Ed miliband

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband may soon be gone. But let's remember what he got right

Most Conservatives I have spoken to in the last couple of hours are optimistic, hoping the prospect of RedEd in power has inspired a higher turnout amongst Tory voters. The Tories could still win, the polls could be as wrong as they were in 1992. But my concern is about the campaign. I hate to say that I think the Labour party fought the better one (not saying much, admittedly). Just as after the Scottish referendum I felt depressed that the unionists had relied so heavily on negativity, I find it depressing that the Tory campaign relied on anti-SNP sentiment. Yes, it has proved the most effective card they played – but

Isabel Hardman

Has Ed Miliband got something clever up his sleeve?

How will Ed Miliband manage tomorrow if Labour does end up the second largest party but with a viable ‘anti-Tory alliance’ in the House of Commons? The Tories are trying to craft a narrative that such a government would be illegitimate, and David Cameron will give a statement early on Friday. But there is a theory developing among some Tories who rate Miliband’s strategic skills that he could be about to produce his own clever game-changer too. He could be about to offer a significant devolution of powers to the regions, a huge transfer of power to Scotland and Wales, the elected Senate of the Nations and Regions that was

Rod Liddle

Is Ed Miliband really proud to have fought alongside me? I'm not so sure

Sheesh, sometimes you read something and it makes you go all gooey inside. Take this email I got from Ed Miliband. Dear Rod, As I write this, Justine and I are on our last trip on the Labour campaign bus. We’re heading back from an incredible supporter rally in Leeds to Doncaster so we can vote there first thing tomorrow morning. So while I have this rare, quiet moment, I want to say this: thank you. I am so proud to have fought this campaign alongside you. If our country votes for a Labour government tomorrow, it will be because of the dedication, passion and generosity of hundreds of thousands

Alex Massie

The disunited kingdom

Never before — at least, not in living memory — has there been such a disconnect between north and south Britain. We vote together, but cast our ballots in very different contests. Scotland and England, semi-detached in the past, are more estranged than ever. The mildewed contest between David Cameron and Ed Miliband touches few hearts north of the Tweed; the battle between Labour and the SNP still mystifies many of those sent north to observe the strange happenings in Scotland. Edmund Burke wrote of another revolution: ‘Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all

Rod Liddle

Miliband’s tablet of stone may cost him my vote

You have the advantage over me. You know the result of the general election, whereas I do not — a consequence of the moronically linear progression of time. Indeed, you may already have fled to one of those countries with a much lower tax rate and less fantastically irritating politicians — Algeria, for example, or Benin. Or Chad. And you are reading this digitally on some patched-in fibre-optic service, the electricity generated by goats trotting forlornly around a gigantic hamster wheel outside — but you are nonetheless delighted with your new life, despite the flies and the occasional gang of marauding, maniacal jihadis. At least you’re not here to experience Britain

Wednesday

Steerpike

Miliband's adviser Stewart Wood says he is 'loving' #JeSuisEd

A little Twitter fad had emerged this afternoon where fans of Miliband tweet pictures of themselves eating sloppily along with the hashtag #JeSuisEd. It came about after the Sun went to town this morning on the Labour leader, reheating his famous bacon sandwich antics. While Labour can hardly stop their supporters from hijacking the #JeSuisCharlie meme that was set up in honour of the journalists massacred in Paris earlier this year, surely Miliband’s chief aide Lord Wood, a bright Oxford tutor, should know better than to use it for a quick laugh online? I'm loving this collection of food selfies from Ed Miliband fans & supporters. #JeSuisEd. http://t.co/qNTkoVUSpg— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) May 6, 2015 The compassionate left out in

Ross Clark

I have worked out the only possible way to build a viable government (but it's not pretty)

For the past few days the BBC website has had an interactive game where you have to build your own coalition, using a series of possible results from tomorrow’s election. It ought to be marketed as an educational test, far more challenging even than Michael Gove’s rigorous school tests. But finally, I think I have done it. I have worked out the only possible way to build a viable government using the composition of the House of Commons which the polls appear to be predicting. Take Nate Silver’s analysis of the polls this morning, which predicts the following: Tories 281 seats, Labour 266, SNP 52, LibDem 26, DUP 8, Sinn

