Labour party

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. But a

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

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. Not only is

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

When he took on being shadow Chancellor, Alan Johnson said that he would need to get hold of an economics primer. Judging by his comments in yesterday’s debate about the bi-lateral loan to Ireland, he hasn’t got that far into it. Johnson told the House, ‘The euro had nothing to do with the [Irish] property boom and bust’. This is a bizarre statement. If Ireland had been able to set its own interest rates, they would have been far higher and thus dampened down the property boom. As Johnson’s close friend and the former Chancellor Alistair Darling said later in the debate when asked if he agreed with the Shadow

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

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

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

If this morning’s papers are anything to go by, Nick Clegg is in freefall. The man who was the Lib Dems’ biggest electoral asset is now a magnet for all sorts of political digruntlement. Exhibit A: the Ipsos MORI poll (£) in today’s News of the World, where 61 percent of respondents say that they don’t trust Clegg, compared to 24 percent in April. He has gone from being “the most trusted politician since Churchill,” to one of the least since … well, ever. It is no small irony that the leader who sailed most capably on the winds of “change” and “new politics” in the TV debates has, whether