Ed miliband

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 for his tone by the other Miliband advisers on the email.

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 the economy to energy prices.

The Sunday Sport, that esteemed paper of record, has replied to Ed Miliband in the matter of Ralph Miliband killing a kitten with a bicycle during WW2, which Miliband described while accepting one of our Parliamentarian of the Year awards last week. The paper says: ‘A WIDOW whose beloved pet kitten was KILLED by the Marxist Dad of Ed Miliband is demanding a face-to-face meeting with the Labour leader. Last month we revealed how the late academic Ralph Miliband ran over Eunice Clark’s  pet Winston while drunkenly riding his bicycle in 1944. Eunice, now 78, was only nine then - but time has failed to ease the upset of losing her cat, which she’d received only weeks before as a Christmas present.

Ed Miliband's energy freeze pledge won him 'political speech of the year' but has had the unintended (yet inevitable) consequence of throwing the energy market into a spasm. The head of Npower, Paul Massara, has said that the political uncertainty means we may not have enough power to cover demand. He has told BBC Hardtalk:- 'The amount of spare capacity to meet the peak requirement has dropped from somewhere around 15 per cent to five... and unless the UK can create a politically stable environment to attract new capital, that capital will not come in... The more government creates uncertainty with things like price freezes or other changes, it means there's less certainty and less likely for capital investment.

Ed Miliband stole the show at this year's Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards. The Labour leader, who won a new prize called Political Speech of the Year (for the energy freeze pledge, which ‘transformed his fortunes’), took the chance to read out a Sunday Sport story which accused his ‘Belgian communist’ father of ‘killing a cat’ when cycling through the British countryside during the war. Ed charmed the crowd by being funny, good on camera and, you know, normal. Home Secretary Theresa May, who took the Politician of the Year award, despite her recent burka-related difficulties, was a hoot.

PMQs today was a typically bad tempered affair. The Tories have responded to David Cameron’s mauling two weeks ago, by upping the aggression in Cameron’s answers and the noise levels. Today, the Tories wanted to talk about Unite. At every opportunity, Cameron sought to bring Unite the union, who donate millions to Labour, into his answers. He floated the prospect of new laws to combat the aggressive and unpleasant ‘leverage’ tactics that Unite had used at Grangemouth. He likened Ed Miliband to the mayor of a Sicilian town who had been put in by the mafia and was afraid they would take him out if he took them on. Miliband led on the NHS. But the exchanges were far from enlightening.

It is great to be here in Battersea with you today. Last Friday, I was in my constituency, at the local Citizens Advice Bureau. And I talked to some people who had been preyed upon by payday lenders. There was a woman there in floods of tears. She was in work. But she took out a payday loan for her deposit so she could rent somewhere to live. And then disaster followed. A payday loan of a few hundred pounds became a debt of thousands of pounds. She still faces bullying, harassment and threats from multiple payday lenders. Like the young mum I met who described sitting at home with her daughter and seeing an advert on the TV for a payday lender. She said she was down to the last nappy for her baby. She took out the payday loan.

Will Ed Miliband's pledge on the Living Wage, made in today's Independent on Sunday, work? Actually, that's not really the most important question: the experience of the weeks following the autumn conference season is that you don't actually need a workable pledge to be able to set the terms of debate. The Labour leader's plan is for private and public sector employers to receive a tax rebate - on average £445, but up to £1,000 - for 12 months for every employee whose pay is lifted to living wage level of £7.45 an hour. He says this will be paid directly through increased tax and national insurance receipts. The big question now is how the Conservatives respond to this.

One of the odd things about the polls at the moment is that the Tories lead on economic competence and leadership, traditionally the two most important issues, yet trail overall. There are, I argue in the column this week, three possible explanations for this polling paradox. The first possibility is that Ed Miliband is right, that the link between GDP growth and voters’ living standards is broken. A consequence of this is that voters put less emphasis on economic management in the round. Instead, they want to know which party will do most to help them with their cost of living. Then, there’s the possibility that the traditional political rules don’t apply in this era of coalitions and four party politics in England.

It is, of course, beyond dismal that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night. The only upside to this is that it ensured the St Louis Cardinals, the National League's most pompous franchise, lost. It is a very meagre upside. The Boston Red Sox: insufferable in defeat, even worse in victory. It comes as no surprise, frankly, that Ed Miliband is a devoted member of what is teeth-grindingly referred to as the Red Sox Nation. Dan Hodges and James Kirkup each salute Ed's willingness to embrace a cause as unfashionable as baseball. Why, it's charmingly authentic! Better a proper baseball nerd than a fake soccer fan. There is, I concede, something to this.

It was a doddle for Ed Miliband at PMQs this afternoon. The nation watched agog yesterday as the energy companies deployed a handful of silk-lined suits to justify their price hikes to a parliamentary committee. Miliband arrived at the house knowing that victory was simple. He just had to fuse the Tories and Big Energy in the public mind and then sit back and enjoy the results. But he got ambushed by David Cameron who had a surprise document up his sleeve. Miliband’s fuel bill. First Cameron reminded us of his advice to consumers last week. ‘Switch your energy company and save £200.’ This idea had been instantly derided by the Labour leader. Yet he himself had just changed supplier. Cue Tory hilarity. Cameron twisted the blade.