Ed miliband

Monday

David Blackburn

Labour confirms Tory strategy: Vote Nigel, Get Ed

Talk to most Tory strategists about Ukip and Ed Miliband and they say something along the lines of ‘Vote Farage, get Miliband’. They hope that this will deter people from voting Ukip or win back those Ukip supporters who are not irreconcilable to the Tories. The Telegraph has news that Labour’s private polling confirms the Tory view: Ed Miliband will win Downing Street if Ukip polls 9 per cent of voters, which it is more than capable of doing on current projections. The Tories, I suspect, will be fairly pleased that Labour has published this information. It reinforces what we’ve known all along: an unpopular left-wing party will win power if the right remains divided.

Sunday

James Forsyth

Ed Miliband tries to turn his vices into virtues

Ed Miliband’s admirers are hailing his speech on Friday as an attempt to change how we think about leadership. It might have been that, but it was also a very political attempt to deal with the ‘Ed problem’, the fact that he trails David Cameron in the leadership stakes by a potentially fatal margin.   There is huge frustration in Miliband’s circle that, as one puts it, voters say that they don’t like spin and then say they won’t vote for Ed as he’s bad at it. But for all Miliband’s decrying of modern politics emphasis on presentation, he has—at times—tried to play the image game just as hard as any other politician.

Friday

Lloyd Evans

Call Me Dave still has much to learn from The Master

David Cameron and Tony Blair faced identical tasks earlier this week. Both wished to force a reluctant group of back-sliders to adopt a more robust and pragmatic position. Cameron wanted Europe to toughen up against Putin. Blair wanted Labour to toughen up against Cameron. Blair’s opportunity was the 20th anniversary of his enthronement as Labour’s leader. Oddly enough the chief beneficiary of that leadership – the Labour party itself – mysteriously forgot to give its messianic champion a chance to reflect on his methods. Instead, he offered his blueprint for further Labour victories to the think-tank, Progress. Blair likes to write in the early morning, in long-hand, seated at a window.

Steerpike

Image is the least of Ed’s worries

What were Labour thinking? Against the background of Ukraine and Gaza, the only domestic story likely to cut through is an economic one. The news today is dominated by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg wallowing in the success of the British economy. So what did Ed Miliband do? He made a speech about presentation for the Westminster village, of course. The SAS is on standby to land in Ukraine, Gaza crumbles and the IMF gives the UK a gold star for economic performance; but, look over there, Ed's got something to say about the political-media nexus! Miliband's war on photo-ops is utterly laughable given that it came just days after he flew half-way round the world to pose for a picture with President Obama at a pointless meeting.

David Blackburn

Ed Miliband stakes all on his ‘big choice’

Labour will launch its summer campaign later today. The centre-piece is Ed Miliband’s speech. He will present a ‘big choice’ to the British public, arguing that they cannot afford 5 more years of Conservative rule. Miliband’s argument is simple: the economy is broken, only we can fix it; the NHS is threatened, only we can save it; the Tories represent the few, only we care for the many. You will have heard these mantras many times before; but, this time, the presentation is different. The speech bears the mark of David Axelrod, who is busy ‘reframing’ Ed Miliband as an honest yeoman of the shires rather than a metropolitan oddball. Rafael Behr of the Guardian has an extensive account of this ‘reframing’ effort.

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

Ed Miliband comes to Washington — and nobody here notices

Washington, D.C. Ed Miliband met with Barack Obama yesterday, haven't you heard? The British press covered the visit with their usual gusto but the visit barely registered on the radar of American outlets. Out of the country’s most influential papers, neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal wrote a single word about the potential next prime minister of the United Kingdom meeting the president. Miliband wasn't covered on any of the blogs or TV stations either. Only one US paper said anything about the visit.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Caption competition: Ed Miliband meets Barack Obama

I'm in the US right now, where the national conversation is - it's safe to say - not fixed on Ed Miliband's White House trip. We now have photographic proof of this event, but what's Barack Obama saying? A prize for the best suggestion. PS some unkind souls have suggested that this picture is the unfortunate type, taken by a malicious photographer. This is the official picture released by the Labour Party. I assume there were a few worse ones rejected.

Steerpike

Tony Blair — the unloved one

Tony Blair, international superstar, has jetted into London to deliver the inaugural Philip Gould Memorial Lecture at Progress, a think tank. The speech would have enraged the likes of Len McCluskey, in the unlikely event that he listened to it. Blair trotted out all the pleasing soundbites of the past. The ‘third way’ was, he said, ‘a hard-headed examination of the world as it really is.’ Progressive politics was ‘not a cast of policy but a cast of mind. It’s not a programme but a philosophy. It’s not time limited but perpetual.’ The audience drank of these comfy platitudes and were nourished. Mr S, meanwhile, wondered what Ed Miliband, who has flown to America in pursuit of a photo-op with Barack Obama, made of it all.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Miliband’s message: I’m neither New Labour nor Old Labour

On the hottest weekend of the year, few people would want to be stuck inside in Milton Keynes. But that is where the Labour hierarchy finds itself. For this weekend is the party’s national policy forum. Ed Miliband’s speech today is meant to try and show that while he has moved on from New Labour he is not old Labour. There will be much talk of how fiscal restraint will have to continue and how Miliband knows there can be no return to the free spending ways of the past. One aide sums the message up as, ‘We know there is no money to spend.’ But it’ll be fascinating to contrast Miliband’s speech today with the one that Tony Blair is giving on Monday to mark the 20th anniversary of his election as Labour leader.

