Labour party

Who would have thought it? Miliband's short speech in Nottingham today went largely unheralded, and doesn't seem to be getting a whole lot of attention now — and yet it tells us more about his approach to Opposition than almost anything he has said previously. Fact is, the Labour leader is taking two risks that may be either bold or foolhardy, depending on your point of view. These risks could come to define his Labour party. The first is splashed right across the entire speech. Miliband dwells on three "challenges" that the country will face over the coming decade: the "cost of living crisis"; declining prospects for the next generation; and the erosion of the "Merrie Englande" that David Aaronovitch wrote about this week.

Last night, Portugal's parliament voted to reject its latest measures to deal with its deficit. It was the fourth time that the Portuguese parliament had been asked for more taxes and for more spending cuts. The result has been a further loss of confidence in Portugal’s ability to pay its debts. Market interest rates have risen to over 8 percent. European leaders are meeting this weekend to work out a path forward. The lessons for us here in the UK are starkly clear. First, it is better to set out all the difficult decisions needed to deal with the debt crisis, even if these take place over a number of years, rather than continually going back to ask for more. That the Budget was neutral overall shows that a clear plan is being followed here.

Ed Balls has just delivered Labour’s Budget briefing. His main point was that the Office of Budget Responsibility now forecasts higher levels of unemployment than it did last autumn. He claimed that this would lead to a £12.6bn increase in spending on unemployment benefit. He also argued that the decision to increase tax thresholds by CPI rather than RPI was an effective tax increase and that it will hit the middle hardest. In a classic piece of Ballsian mischief, he reveled in pointing out that the Office of Budget Responsibility says that it received news of the extra cut in corporation tax and the 1p cut in fuel duty too late to add to its model.

When trying to understand George Osborne Budgets, you need to bear in mind the mantra that he and his team live by: in opposition you move to the centre, in government you move the centre. It is this desire to move the centre ground that lies behind Osborne’s keenness to merge income tax and national insurance. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, the thinking behind it is that if people were more aware of how much tax they really paid, they’d be more inclined to vote for low-tax parties. At the moment, National Insurance is one of the taxes people are least aware of as it is simply deducted from their pay cheque. It is no coincidence that the most unpopular taxes—council tax, inheritance tax—are the ones that voters are most aware of paying.

Much excitement, today, about the fact that Ed Miliband is just as unpopular as Nick Clegg. A pre-Budget package by Ispos-MORI contains the finding that both party leaders are actively disliked by 51 per cent of the public. It's a striking result, particularly after the tuition fee furore — yet, sadly, it isn't new. It actually comes from the political monitor that Ipsos MORI released in January. They didn't ask the question for their March political monitor. So far as the Clegg-Miliband divide goes, the latest Ipsos MORI figures actually have this to offer us: net satisfaction with Miliband's performance as party leader is at -5 per cent, whereas it's at -22 per cent for Nick Clegg. So, not great for either leader, but considerably better for MiliE.

Ken Livingstone was out on the stump in Croydon yesterday. So far, Livingstone has not made any election pledges; his entire campaign has been founded on his past record as London Mayor. So, when can Londoners expect to hear what Red Ken plans to do, and how he intends to fund it? 6:30 into this interview with the Mayor Watch website, he said: “On the morning after the election, I’ll let you know.” Thirty seconds later, he repeated himself for clarity's sake.

I do feel for Nick Clegg. He’s taken an oppositionalist party into government, and they hate it. He is politically and psychologically prepared for what goes with power; grassroots LibDems less so. And this brings problems. Yesterday, he was complaining that his party is “too male and too pale”; but his main problem is that there are too few of any. At the peak of Cleggmania, the Lib Dem had 30 per cent of the the vote. Now it’s 10 per cent in the polls. If things continue at this rate, he won’t need a ‘ring of steel’ for his next conference: a phone box will suffice. So, what can he do? His speech tries to define a new word: ‘liberal’. He has this to say: 'For the left, an obsession with the state.