Ed miliband

Ed Miliband started off with a soft question to which he already knew the answer at PMQs: ‘Does the PM agree with me that given the crisis ordinary families are facing in their living standards, MPs should not be given a pay rise many times more than inflation in 2015?’ The PM did agree, and offered some further thoughts on the situation. Then Miliband pushed him a bit further. He asked whether the Prime Minister was keen ‘to work with me to find a way on a cross-party basis to make Ipsa think again?’ This whole exchange was carried out to an amusingly eerie silence from backbenchers listening to their

All three party leaders paid eloquent tribute to Nelson Mandela in the Commons. But by far the most powerful speech came from Gordon Brown. His speech, which combined wit with a string of serious points, was a reminder of the qualities that made many in the Labour party prepared to overlook his flaws. Brown, the timbre of his voice so suited to these occasions, spoke movingly about the Mandela he knew. He gave us a sense of the man as well as the statesman. He recalled how at the concert for Mandela’s the 90th, the former president had to sneak off to have a glass of champagne as his wife

At the beginning of the autumn, strategists from all three parties assumed that the theme of the season would be Labour’s poll lead narrowing as the economic recovery picked up pace. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Labour’s lead has remained and its own poll numbers have actually ticked up. This is, largely, thanks to Ed Miliband’s reframing of the political debate about the economy, making it about living standards But the autumn statement showed that when the political conversation is focused on the broader economy, the Tories have the better of it. Thursday has weakened Ed Balls, strengthened George Osborne and begun to move the political debate off Labour’s turf

Vince Cable is surely right in his comments yesterday that the most likely scenario for Britain leaving the EU is if Ed Miliband is Prime Minister after the next election. The theory, that you hear a lot in Westminster, goes like this: Miliband is forced by public opinion into promising a referendum on EU membership, he then becomes Prime Minister and is obliged to hold the vote. But by this time, the Tory opposition is advocating a No vote; arguing that a better deal can be negotiated. The country then votes No and the rest of the EU, for once, accepts the result of the first vote. Many senior pro-European

Downing Street has released the following statement from David Cameron: ‘A great light has gone out in the world. Nelson Mandela was a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death – a true global hero. Across the country he loved they will be mourning a man who was the embodiment of grace. Meeting him was one of the great honours of my life. My heart goes out to his family – and to all in South Africa and around the world whose lives were changed through his courage.’ Ed Miliband has also released a statement on the death of Nelson Mandela: ‘The world has

When George Osborne stands up next week to deliver the autumn statement, he’ll have some good news to deliver. Not only is autumn, the dreariest of the British seasons over, but borrowing has come in lower than expected and the OBR will upgrade the growth forecasts. But the return of growth, as I say in the magazine this week, poses a strategic dilemma for Osborne. If he declares the economic emergency over, the public might conclude it was safe to turn back to Labour. But equally he has to show voters that he’s sharing the proceeds of growth. I suspect that Osborne will steer clear of too many sweetners. They’ll

Loan sharks got a biff on the nose at PMQs today. Cameron wants to cap the sum that each of us can borrow. Ed Miliband was puzzled. This is a U-turn, he said. When he proposed to cap energy bills Cameron called it ‘Marxism.’ Cameron shrugged this off. And he gloatingly invited Miliband to ‘congratulate us’ for pushing through an important reform. Tricky for Ed. When the government filches your idea, you can’t complain without seeming to oppose your own position. Miliband moved to the looming winter crisis which he seems to be looking forward to. Last year an additional 31,000 deaths were recorded. All the PM’s fault, apparently. ‘Any

Seasoned Miliband observers learned relatively little about the Labour leader from his appearance on Radio Four’s ‘Desert Island Disks’ on Sunday. The programme addressed Ed’s biggest weaknesses head on – namely that he is a bit of a nerd who knifed his brother and comes from aristocratic Marxist stock. The music told its own story. David Miliband has fled across the Atlantic; but Édith Piaf has told Ed that he should regret nothing. A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’, coupled with tales of never pulling down at the disco, played up to Ed’s nerdiness. ‘Jerusalem’ was included to mark his ‘lodestar’ father Ralph; a man who ‘loved this country’ seemed a little meretricious

The next time you see a Tory minister on television, count how long it is until they say that David Cameron is a leader with a long term plan for this country. This is the Tories’ new message. In a presentation to Cameron’s political Cabinet on Tuesday morning, Lynton Crosby told the ministers present that the Tories would probably lose the election if it was held today or tomorrow. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, he stressed that the election was still 16 months away so the Tories had time to turn things round. He emphasised that they should play up that Cameron is a man with a

Six and a half years after Gordon Brown finally badgered Tony Blair out of Downing Street, the relationship between these two men still dominates British politics. Why? Because David Cameron and George Osborne, and Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are, in their different ways, doing what they can to prevent history repeating itself. Their relationships are both informed by the Blair-Brown breakdown. Cameron and Osborne have quite deliberately structured their working lives to avoid replicating the tensions within New Labour. The pair shared a set of offices in opposition with their aides sitting in the same room. This was meant to prevent the emergence of two separate, competing power centres.

It started as soon as Ed Miliband stood up at PMQs today. ‘Nightmare!’ yelled the Tories. ‘Nightmare!’ They’d been fired up by the first question from Steve Brine, who craftily double-loaded his query. He referenced the Co-op bank and the ‘nightmare email’ in one sentence. Would the PM respond, he asked, ‘to grave concerns about the nightmare unfolding at the Co-operative?’ Cameron pretended to be all serious. He fretted about the regulatory controls and about safeguarding the bank without fleecing the tax-payer. ‘Nightmare!’ goaded the Tories. Ed Balls, seated beside Miliband, flushed puce. Not a natural Trappist, the shadow chancellor is clearly under orders to shut his gob during PMQs.

Foaming at the mouth is rarely a good sign. In dogs, it can indicate nausea, anxiety or (at worst) rabies. But what about in a Leader of the Opposition? Should we be nervous? During an interview with Sky News today, Ed Miliband was visibly frothing at the mouth, while explaining how he has ’embarked on a major reform’ of the Labour party. Steerpike would like to suggest two diagnoses. One: that in future, Miliband should delay the post-lunch interview to avoid further frothing. And two: that the Tories can cut back on their campaign to paint Miliband as unprimeministerial. He does the work for them.

It has long been suspected that there are tensions between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The pair fell out badly over the third runway at Heathrow in government and when Miliband was elected leader, he conspicuously didn’t offer Balls the job of shadow Chancellor. But since Balls became shadow Chancellor the pair has largely succeeded in keeping their differences under wraps. But the leaked emails revealed by Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday today, show what Miliband’s team privately thinks of Balls. Torsten Bell, one of Miliband’s most influential aides, calls Balls a ‘nightmare’ and complains about how complicated his message on the economy is. Tellingly, he isn’t rebuked

Nick Clegg’s blast at Labour today is just the opening salvo of a Lib Dem offensive against Labour on the economy. It is another reminder that coalition unity is strongest on the economy. Clegg’s jibe ‘Do you know why Ed Miliband suddenly wants to talk about the cost of living? Because they’ve lost the bigger economic argument’ could easily have been said by Cameron. While his argument that ‘healthy household budgets flow directly from a healthy economy. The two go hand in hand’ echoed George Osborne’s response to the GDP figures. At the top of the coalition, they are immensely frustrated that Labour has managed to change the conversation from