Labour’s ‘media grid’ for this week had Miliband’s millionaire spinner Tom Baldwin pencilled in to brief Times journalist Rachel Sylvester and give her an exclusive story for Tuesday's paper. When the paper landed it was actually lots of Labour figures slagging off the leader, and saying how Ed had lots of policies but not the character to be PM. That's some class A spinning for you.
Mr S wandered down to Ed Miliband's big business speech at the 'Inclusive Prosperity' conference at the Science Museum today, and it has to be said: it was all a bit weird. While the space age theme of the ‘breakout’ coffee room was rather funky, it was so dark that you could not actually see anyone's face or work out who you are talking to. The whole thing had the feel of a night club—all be it one hosting a geek-themed fetish evening—about it. Perhaps this is how the Labour leader likes to interact with big business – cloaking it in darkness so he can pretend it is not there.
It was damn close. And it scored top marks for effort. Miliband’s plan today was to prove that Cameron’s NHS policy is a disaster. And to prove it with Cameron’s own admissions. Or omissions. ‘It’s four years since his top-down re-organisation of the NHS,’ began Miliband in that quiet, meticulous manner that always foretells a forensic ambush. ‘Have the numbers waiting for cancer treatment got better or worse?’ Cameron instinctively dodged the question. Miliband moved on to A&E waiting times. Cameron shifted and ducked again. Miliband asked about numbers waiting over four hours on a trolley. Cameron ran for cover.
PMQs taught us a number of things about Labour and the Conservatives. The first is that while Labour has a bumper economy week underway, it does not feel sufficiently confident to attack the Conservatives on this issue in an aggressive forum like PMQs. This is probably quite sensible, given the attack that Cameron launched towards the end of the session on Ed Balls. Looking very chipper indeed, the PM said: 'What is my idea of fun? It is not hanging out with the Shadow Chancellor! That is my idea of fun! And so, I feel sorry for the leader of the Opposition because he has to hang out with him all of the time.
Today's PMQs will not live long in the memory. Ed Miliband led on the NHS and the debate quickly turned into a statistical stalemate. Indeed, at the end Andy Burnham tried via a point of order—with little success—to get Cameron to admit that one of his numbers was wrong. listen to ‘PMQs: ‘Cheer up folks, it's only Wednesday!’’ on Audioboo Miliband was in a confident mood at the despatch box because he knew he was on strong ground on the NHS. But in a week where Labour is trying to burnish its economic credentials, it is telling that Miliband didn't choose to go on the economy.
What with his victory parade to celebrate a failure in Europe and Labour's continuing muttering and complaining, David Cameron must be feeling pretty positive about Prime Minister's Questions today. He's managed to annoy some of his MPs with a Downing Street hint that it will not oppose Michael Moore's bill to enshrine the 0.7 per cent aid target in law, but at least the Prime Minister can count on a good tribal feeling on his backbenches to tide him through today's session. He could taunt Miliband with Jon Cruddas' 'dead hand' quote, or Lord Glasman's assessment that his party lacks a sense of direction.
There's been a bit of a fuss over the claim in Lord Adonis's growth report—repeated in a draft of Ed Miliband's localism speech—that four-fifths of the private-sector jobs growth in the UK since 2010 has happened in London. The Prime Minister tweeted: Labour get their facts wrong on jobs - again. How can they ever be trusted with the economy? http://t.co/zTZJVadFhQ #AdonisReview — David Cameron (@David_Cameron) July 1, 2014 And NIESR's Jonathan Portes (who has form taking issue with how numbers on ‘new’ jobs numbers are used) said: @eduardmead @bbcnickrobinson That said, Labour stat certainly wrong. Conservatives much closer, but not on basis of published ONS figures.
Is Damian McBride auditioning for a job as the saviour of the Labour Party spin operation? His re-energised blogging would certainly indicate as much. In the last few weeks the Brownite bad boy has left his job with Catholic aid charity Cafod, and returned to writing full time. He's also managed to make a compelling argument for why his misdemeanours cannot now be compared to those of Andy Coulson, despite the best efforts of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor: 'So if the Tories want to keep using the ‘What about Damian McBride?
In our latest View from 22 video, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the two top stories from this weekend — the ascension of Jean-Claude Juncker and Jon Cruddas's intervention on Labour's 'dead' hand — and how they will play out over the week.
Are we seeing a global revival of religion, which is having a radical impact on politics? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Damian Thompson debates Cristina Odone on this week’s Spectator cover feature. Is the UK and Europe unable to understand many of the current conflicts because of ardent secularism? Has our current government been too secularist; obsessed with Brangelina instead of Boko Haram? And would politics be simpler if there were no religious element at all? Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson discuss two political figures whose fortunes are shifting in different directions — George Osborne and Ed Miliband. Are we beginning to see the real George Osborne, who has more substantial ideological views than his detractors believed?