Freddy Gray

Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through election night

The hours between polls closing on election day and the result emerging represent an almighty challenge for journalists and know-alls everywhere. Demand for punditry is huge, yet there is little to say, and nobody knows what is going to happen. Tomorrow evening, The Spectator will launch our own ‘Pundyfilla Award for Inane Political Commentary’ – but until then, here are a few stock phrases that should help everyone (remember, in the age of social media, we must all be journalists) sound as if they know their election onions: ‘What I’m hearing is…’ The TV correspondent’s best friend. This line suggests an ear to the ground — even if in truth ‘hearing’ means checking Twitter. It hardly matters what you

Douglas Murray

This election campaign has shown a democracy in a horrible state of disrepair

It is often said that we get the politicians we deserve. But throughout this election I have kept wondering, ‘Are we really as bad as all this?’ The answer must be ‘yes’. This bland and empty ‘campaign’ has not only been the fault of the main parties competing to govern the UK – it has also been a reflection of what they believe we, the general public, now expect from our politics. Of course the result is aggravating, in part because we keep trying to enjoy contradictory things. For instance at some point in recent years it was decided that any statement outside a vague centre-left orthodoxy constituted a ‘gaffe’.

Sebastian Payne

A day on the campaign trail with Labour and Ed Miliband

On Monday, I hopped aboard the Labour ‘battle bus’ for a day on the campaign trail with Ed Miliband. Although each party has a different campaign operation, I was a little surprised to find that journalists are given a bus of their own, travelling separately from the party leadership. But I still managed to gain some insight into Labour’s campaign and how Team Miliband are feeling about the election with in the final stretch. The battle bus The campaigning day began at 7:30am, with Labour’s battle bus pulling out of a garage in Westminster. I boarded with two other journalists, from the Financial Times and the Daily Mail. The large silver Mercedes coach was impressively decked out, including

Tuesday

Steerpike

Ed Miliband comes to the defence of the #EdStone

Mr S reported earlier on Lucy Powell’s blunder after she unwittingly seemed to contradict the message of the EdStone: ‘I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he’s carved them in stone means he’s absolutely not going to break them or anything like that.’ Miliband has now come to the defence of his beloved monument. During an interview with the BBC’s deputy political editor James Landale, he was asked whether Powell, the vice-chair of Labour’s general election campaign, had got the wrong take-away message from his 8ft 6 sculpture. To this, Miliband replied, ‘Well, I’m clear about it, yes.’ At least somebody is clear. listen to ‘Ed Miliband says Lucy Powell was wrong to

Steerpike

Sell your Tory glory story: The Sun offers cash for Conservative testimonials

Mr S reported over the weekend that Rupert Murdoch has jetted in to Britain ahead of the election. Now in the UK, the media mogul, and arch rival of Ed Miliband, is expected to be running a tight ship across all News UK titles as polling day approaches. So Mr S couldn’t help but wonder which bright spark thought it was a good idea to place an advert from the Sun with a press agency offering money in return for a ‘good-news story’ about the Conservatives: £100 from @TheSunNewspaper for stories about how the Tories have helped you!!! Via @peterjukes pic.twitter.com/Y360sYy2KA— Tim Montgomerie 🇬🇧 (@montie) May 5, 2015 The advert, which conveniently expired at 4.00pm today,

Steerpike

Another joker comes out for Labour

Eddie Izzard, Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan and Russell Brand. What is it with professional funny-men backing Labour? It’s a little odd that when Miliband is trying to show the world what a serious, potential statesman he can be, he puts jokers in Labour’s election broadcasts. Robert Webb, of Mitchell and Webb fame, is the latest to come out for Ed: ‘I don’t need the Labour Party to have the kind of leader you’d want to put on a T-shirt and God knows they continue to oblige me. Ed Miliband’s favourite track is probably “Persuading in the Name Of” by Reform Against the Machine. It’s not my rage he needs, it’s my vote.

