Labour party

Saturday

James Forsyth

Simon Hughes speaks out against the benefit cap

In the Cameroon effort to redefine the politics of fairness, the benefit cap of £26,000 a year is key. When George Osborne announced it in his 2010 conference speech, he explained it – rightly – as a matter of fairness that ‘no family on out-of-work benefits will get more than the average family gets by going out to work’.   The Tories were also aware of just how potent a wedge issue it would be. If Labour opposed the cap, they would be in favour of some households in which no one is working receiving more from the state than the average salary people achieve by working. This is, to

Jonathan Jones

Balls’ attempt at credibility falls short

‘I must be responsible and credible in what I say.’ No, it’s not Bart Simpson writing on the blackboard at the start of The Simpsons, although it may have been said with just as little enthusiasm. It’s Ed Balls on the Today programme this morning, explaining his decision to endorse George Osborne’s public sector pay freeze. Balls’ interview in today’s Guardian is his biggest effort so far to sound ‘responsible and credible’ on the economy. His admission that ‘we can make no commitments to reverse any of [the cuts], on spending or on tax’ is nothing new – in his September conference speech he said ‘no matter how much we

Friday

Jonathan Jones

From the archives: Saving the Union

With Scottish independence very much the issue of the week, we thought you might enjoy this Spectator leader from 1979, arguing for a ‘No’ vote in that year’s referendum on Scottish devolution: To preserve the Union, 24 February 1979 ‘So, Sir, you laugh at schemes of political improvement?’ ‘Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.’ The Scotland Act, which comes before the judgement of the Scottish people on Thursday, is certainly laughable. Would that it were no more than that. If the Scottish Assembly is instituted it will be the most important constitutional change the United Kingdom has known since the Irish Free State came into

Hamish Macdonell

Osborne sparks the unionists’ fightback

Edinburgh It became clear last night why George Osborne was put in charge of the Coalition Government’s fightback against Alex Salmond and separatism: he is the only one who has the ability to really score points off the Nats. The Chancellor’s intervention on currency and bank notes – suggesting that an independent Scotland might not be able to keep the pound and that, if it did, it might be banned from producing Scottish bank notes – hit the SNP hard. Osborne’s remarks shook one of those comfortable certainties which the SNP has been peddling for so long – that Scotland would simply keep sterling after independence and everything would progress

Thursday

Jonathan Jones

More Mili-woe

It gets worse for Ed Miliband in the polls today. After revealing last week that just 20 per cent of the public think he’s doing well as Labour leader, YouGov now find that only 17 per cent think he’d make the best Prime Minister. That’s his lowest score yet, and it compares to 41 per cent for David Cameron. But the way those numbers break down may be even more worrying for Ed. Only half of current Labour supporters say he’d be the best PM, and a minority — just 43 per cent — of 2010 Labour voters pick him. By contrast, Cameron has the backing of 97 per cent

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Why Ed Miliband’s PMQs slip-up matters

The exchange about rail fares in PMQs earlier was, it’s true, not one for the photo album. But the way it’s resolved itself this afternoon has been considerably more diverting. You see, it turns out that David Cameron was right: Labour did arrange for these fare increases when in government. And, what’s more, Ed Miliband was wrong: the coalition didn’t ‘reverse’ the cap on fares that Labour then conveniently introduced in the run up to the general election. That cap was limited to one year by the Labour government itself. It was always intended that it would expire on 1 January 2011, at which point — barring a new cap

Lloyd Evans

Ed Miliband lives to flop another day

Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche issue. Rail fares. He asked the prime minister why the operating companies have managed to hike prices by 11 per cent on the busiest routes. Cameron: ‘Because of a power given to them by the last Labour government.’   With that lethally terse response the PM sat down. To his credit, Miliband wasn’t rattled. But

James Forsyth

A fairly bland PMQs

Today’s PMQs was rather a bland affair. Ed Miliband started with three questions on train fares that David Cameron batted away, but there is a little row brewing over whether Cameron’s claim that he is simply continuing the policy of the last government is correct. Later, Miliband moved onto the safe territory of the Union and consensus broke out with only the half dozen SNP MPs dissenting from it. Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, then asked the PM a question that, in a preview of the SNP’s campaign tactics, was designed purely to get the words Cameron, Thatcher and Scotland into the same sentence. There were two other things

James Forsyth

Will Miliband use his lifeline in PMQs?

At the weekend, Tories were anticipating giving Ed Miliband an almighty kicking at PMQs. Lord Glasman’s description of Labour’s economic record as ‘all crap’ had given them a killer line. As one member of the Cameron circle joked to me, ‘we’ve never had more material to work with.’    But Ed Miliband now has a get out of jail free card. If he asks six questions about the Union and the referendum, it will be impossible for Cameron to have a pop at him without looking distinctly unstatesmanlike. On Scotland, the two leaders need each other. The Unionist side cannot win without the Labour party and the Labour party will

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband is No Teddy Roosevelt

This is, I know, a statement of the obvious but Ed Miliband is no Teddy Roosevelt. There are two reasons to be thankful for this. First, TR was really a ghastly man; secondly, if Ed Miliband were able to muster a quarter of Roosevelt’s brio he’d be faring rather better than he is. In the present circumstances, the opposition should be thumping the government every day. Granted, this requires more credibility than either Mr Miliband or Mr Balls can boast but the fact remains that a) George Osborne’s economic hopes have been vanquished by events and b) there is little substantive difference between his proposals and those made by Alistair