[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_26_June_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss whether Labour should let Miliband be Miliband" startat=934] Listen [/audioplayer]That bacon bap earlier this month was not the cause of Ed Miliband’s unpopularity. Ed Miliband’s unpopularity was the cause of the bacon bap. Scant comfort this will give the Labour leader and his fabled ‘advisers’, but they can stop worrying about food-related photographic gaffes because once the world is out to get you, the world will get you, and if they don’t get you one way they’ll get you another. Sooner or later Mr Miliband will have to eat, and sooner or later a shutter will click as he opens his mouth.
The pressure was all on Miliband today. With Cameron hurt, he needed to show that he can still press home an advantage. First, we all had to listen to the Speaker, who rather enjoys listening to himself. He began with a long and winding overture about the dangers of prejudicing the Coulson trial. One sentence would have done it: yesterday’s convictions are mentionable, those due today aren’t. But he rambled on and on. His legal witterings were delivered with all the clunking sonorities and ham pauses of an under-employed luvvie delivering the Gettysburg address. And he couldn’t stop interfering during the debate. Miliband had carefully planned his ambush and committed its wording to memory.
Today must have been the first that David Cameron thought 'thank goodness for the Leveson report' as he prepared for Prime Minister's Questions. He used the report as a shield in his exchanges with Ed Miliband, waving it about at the despatch box and saying that he had 'totally disproved him using the evidence' on a series of accusations that the Labour leader had made about whether or not he ignored warnings about hiring Andy Coulson and bringing him into Downing Street.
The phone hacking jury will only be about an hour into their continued deliberations when Ed Miliband stands up at Prime Minister's Questions today, but the Labour leader does seem determined to raise the question of David Cameron's judgement in hiring Andy Coulson all the same. Harriet Harman did the Labour late shift yesterday on Newsnight in which she pointed out that the Conservative leader ignored warnings about Coulson. Labour's thesis is that Cameron hired Coulson in spite of those warnings because he was desperate to get closer to the Murdoch empire. The party is certainly right that Cameron was desperate: the Conservatives were not particularly worth joining in 2007 and so there would not have been an endless queue of former senior tabloid journalists desperate to join the team.
That Ed Miliband is even having to state that he wants to carry on as Labour leader if he loses the general election when his party is ahead in the polls shows what a mess the operation around him is. There are a number of Shadow Cabinet members who seem more interested in what happens after the 2015 election than in their party's chances in that election. Perhaps this is because they have decided that though their party is ahead now, voters will panic about Miliband as they start to try imagining him as Prime Minister. Better to get your off-the-record briefings in now, and not make too much of an effort batting for this guy when you think you're doomed. The problem is, of course, that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ed Balls knows how to talk to bankers. Having been Gordon Brown’s right hand man and City Minister under the last government, he is well known in the Square Mile—and far more popular than you might think. Earlier this month, Balls was to be found having lunch at HSBC’s private bank in St James. He was there to address the chairmen of the UK banks. Those present left this private lunch with the distinct impression that Balls was presenting himself as a restraining influence on Ed Miliband, and someone who could protect them from some of the Labour leader's more radical policies. Balls made clear to the group that he was a 'sceptic' of regional banking.
David Cameron has not had the best of weeks. At home, he is engaged in a mucky fight with the former government aide Dominic Cummings and abroad he is facing defeat in his attempt to stop Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming president of the European Commission. But in the papers today, it is Ed Miliband who has all the problems. The Guardian splashes on how Labour frontbenchers do not want Miliband to stay on after an election defeat. If this story had appeared in almost any other paper, Miliband’s team could have tried to dismiss it as the price you pay for standing up to Rupert Murdoch or backing Leveson. But with The Guardian, this is much harder to do.
Ed Miliband is in Wales with the Shadow Cabinet today, and they've been busy praising the Labour government there for 'leading the whole of the United Kingdom into economic recovery'. It's interesting that the Westminster Labour party is so keen to hang out with Welsh Labour, as doing so simply allows the Tories to attack Miliband again for admiring a party with a rather mixed record in government. The Welsh government has presided over a 16 per cent drop in the number of affordable homes being built from 2011/12 to 2012/13. One house builder, Persimmon, has stopped building in parts of Wales because the planning regulations there are so burdensome.
As you’re reading this, I will still be recovering from the dinner I’m due to attend this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies, the think tank founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. Earlier the same day, I’m due to appear on a panel with various conservative grandees to discuss whether the other side has won. Classical liberals emerged victorious from the battle of ideas in the 1980s, thanks in part to the work of the CPS, but it’s beginning to look as though we’ll have to have the same arguments all over again. One reason for concern is the hard left turn taken by the Labour party. It has often been said that Thatcher’s greatest victory was converting her socialist opponents to economic liberalism.
Rigorous welfare reforms for the under-25s must be combined with targeted tax breaks. That’s the best way to get young Britain going and galvanise the new electorate. For keen observers, Ed Miliband’s speech on welfare may sound familiar. Last November Labour dropped plans — to scrap benefits for the under-25s — like a hot potato after vicious attacks from activists. Yet a few months on and Miliband rehashes these, pledging to continue good work this government is already doing, for instance young people already receive a lower rate of Jobseeker’s Allowance and can already take up training and continue receiving their benefits. It seems that Ed Miliband is the timid toad sat at the edge of the pond, just dipping his toe-in.