Steerpike

Lucy Powell says promises on Labour's 8ft 'Edstone' may be broken

Oh dear. Lucy Powell has managed to mess up yet another media appearance. Appearing on Radio 5 Live, Powell attempted to justify Ed Miliband’s decision to commission an 8ft 6in stone with Labour’s election promises inscribed. When the presenter suggested that a stone wouldn’t make voters believe in a politician’s promises, Powell came out with a rather off-message reply: ‘I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he’s carved them in stone means he’s absolutely not going to break them or anything like that’ listen to ‘Lucy Powell says promises on Labour’s stone may be broken’ on audioBoom

Steerpike

Cameron wins 81 seat majority in the (junior) General Election

At last, David Cameron has won an election. First News, a weekly newspaper for school children, organised a national Junior General Election and surprisingly the PM has romped home with 40 per cent of the vote. The Greens beat both Clegg and Farage, and Miliband managed just 22 per cent of the vote. Running these numbers through the BBC’s election seat calculator, it would give Cameron 407 seats and a majority of 81. Here are the results in full: David Cameron, Conservative: 40 per cent Ed Miliband, Labour: 22 per cent Natalie Bennett, Green: 18 per cent Nick Clegg, Lib Dem: 9 per cent Nigel Farage, UKIP: 6 per cent Nicola Sturgeon, SNP: 4

Daniel Jackson

Scotland is on the verge of becoming a one-party state

My constituency is one of the SNP’s most coveted prizes. If they win in Midlothian they can win almost anywhere. This is Gladstone’s old seat, where the modern political campaign was born. He wrested it away from the Conservatives in 1880, after a series of stirring speeches on the government’s foreign policy failures. On Thursday the SNP are hoping to pull off a similar upset. The momentum behind the nationalists is incredible. Everything I’ve seen and heard in the last couple of weeks points to an SNP victory here. My entire family is voting for them. My mother suggested that I should do the same. ‘Give your dead grandfather a

Monday

Sean Kemp

A beginner's guide to pulling off a political stunt

It’s an important discipline when watching elections to remind yourself that political parties are staffed by smart, hardworking people and not – despite occasional impressions to the contrary – complete buffoons. One of those moments came on Sunday, as Ed Miliband stood next to a gaggle of glum-looking supporters in a Hastings car park and unveiled a huge limestone slab with his six election pledges carved onto it. You can always tell when a political stunt has gone wrong; it’s the moment when party spokespeople tell you that ‘at least it has cut through’ or ‘well, it got people talking about it’. The problem is that you don’t want people

Ed West

Three reasons why Labour might not actually want to govern

There’s an episode of The New Statesman in which geologists discover that there’s no more oil in the North Sea and the British economy is about to crash; as a result all the parties try their best to lose the election so as not to carry the can for the next five years. Alan B’Stard, put in charge of the Tory campaign because they think him a liability, appears in the election video with Page 3 girls offering free bingo to the voters. Unfortunately, this proves a huge hit with the electorate. A conspiracy theorist might think this is actually happening today, judging by the inertia of the major parties.

Fraser Nelson

Ed Miliband still isn't being honest about debt. And yes, that matters

The Guardian’s superb live blog was even better than usual this morning when it covered Twitter’s reaction to the Ed Miliband interview: eight tweets, of which five came from Spectator staff. That’s what I call balance: opinion from the full spectrum of opinion in 22 Old Queen St. We were challenging Miliband’s claim when he said the debt was “lower than what we inherited” – it was about £200bn higher. I can’t imagine these tweets went down too well with Guardian readers, because an update emerged later saying that the debt/GDP ratio fell. So was Ed speaking the truth after all? I’m rather keen on this topic. We journalists do the public a great disservice if we

Fraser Nelson

A Labour-SNP alliance will be a political remake of Stephen King's 'Misery'

On the radio this morning, Ed Miliband spoke as if he could get a Queen’s Speech passed without speaking to the SNP. This struck some as implausible, but it sounds right to me. Here’s the transcript:- Q: Well let’s just be absolutely clear… neither you nor any of your colleagues will have any conversations with anybody from the SNP at any point after the election. A: We’re not going to negotiate about a Queen’s Speech, no. We’re not going to negotiate with the Scottish National…(Interrupted) Q: Well you’re refining my question a little bit aren’t you. A: I don’t think I am John. You’re asking me whether we’re going to negotiate about