Thursday

Toby Young

Cameron was right to move Gove

I tried to reach Michael Gove on Tuesday shortly after the news broke that he’d been moved to the Whips’ Office. I’m quite relieved he never called back, because my intention was to offer my condolences, never a good idea when a friend suffers a setback. I know from experience that any expression of pity when some calamity befalls you only makes it ten times worse. ‘Oh Christ,’ you think. ‘Is it really that bad?’ In Gove’s case, I don’t think it is. He achieved more in his four years as Education Secretary than his predecessors did in 40. Given the hostility of the education establishment to even the mildest of reforms, it’s remarkable he lasted that long.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Dave the radical feminist gets a helping hand from Harriet

It was the final PMQs before the sun-stroke season begins. Usually these are high-spirited Derby Day affairs and Ed Miliband came to the house knowing things could hardly be easier. A political grenade has just been lobbed into the prime minister’s bunker – by the prime minister himself. He’s sacked two of his closest allies (and Ken Clarke). He’s fatally weakened himself in Europe by sending Lord Nobody to Brussels. And he’s surrendered to hypocritical calculation by stuffing his cabinet with skirt. Cameron the radical feminist? The silliest pose he’s ever adopted. Miliband began by striking a note that he does particularly well: low-key, gloating irony.

Isabel Hardman

Reshuffle 2014: How will Labour attack?

How will Ed Miliband deploy the reshuffle at Prime Minister's Questions today? The Labour leader may not use it as his main theme, but he has plenty of elements from yesterday's surprisingly big shake-up to work with. He could probe on just how good a reshuffle this has been for equality. Most of the focus is on gender equality, but some appointments yesterday were about more than just the ladies in waiting for a Cabinet post. Stephen Crabb, for instance, was raised by a single parent in a council house, although there seems to be more interest in his minority status as a bearded Cabinet minister.

Friday

Steerpike

Ed Miliband’s road to nowhere

Ed Miliband's negotiations with the White House to meet his hero Barack Obama aren't going well, Nick Robinson reported on the Today programme this morning: ‘Ed Miliband's team are desperate not to ruin their man's chances of a visit to the White House by talking them up... The Labour leader's aides point out that he has already met Barack Obama, though not at the White House. Some even say that Michael Howard never got to go when he was leader of the opposition – before remembering, perhaps, that that's not the best parallel to draw. Don't be fooled though, in Washington DC they're in no doubt this is a meeting the man who aspires to be our next Prime Minister wants and wants badly.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Is cross-party agreement on surveillance legislation a good thing?

So all three party leaders agree that it's worth rushing through emergency surveillance legislation. While David Cameron and Nick Clegg were holding their rare joint press conference, Ed Miliband released a joint letter with Yvette Cooper in which he said 'we have been guided by our firm conviction that it is essential to maintain the security of our citizens and also ensure people's privacy is protected'. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both needed to make the case for the emergency legislation today but Nick Clegg also needed to make the case for his support for it, given he had rejected the full Communications Data Bill.

Christopher Gage

How Wales was betrayed by its (Labour) government.

In England, success in life is bound up with where you went to school. In Wales, where I come from, the standard of education can be so miserable that you’d do better to get expelled. I did. I’d just spent three days in ‘isolation’ in my south Wales comprehensive — banished to a cubicle with a CCTV camera — for misbehaviour. As I left the grounds, I lit a cigarette. A teacher accosted me. I got lippy and she smacked me across the face. I was expelled soon after. Thank God. If you want good schooling in Wales, you’d be best to go private. If you’re taken ill, make sure you’re treated in the English NHS, not the Welsh version. If you want a private-sector job, best leave Wales. You get the picture.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Miliband’s main man blames the voters

Labour Party guru David Axelrod popped up in Sunday's New York Times, presumably to promote his new book. He spoke candidly to columnist Maureen Dowd, attempting to explain why Barack Obama is plummeting in the polls: 'Reagan significantly changed the trajectory of the country for better and worse. But he restored a sense of clarity. Bush and Cheney were black and white, and after them, Americans wanted someone smart enough to get the nuances and deal with complexities. Now I think people are tired of complexity and they're hungering for clarity, a simpler time. But that's going to be hard to restore in the world today.' That's right; apparently, President Obama is just too complex for the simple American public.

Alex Massie

Labour’s true believers ask Ed Miliband to repeat past Tory mistakes.

The first, and perhaps most important, thing to say about the 2015 general election is that it is Labour's to lose. The second thing to say is that Ed Miliband might be just the man to do it. Nevertheless and despite Miliband's awkwardness Tory optimists should ask themselves a very simple question: Which seats will we win in 2015 that we failed to win in 2010? Perhaps a handful will be taken from the Lib Dems and perhaps another handful can be snatched elsewhere but, overall, the battlefield picture is pretty damn bleak. But perhaps Labour will help. Miliband's problem is that his position is not secure to hunker down, do bugger all, and just wait for victory. He must move.

Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband is a wonk. Why doesn’t he check his facts?

A few weeks ago, I was reading the newly-published Modernisers’ Manifesto (pdf) published by Bright Blue and a fact jumped out: ‘London is a tearaway success, responsible for 79 per cent of all private sector jobs growth since 2010’. Startling fact, I though – I’d missed that. But about ten minutes of Googling showed that it wasn’t quite true. The fact was from a report by an IPPR offshoot, the Centre for Cities. It used survey data that went up to 2012, before the jobs boom started. You can find the real figures on the ONS website, and here’s what they show. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/oRem6/index.html"] But here’s the thing.

Monday