Ed miliband

If you want to know what British politics will sound like in 2011, then just read David Cameron’s and Ed Miliband’s New Year messages one after the other. They share a lot of the same words, but bounce along to different, if familiar, drumbeats. According to Cameron, next year will be “very difficult,” due to the effort of “putting our economy ... on the right path”. According to Miliband, next year will be more difficult than it needs to be, due to “the decision taken to reduce the deficit at what I believe to be an irresponsible pace and scale.” In other words, cuts versus fewer cuts. Just like 2010 all over again.

Yesterday’s announcement that 114 Labour MPs, including 5 shadow cabinet ministers, will be voting ‘No’ in next year’s Alternative Vote referendum isn’t exactly a ‘game changer’. But it has certainly shifted the terms of debate within the Labour party. Over the past few weeks a perception had been developing that adoption of the AV system, whilst not generating unparalleled excitement and passion within Labour ranks, was at least becoming the line to take. That perception has now changed. Labour’s internal stance on the issue is important. Labour supporters effectively represent the referendum’s ‘floating voters’.

Ed Miliband’s proposal to cap party donations at £500 – thereby restraining the huge one-off union payments that sustain Labour – certainly looks radical enough. But, as any fule kno, surface appearances can be deceptive. As Jim Pickard explains in an insightful post over at the FT, the result would be a system that affects the other parties far more than it does Labour and their union support. The trick is crystallised by this passage from the original Independent report: “One reform option would be to treat Labour’s income from union members who pay the political levy as individual donations. This helps to fund the party’s day-to-day spending.

Courtesy of Alan Johnson's interview in the Independent today: "Both [Ed Miliband and Johnson] have accepted that it is 'inconceivable' that the 50p tax rate won't be needed at the time of the next election." Or, in other words, Johnson and Miliband have reached compromise over their divergent positions on the 50p rate.

Talk about a Christmas miracle: Ed Miliband has set about the task of Opposition with ruthless efficiency today. As both Guido and Nicholas Watt have noted, the Labour leader is all across the broadcast news this afternoon, after upping the heat on Vince Cable and the coalition. His party's attack comes in the form of a letter sent by the shadow business secretary, John Denham, to the Cabinet Secretary, Gus O'Donnell. It asks, mischieveously, whether Vince Cable has broken the ministerial code by promising to wage war against Rupert Murdoch, and whether Jeremy Hunt is impartial enough to step into the breach. And while nothing is likely to come of these exhortations, they have already done their work in terms of grabbing Labour, and Miliband, some rare attention.

You can stuff your beer and sandwiches, Prime Minister – the unions want war. That's the broad sentiment of Unite's new leader, Len McCluskey, writing in the Guardian today. The union capo urges his brothers to rally behind the protesting students, and prepare to militate against the coalition. Or as he puts it, with nary a hint of self-awareness: "While it is easy to dismiss 'general strike now' rhetoric from the usual quarters, we have to be preparing for battle." Which, reading on, seems pretty similar to, erm ... general strike now. Putting aside the prospect of industrial unrest, this will be as nectar for the Tories.

And the award for quotation of the day goes to the unnamed Labour MP who says, in the Sunday Times (£), of Ed Miliband: "We've got a new nickname for him: the monk, because he wants two years of quiet contemplation to work out what he's going to do."  And second prize goes to another Labour MP, quoted in the same article, for this: "I give him 18 months. Tops." Words alone may not hurt Miliband, however acidic they are – but throw in another set of poor poll ratings for the Labour leader, and he is rather limping towards next month's 100 day milestone. Today's YouGov poll has a 29-44 split between those who think he is doing well and those who think he is doing badly.

Joy. It will be a campaigning Christmas, now that the Oldham by-election is likely to be held on 13th January. The Labour party is much exercised. The permanently outraged Chris Bryant says it is a ‘disgrace’ that politics will sully the ‘major Christian festival of the year’ – the lapsed cleric seems to have forgotten the election’s proximity to Easter. More importantly, fewer students will be in Oldham on 13th January to serve ‘judgement’ on the government, as Hilary Benn put it in the Commons this morning before adding that the government is ‘running scared’. By-elections are determined by local issues, as one would expect.

Up, up, up! It was the only way he could go. For the last couple of months Ed Miliband has arrived at PMQs like a hapless fag with his bottom ready-stripped for a ritual flogging from Flashman. Today he made a proper fight of it. This was his best PMQs performance since his debut. He’s been studying the old masters. Long-term followers of PMQs will have recognised William Hague’s favourite battle-plan today. In football it would be called ‘pass-and-go’. You ask a question. Then dismiss the answer as inadequate. Ask a second question. Dismiss the second answer as inadequate. Move to a third question while pointing out, in parenthesis, that your interviewee is making a habit of not giving proper answers.

John Reid made a bruising and quite extraordinary appearance on the Daily Politics earlier today. He demolished the Labour leader. Reid’s analysis was concise: there has been a vacuum at the heart of Labour since Tony Blair’s departure. Gordon Brown was divisive, at best, and clearly not up to the demands of leadership. And, Reid intimated, Brown's child shares his father’s foibles. Ed Miliband has not impressed so far, having failed to understand the cause of New Labour's success. Case in point, his support for the coalition’s very liberal policies on crime, and his inability to perceive that New Labour’s sustained dominance was due to constant policy renewal, not ideological trauma.

Peter Kellner has an interesting comment piece up on the YouGov site about how we are in the unusual position of having three relatively unpopular party leaders. Nick Clegg’s approval rating is down at minus 29 but that hasn’t helped Ed Miliband who is at minus 15. David Cameron does have a positive rating, but only just. His approval rating is plus one. As Kellner points out, normally when one political leader is unpopular another benefits. But that hasn’t happened this time: a sign of how strong a hold anti-politics has on the public consciousness. This discontent is mirrored by how all three parties are having quite serious debates about what they should be.

The Liberal Democrats are not like the other two parties. The acitvists still have real power and set the policy agenda of the party. This is what makes Richard Grayson’s intervention in The Observer today so important. Grayson is one of the leading activists on the left of the party. After Nick Clegg's election as leader. he organised a concerted push by the beard and sandals brigade to take over the powerful party committees and thus check the more economic liberally instincts of the party leadership. So his call for Lib Dem members to start cooperating with Ed MIliband is far more than just a cry of pain.

As with so many things, the coalition’s great strength is also its great weakness. On the one hand, it is two parties working together, politicians putting aside their differences to cooperate in the national interest. This is something that, broadly speaking, the electorate likes. On the other, it is a government that nobody voted for. There’s a danger that the public come to see coalition as an arrangement that just allows both parties to worm out of their manifesto commitments on the grounds that they didn’t win the election.  The coalition’s national interest case is a strong one. But it needs to be made with greater frequency. It cannot be allowed to go the way as the summer of scrutiny of Labour’s record.

At last Wednesday’s PMQs Cameron kicked Ed Miliband into touch with a debonair swagger. Today anger replaced disdain. The PM’s eye-popping rage is so palpable that some commentators take it for vulnerability or even a hint of self-doubt. Milband has Cameron rattled? Nothing of the sort. Cameron just can’t control himself.   Asked about the Coalition’s higher education policy, he heaped rancid abuse on the opposition leader from a lofty perch. He called him "an opportunist,"  who "posed about social mobility" and was guilty of "rank hypocrisy." "He saw a big crowd in the Mall," fumed Cameron, referring to the student protests, "and said, 'I am their leader I must follow them'.