameron raised a cheer when he told MPs that he will not pay the €2bn bill apparently sprung on him by the European Commission, but he had very little to say when pressed by Labour on how this surprise was quite so surprising given Treasury ministers were mentioning it in letters months ago. Ken Clarke made backbenchers glower and opposition MPs howl with glee when he told the Chamber he sympathised with the Prime Minister for being surprised by something everyone in the Foreign Office and Treasury had known about for months. Just to endear himself to the members around him, Clarke also defended the European Arrest Warrant.

Johann Lamont and Tony Blair don’t have much in common. But they are both causing Ed Miliband trouble this morning.   I suspect that those close to Miliband are relieved that Lamont has quit as the leader of the Scottish Labour party; his statement on her resignation last night was barely lukewarm. Certainly, the Miliband circle didn’t hold her in high regard and became despairing of her abilities during the referendum campaign. But what they won’t like is how she has taken a swing at them on the way out. She has lambasted Miliband’s office for treating Scottish Labour as ‘a branch office of a party based in London.’ These words will sting and be thrown back at Labour by the Scottish Nationalists at every opportunity.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_23_January_2014_v4.mp3" title="Charlotte Leslie and James Forsyth join Sebastian Payne to discuss the NHS." startat=1410] Listen [/audioplayer] As someone who believes that a Labour government would be a calamity for Britain, I ought not to mind the recent fuss about NHS Wales. Yes, it is a disaster – as the Daily Mail has been cleverly highlighting. And it has been run by Labour for 15 years, so they're guilty as charged. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, makes this point powerfully today. But if the English NHS is much better by comparison to Wales, it’s not because of him, nor because of David Cameron. It’s because of Tony Blair.

It didn’t work. But it was a good idea. David Cameron prepared an ambush for Ed Miliband at PMQs today. The trouble was he attacked the Labour leader for a vice he himself has mastered with conspicuous aplomb: question dodging. Miliband is clearly in trouble. He’s using his only remaining strength, the NHS, to prop up his burgeoning weaknesses. Expect this to continue till next May. There’s always a calamity somewhere in the NHS and for Miliband, ill tidings are like gold dust. He painted a picture of a basket-case health system that would have shamed a failed state in the Middle Ages. Cameron, he said, wasted billions on a massive inter-departmental rejig when he came to power.

The ‘windfall tax’, a concept introduced in the UK by the Blair government, is by definition a one-off seizure of revenue from a profitable industry, to fund an invariably unprofitable but popular project. It has been justified as putting ‘right a bad deal’ on the excesses of profits of unpopular industries. Between 1997 and 1998, Gordon Brown raised £5 billion from privatised utility companies to fund the Welfare-to-Work Programme. Today we have face another well-intentioned policy initiative, of ensuring every NHS patient is guaranteed a cancer test within 7 days, supposedly to be funded by a windfall tax on tobacco companies.

This week has gone much better for Labour than many of its MPs thought it would. They started the week in very poor form indeed, grumpy after a bad conference, bruised after the narrow Heywood and Middleton result, and braced for good jobs figures to be published shortly before a very challenging PMQs. But the party has narrowly avoided real meltdown once again. Had Ukip won Heywood, Labour would be in chaos, but it didn't and instead those Labourites who do worry a lot about Ukip are now even more worried, which is still infinitely preferable to party uproar over a lost seat. Had Ed Miliband had a poor showing at PMQs, the worriers would have worried some more and encouraged other MPs to grow more doleful about next year's result.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_16_Oct_2014_v4.mp3" title="Lord Pearson and Damian Green join Lara Prendergast on this week's podcast to discuss Ukip and the Tories." startat=79.5] Listen [/audioplayer] What result at the next election would most suit Ukip? There is little doubt that the party would most benefit from a Labour victory in 2015, which I discussed in my Spectator column this week. In brief, Labour victory would mean: 1. No EU referendum and more EU immigration. Ed Miliband has taken a strong stance against an In/Out referendum despite pressure from inside his shadow Cabinet to agree to one. He is unlikely to change his mind on this if he became Prime Minister.

It was like the last night of the Proms at PMQs. Miliband stood up to hearty roars—Tory roars—that seemed to go on for minutes. This was the longest and most humiliating ovation of his life. But his throat had been hit by a lurgy and his voice was rasping like a misfiring chainsaw. This impairment made him a less tasty target. It took the fun out of the fight. Still, Cameron had a pop. ‘If he gets a doctor’s appointment we do hope he doesn’t forget it.’ Miliband flashed back. ‘He noticed that I lost a couple of paragraphs in my speech. Since we last met he’s lost a couple of Members of Parliament.’ He brought up Lord Freud’s quote, about the disabled being unworthy of decent wages, but his main target was Tory moral turpitude.