Ed miliband

Up until now, the fact that we know the date of the next general election has worked in Ed Miliband’s favour. He has known the timetable to which he has to work and has been able to resist demands to produce policy early by pointing out that we know the next election will not be until May 2015. But in the present circumstances, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act is not helping Miliband. Normally, in the fourth year of the parliament with the government receiving a bounce in the polls, the opposition would be wary of a snap election. This would create some internal discipline. But everyone on the Labour side now

David Cameron’s attack on Labour for “flailing and dithering” over whether to support the government’s pension reforms would seem unfair had the party not struggled to present a clear message over the weekend. It would be unfair to expect a snap judgement on the changes from a responsible opposition party, but the weekend press and the papers this morning suggest that Labour doesn’t even have a neat holding line as it works out how far to extend its support. But what should worry Ed Miliband far more than the attack from Cameron is the increasing anxiety from his own side about Labour’s message. The Guardian’s letter from 19 leading Labour

English Labour leaders tend to find Scottish party conferences difficult. The Scots tend to be more old-fashioned, unreconstructed and left-wing than their English colleagues which can make it difficult for English party leaders to gauge the mood when they come north. But Ed Miliband actually managed to get through his address to the Scottish Labour Party conference without any major problems this afternoon, primarily because he managed to adapt his One Nation slogan to fit the independence debate. Miliband has been banging on about One Nation for two years now with few people having any idea what he means. But when he refers to the independence debate, the concept suddenly has meaning –

Tony Benn, the most divisive left-wing figure since the war, united the house today. David Cameron paid tribute to him as an orator, diarist and campaigner. Ed Miliband praised his determination to ‘champion the powerless’ and hold the executive to account. Miliband moved to Crimea. He called Sunday’s plebiscite ‘illegal and illegitimate’. Cameron trumped him with a curious phrase that bolted a bit of punchy modern sloganising onto a fragment of olde Englishe slang. The referendum, he said, had been ‘spatch-cocked together in ten days at the point of a Russian Kalashnikov’. The leaders, both keen to denounce Russia in the most savage terms, swapped promises about travel bans, asset

Just occasionally in politics, the mask slips and political parties reveal what they really are – rather than what they would like us to believe they are. Today in Edinburgh we experienced one of those moments. Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour Leader, unveiled her plans for ‘devo plus’ for Scotland – if Scots vote No in September. We expected something technical focusing on the new powers the Scottish Parliament would be gifted by a Labour government at Westminster. Instead, we got something fundamentally red in tooth and claw. Indeed, Lamont could not have taken a harder socialist approach had she grabbed a red flag and waved it from the rooftop

Both coalition parties remain scarred by the political potency of Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices. They are determined to do what they can to stop this issue gaining salience again. So, it is telling that Ed Davey and Michael Fallon have both personally signed up to The Big Deal, a new initiative designed to gets consumers cheaper energy bills through bulk buying. Their decision to sign up shows how it is politically imperative to be seen as on the side of the customer rather than the producer when it comes to energy. (It is also testament to how well connected the campaign is in Westminster.) No politician wants

There’s been much hullaballoo this afternoon over a Populus poll that shows a Labour lead of one point. The usual caveats apply (it’s just one poll!); but, nevertheless, this sample adds to the sense that Ed Miliband is in difficulty. There is, incidentally, only 419 days to go until election day. If the Populus poll was disappointing, then this projection compiled by Stephen Fisher of Oxford University could have Miliband reaching for the scotch: ‘Forecast Election Day Seats: Con : 307 Lab : 285 LD  : 31 Con largest party, but short of a majority by 19’ A dismal prospect for Labour; but there are also worries for the Tories because they are

‘You only offer a referendum if you want to ratify your existing policy,’ a Tory veteran told me this morning while discussing Ed Miliband’s recent referendum announcement. The Tory illustrated his point with reference to the Major government’s row over a proposed referendum on the single currency. He said that the pro-European side of the argument ran from a referendum, fearing that the public would say ‘no’ to EMU. His logic was: there isn’t time to change minds during a referendum campaign, so the public backs the status quo. Leaving aside the matter of whether or not this old Tory’s interpretation of those historical events is correct, his logic suggests that Miliband

The Tories have been hoping that their pledge for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU would split Labour – it was the rationale behind John Baron’s regular pushes for legislation in this parliament for a referendum in the next, which David Cameron eventually satisfied as far as he could with the Wharton Bill. But so far the only dissenting voices on Ed Miliband’s pledge today for an ‘unlikely’ referendum have been the usual suspects on the backbenches such as Graham Stringer and John Mann. That’s hardly a ‘furious backlash’ and more expected and manageable rage – at present, anyway. It will be interesting to see whether there are

Why is Ed Miliband going to rule out a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in a speech tomorrow? The Labour leader has written in the FT that he would legislate for a new referendum lock which would force an In/Out referendum if there was another transfer of British power to Brussels, which essentially means he supports the current situation under the Coalition. And he says in the piece that the transfer is unlikely in the next Parliament. Which means no referendum. He writes that Labour’s position on Europe… “… is clear and principled: we strongly believe Britain’s future is in the EU. And my priorities for government after