Ed miliband

The evolution of Ed Miliband's Labour Party continues today with a letter in the Observer from candidates demanding that the party renationalizes the railways to lower the fares. It would be popular in commuter towns, they say – no wonder, as this would pass the costs from commuters to the general taxpayer. When challenged about it on this morning's Andrew Marr show, Miliband didn't rule it out. 'We're looking at all the options,' he said. His only concession was that he is 'not going back to old-style British Rail,' - he plans a new form of state intervention.

In recent weeks, I have found myself defending Ed Miliband as much as attacking him. I do believe that his election would be a calamity for Britain, but that doesn't mean I think he is an idiot pursuing a stupid strategy. On the contrary, I think what he is doing is bold, coherent, radical and chimes with the emerging populist mood. I also think that it is working – as things stand, he is on course to become the next Prime Minister. I look at this in my Telegraph column today. The rent control policy announced yesterday embodies this bold populism. Britain has a problem with buying houses – one created, in my view, by government policy to keep interest rates nailed to the floor during an economic boom.

Ed Miliband has got the reaction he wanted to his speech on the private rented sector, which he used today to launch Labour's local election campaign. Landlords and nasty right-wingers hate this latest stage in his 'cost-of-living contract'. The Residential Landlords Association said rent controls 'would critically undermine investment in new homes to rent and are not needed' and the National Landlords Association said 'the proposal for a three-year default tenancy is unnecessary, poorly thought-through and likely to be completely unworkable'. On Coffee House, Policy Exchange's Chris Walker says 'rent controls are at best misguided and at worst could be counterproductive, longer-term'. Grant Shapps suggested that these were 'Venezuelan-style rent controls'.

As the economy bounces back it keeps smacking Ed Miliband in the face. At PMQs today he tried to pose as the people’s champion fighting fat-cat capitalism. He started with Royal Mail, which is now worth a billion more than when it was floated. In hindsight, any privatisation can look like a Westminster mega-blunder or a Square Mile stitch-up. Miliband took the latter view. Referring to the clique of 16 ‘golden ticket’ investors, he asked why these lucky speculators had been allowed to flip their shares for an instant profit while the hard-working posties had been ordered to retain theirs for three years. Cameron spotted the trick. Posties got free shares. The City paid hard cash. The PM praised the flotation for turning a commercial dead-horse into a ripping triumph.

With apologies to John Rentoul, Can Ed Miliband save the Union? is a question to which the answer is God help us all. I admit to a blind spot vis a vis the Labour leader: Looks like Gussie Fink-Nottle, thinks like a Marxist Madeline Bassett. Clever enough in a droopy kind of way but, ultimately, a gawd-help-us kind of fellow. I wasn't very impressed last time Mr Miliband came to Scotland and so I wasn't inclined to be impressed by his most recent trip to Glasgow. Which is dandy because I wasn't. I dare say Miliband's belief that Scottish independence would be a bad idea - for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom - is sincere. That this belief is in his own narrow, strategic, sectarian interest is beside the point.

When Ed Miliband goes to Scotland and declares that ‘It is Labour that’s got to win this referendum’ it is a statement of political reality as much as it is braggadocio. The Tories have only one MP north of the border and the Liberal Democrats are the fourth party in the Scottish parliament. If this vote is to be won, Labour—as by far the largest Unionist party—will have to get the No camp over the line. Ed Miliband’s decision to take the entire shadow Cabinet to Glasgow last week was meant to show that UK Labour is now engaging fully in this battle. Miliband himself thinks that he has come up with an argument for the Union that is distinctly Labour.

At the start of the year, some of the air seemed to have gone out of the Ukip balloon. The party’s warnings about the scale of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration to Britain hadn’t been borne out by events. But the debates with Nick Clegg enabled Nigel Farage to get his momentum back. In those debates, Clegg was too passive in the first one and then over-compensated in the second with the result that he ended up losing both of them. Clegg’s decision to not engage with Farage in the first debate meant that he missed his best chance to get under the Ukip leader’s skin.

Labour's announcement on zero hours contracts today as the Shadow Cabinet visits Scotland is supposed to be a demonstration of how much better the UK can be by staying together. Ed Miliband's reasoning is that a border between Scotland and rUK would mean a 'race to the bottom' between the two countries, who would come under pressure from 'powerful interests' to 'worsen wages and conditions for everyone else'. It's part of Labour's 'positive case' for the union which the party wants to make today, and the reasoning does, if you're a Labour type, make sense. The only spanner in the works is the policy that he's announcing, which will hardly set the soul on fire if you're a Labour type who has been expounding on the evils of these contracts.

Dan Hodges' piece in this week's Spectator on the team around Ed Miliband is a must-read (and we've posted an even longer version online here). As he runs through those working with the Labour leader, a clear pattern emerges. There doesn't seem to be a Lynton Crosby equivalent working with Miliband. One of the many things that make Crosby so important to the Conservative party is his ability to swear at them and tell them they're doing something wrong. Miliband doesn't have a Crosby-esque character in that respect. Instead, all those around him seem keen to either demonstrate that they are the most loyal, in a Uriah Heep-esque display of servility, or to bolster Miliband confidence.

There's something quite amusing about a party that majored on the number of Etonians in the Cabinet as the substantive part of its response to the Budget briefing the Independent that it won't stoop to 'class war' in its 2015 election campaign. Labour, apparently, will occupy the moral high ground next year, which suggests the party will have to change its messaging quite significantly from this: 'What do this lot now call themselves? They call themselves the workers’ party. Who is writing the manifesto for this workers’ party? We have a helpful answer from one Conservative MP: “There are six people writing the manifesto…five…went to Eton”.

Is Britain still a Christian country? There is no straightforward answer to that question, as David Cameron discovered to his cost this weekend. The ongoing row began with an article the Prime Minister wrote for the Church Times last week, arguing that Britain should not be ashamed of its Christian ethos: ‘I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organisations, and, frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people's lives’ In response to this, fifty notable public figures — from Tim Minchin to Terry Pratchett — wrote to the Telegraph warning that the Prime Minister’s remarks will cause ‘alienation’.

Nigel Farage’s strategy for winning the European Elections is based around winning over blue collar workers who normally vote Labour. Ukip believe that they can use immigration as a battering ram to break through Labour’s defences in the north. One of the party’s campaign billboards unveiled last night simply says, ’26 million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after’. (I suspect that Ukip will welcome the controversy these posters are attracting because it will help amplify their message) https://twitter.com/Adrian_Hilton/statuses/458163441531097088 Ukip’s argument is that it is the only party that can actually do something about immigration.

John Bercow doesn’t like Prime Minister’s Questions. He’s told the BBC in an interview that it is ‘so bad’—in other words, rowdy—that a bunch of female MPs no longer attend. PMQs is becoming particularly partisan with the approach of the election. Miliband has abandoned his attempts to change it just as quickly as Cameron did before him. But Bercow would do well to look closely at his own role in setting the tone of these sessions. From the chair, Bercow understandably tries to silence the hecklers. But, sometimes, he seems to be indulging in a bit of ‘Punch and Judy’ too. Often he moves into put-down mode, trying to get the House to laugh at the offender.

David Cameron is doing God. He has followed up his comments about his faith at last week’s Downing Street reception with an article for The Church Times in which he declares that we should be ‘more confident about our status as a Christian country’ and ‘frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people's lives.’ This is a strikingly different tone to the one that Cameron used to adopt. Back in opposition, he talked about his faith being ‘like reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes'. Personally, as I say in the magazine this week, I find Cameron’s openness about the importance of religion in his life refreshing.