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s speech fails to excite

Was Ed’s Big Speech worth the extended wait? Not really. It wasn’t a stone-cold terrible speech, but neither was it the rambunctious, attention-grabbing number that his leadership could do with. In fact, we could have saved ourselves the effort by simply reading his New Year’s message again. That was considerably shorter, and covered almost all of the same ground. Squeezed middle? Check. Tackling vested interests? Check. An admission that Labour will need to cut? Ch… oh, you get the point. The best that could be said about today’s speech is that it presented some of these arguments more clearly than in the past. Indeed, the attack on George Osborne’s fiscal

Lloyd Evans

The anti-academies club

‘Anyone here from the Spectator?’ Last night a packed meeting at Downhills Primary in Haringey began with this ominous query from the chairman, Clive Boutle, who leads a local campaign against academies. Seated at the side of the hall I kept quiet. ‘No one?’ said Boutle, ‘Great, we’re safe.’ The meeting had attracted about 800 protesters and activists who oppose Michael Gove’s decision to force Downhills – a failing multi-ethnic school – to become an academy. ‘Michael Gove really hates us,’ continued Boutle, his manner urbane rather than menacing. ‘The government doesn’t like Haringey. There hasn’t been a Tory here since Noah was in short trousers. So we’re no risk.’

James Forsyth

Miliband tries to get his message heard

Ed Miliband is trying to do something interesting today. He is attempting to answer the question, ‘what’s the point of Labour when there’s no money left to spend?’ This is the problem that Miliband has been grappling with since winning the leadership and there’s no easy answer to it. It seems that today Miliband will give us more of a sense of the ‘new economy’ which he wants to see in this country. The test of the speech will be whether it gets beyond generalities about a long-term vision for an economy that is ‘fairer’. The challenge for Miliband will be to make his subtle message heard above the chatter

Monday

James Forsyth

Osborne the Unionist

There’s much chatter in Westminster today about the fact that George Osborne is chairing the Cabinet committee on Scotland. Osborne is, of course, the Conservatives’ chief electoral strategist as well as the Chancellor of Exchequer. This has led to some suggestions that he wouldn’t be too upset by a referendum defeat that would make it an awful lot easier for the Tories to win a majority at Westminster. This is unfair: Osborne is a Unionist. What those around Osborne have long been interested in is the option that the coalition seems to be ruling out: fiscal autonomy. The circle around Osborne have long believed that it is only when Scottish

Peter Hoskin

Enter, David Miliband?

‘Every day, in every way, it’s getting worse for Ed Miliband.’ That’s what I said last Thursday, and it has been more or less borne out since then. Friday, of course, brought that Twitter embarrassment. Saturday, the subsequent headlines, as well as Miliband’s unconvincing attempt to push back against them. Sunday featured some of the most vicious attacks on his leadership by Labour MPs so far. And even today we’ve got the sort of ‘helpful’ advice from a senior Labour figure — in this case, Alan Johnson, suggesting that ‘too often we sound like a debating society rather than a political party’ — that comes across as frustrated criticism. Forget

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Ed under siege — and under threat

There was a fun game we used to play during Gordon Brown’s premiership: counting the number of ‘buck up, or we kick you out’ ultimatums that Labour MPs delivered to their leader. There were, suffice to say, a lot of them. And tallying them up illustrated two things: the constant, sapping pressure that the Brown leadership was under, and Labour’s persistent inability to actually finish him off. I mention it now because of this story in today’s Mail on Sunday. It collects the increasingly public criticism of Ed Miliband by his own MPs, including Graham Stringer’s warning that ‘Ed has got to get a grip and turn it around before

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

The Miliband puzzle

So why did Ed Miliband stop his brother being leader of the Labour Party? As each month of his uninspiring leadership passes, it becomes more of a puzzle. In today’s Guardian interview, we learn that he can solve a Rubik’s Cube in 90 seconds. Perhaps David Miliband took two minutes, leaving Ed to regard him as being intellectually inferior. The rest of the interview shows Ed trying to row back towards positions that David Miliband would have adopted from the offset: trying to claim fiscal responsibility, and credibility. The ‘In the black Labour’ movement is also an attempt to repair the repetitional damage being wreaked by Balls, whose calls for

Jonathan Jones

Miliband comes out swinging

After being mostly absent in an embarrassing week, which culminates in today’s Sun headline of ‘Block Ed’ referring to the Labour leader’s Twitter gaffe yesterday, Ed Miliband has emerged with a self-assured interview in the Guardian. In parts, he is even boastful. Miliband declares himself ‘someone of real steel and grit’ and brags ‘I am the guy who took on Murdoch… I am the guy that said the rules of capitalism as played in the last 30 years have got to change’. He claims – contrary to Maurice Glasman’s criticism this week – to have ‘a very clear plan’ about what needs to change in Britain. And what is it

Friday

Peter Hoskin

The scale of Clegg’s Lords challenge

Tucked away on page 15 of today’s Times, there’s an insightful story about Lords reform (£) by Roland Watson. And it’s insightful not just for the new information it contains, but also for the familiar truth it confirms: reforming the House of Lords is going to be one helluva difficult task. You see, while both halves of the coalition committed to a fully- or ‘mainly-elected’ upper chamber in their respective manifestos, only one half of the coalition is particularly eager to force it through now. As the Times story says, Nick Clegg’s proposed Bill has already endured a ‘serious re-writing’ to make it more palatable all round, but even so: