Ed miliband

Having spent four years sticking to a wave at the end of conference and the odd photograph together with her husband, Justine Thornton has burst onto centre stage at Labour's conference. Mrs Miliband - and she uses her Miliband name today - has written to Labour activists pledging her commitment to getting her man into Downing Street: 'Honestly, as a young lawyer who wanted to change the world, I never would have believed that I would become a politician's wife. It's not a role you apply for, nor one I've found easy to understand. Just after Ed won, I Googled a few terms to see if there were books I could read on the role of a politician's spouse. All that came up was references to 'the good wife', and that wasn't quite what I had in mind.

What's Ed Miliband's vision for the economy? We'll get the public version of that vision in a short while when Ed Balls gives his speech to the Labour conference, but last night one of Ed Miliband's closest advisers gave us a more interesting glimpse of the underpinning of the Labour leader's economic plan. Stewart Wood, a former aide to Gordon Brown and now a key member of Miliband's team, gave a fringe interview to ResPublica's Philip Blond. The two men nattered with glasses of wine in their hands (which were at one point topped up by a CCHQ suffer embedded behind enemy lines) about Wood's values. One answer in particular, on how Labour should approach the economy from now on, was very interesting: 'Tax and spend will continue to be a core part of what we do, but there are two limits.

The Westminster party leaders have disagreed with much Alex Salmond has said recently. But it's pretty difficult to fault the assessment of the aftermath of the referendum that he gave on today's Sunday Politics. The First Minister said: 'I am actually not surprised they are cavilling and reneging on commitments, I am only surprised by the speed at which they are doing it. They seem to be totally shameless in these matters. The Prime Minister wants to link change in Scotland to change in England. He wants to do that because he has difficulty in carrying his backbenchers on this and they are under pressure from UKIP. 'The Labour leadership of course are frightened of any changes in England which leave them without a majority in the House of Commons on English matters.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Miliband is protecting his party’s Scottish advantage by accusing the Prime Minister of allowing ‘this moment to be used for narrow party political advantage’. Rejecting Cameron’s plans for English votes for English laws, Labour have rushed out plans for ‘a full Constitutional Convention rooted in our nations and regions, to address the need for further devolution in England and political reform of Westminster.’ Form an orderly queue.

As I left Edinburgh this morning, en route to Inverness, I passed about four ‘yes’ activists cheerily wishing me good morning, asking if I have voted and would I like a ‘yes’ sticker if I had. It worked: on the way to Waverley, people were wearing the ‘yes’ stickers with nary a ‘no’ to be seen. If I were a 'no' voter heading for the polling station, I may wonder if I was actually on the wrong side of history. That a party was happening in one room, and I was heading to another - but that there was still time to change my mind. You have to hand it to the ‘yes’ team: its discipline, messaging, voter targeting and morale have been a sight to behold.

While Westminster sent its own plea to Scottish voters, David Cameron and Ed Miliband were both making fine, impassioned speeches that both tried to scotch the SNP line that a 'Yes' vote was the only way to achieve a fairer Scotland. David Cameron had to address to specific - and quite beguiling - argument that this is Scotland's chance to get rid of the Tories, that from independence onwards, it will never be governed by parties poorly represented within its borders. He did so by being a little attention-seeking: 'I think the third thing that can come across in the remaining part of this campaign is the scale of the decision that Scottish people will be taking in eight days' time.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are combining forces and heading to Scotland tomorrow to make the case for the UK. Here's their joint statement: 'There is a lot that divides us - but there's one thing on which we agree passionately: the United Kingdom is better together. That’s why all of us are agreed the right place for us to be tomorrow is in Scotland, not at Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster. We want to be listening and talking to voters about the huge choice they face. Our message to the Scottish people will be simple: "We want you to stay."' The presence of the three party leaders is meant to show that Westminster will deliver on its promises about further devolution to Scotland.

Ed Miliband would never have seen it coming, but he's starting his first PMQs of the autumn term in a jolly good place. Labour MPs that I've spoken to over the past few days are now panicking not about how they can convince voters to back them but what on earth they're actually going to do when they are in government. Naturally the Labour leader can attack on Douglas Carswell's defection to Ukip, but there are two reasons why he might not want to make this his first question. The first is that he would surely want to contrast some of the serious things that Labour has been talking about this week - on class sizes and deficit reduction - with the Tory party tearing itself up over Europe and Ukip. That would require the first few questions to be on schools or another serious matter.

I don't want to appear too immodest but, you know, I told you so. Back in February I wrote an article for this paper warning that Scotland's independence referendum would be a damn close run thing. That was true then and it remains true now. Today's YouGov poll reports that, once undecided voters have been removed from consideration, 47 percent of Scots intend to vote for independence while 53 percent will back the Unionist cause. If the odds remain against Alex Salmond it's also the case that the price on independence is shortening. Paddy Power's over/under calculation of a Yes vote now stands at 46.5 percent. A few weeks ago it was at 42.5 percent. It's a kind of quickening.

David Cameron and the Tories’ electoral hopes are about to take a long walk on Clacton’s short pier. A poll in the Mail on Sunday today has Ukip on 64% and the Tories on 20%, a lead that suggests this contest is over before the writ has even been moved. So, Ukip are going to get their first MP. This means that the fracture on the right of British politics is a lot closer to becoming permanent, handing Labour the kind of inherent electoral advantage that the Tories enjoyed in the 1980s. This morning, the next election is Ed Miliband’s to lose. One of the striking things about the poll is that it reveals that not even Boris can save the Tories in Clacton. Cameron had hoped that his ‘star striker’ could get him out of this hole.

Anyone who would rather not live in a Britain run by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls should be dismayed at Carswell’s defection to Ukip. He is an original, intelligent and eloquent MP who has done much to help the Prime Minister form the more radical parts of his agenda. For a while, I thought that this was his game plan: to avoid frontbench positions, and engage constructive opposition – which is democratic tugging of the party leader from the vantage point of the backbenches. I defended him against critics who said he was an attention-seeker whose ego would one day explode. Today, it's harder to defend him.

David Cameron is back on holidays again, this time to Cornwall. He missed a trick. His economic recovery is making the pound strong and, ergo, the continent cheap for British holidaymakers. This also makes imports cheaper which has, in turn, cut UK inflation to 1.6 per cent in July – down from 1.9 per cent in June. This will be deeply annoying for Ed Miliband, as it interferes with his ‘cost of living crisis’ narrative. This had more potency when inflation was high (see the graph above) but it becomes that much harder to push the line now. Especially when inflation is expected to trot along near the target of 2 per cent until the election.