Uk politics

So Ed Miliband really is going to pick one of the bigger battles of his leadership. After Lord Fink demanded that the Labour leader withdraw what he said about the peer at PMQs or to repeat it outside the House of Commons, I've spoken to a Labour source who says: 'These are very serious allegations in the Guardian about Lord Fink, including his complex arrangement to minimise tax. He still has not justified the reason why he's made these arrangements. He should do so. 'David Cameron must explain whether he is happy to have appointed Lord Fink as a treasurer. Then it will be up to the public to judge.' Miliband is going to repeat his allegations outside the Chamber, as soon as he is given the opportunity to do so.

Labour is launching its women’s campaign tomorrow, and Guido has discovered that part of this special campaign is a special battle bus. A pink bus. A pink bus with ‘Woman to Woman’ on it. This is odd, from a party whose MPs are quite keen on campaigning for gender neutral toys and which lent its support to the Pink Stinks campaign. Where will the pink van go? To shopping centres and nail bars? Perhaps it will offer manifesto manicures, where the party’s pledge card is stuck onto acrylic nails so that women can’t forget about what Labour is offering - because as the No campaign in the Scottish independence referendum reminded us, it’s pretty difficult thinking about Big Things when you’ve got the housework to do.

After the Scottish referendum campaign, the Union could probably have done with a period of calm. But it is not going to get it. Who gets to form a government at Westminster after the next election could turn on what happens in Scotland and how many seats the SNP wins. This fact is making both Labour and the Tories behave in ways that are damaging to the Union. Jim Murphy, the new leader of Scottish Labour, has decided to try and show that he is prepared to pick fights with London too, in the hope that will take some of the wind out of the Nationalists’ sales. Hence his deliberately provocative boast that via the mansion tax Labour would ‘tax houses in London and the South East to pay for 1,000 new nurses in the Scottish NHS. It’s a real win-win for Scotland.

With every week that goes by, the more likely it is that the next election could result in a stalemate with neither Labour nor the Tories able to put together a deal that gives them a majority in the Commons. One Downing Street source, who has crunched the numbers, predicted to me last week that, because of what is going on in Scotland, the Tories will be the largest party on 280-odd seats. But if the Tories have only 280-odd seats, even deals with both the Liberal Democrats and the Democratic Unionists wouldn’t give them a majority. But Labour wouldn’t be able to stich one together either. For, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, the Lib Dem leadership would not put Ed Miliband into Downing Street if he came second in terms of seats and votes.

Andy Burnham’s interview in The Times today lays down several markers. He praises Len McCluskey, declares that trade union funding is best for Labour, slates Alan Milburn, criticises Peter Mandelson for being relaxed about people getting filthy rich and distances himself from the Blairite mantra that ‘what matters is what works.’ It will, to put it mildly, do nothing to discourage speculation that he is preparing to run for the leadership on a left-wing ticket if Labour loses the election. To be fair, Burnham is frank in this interview that he has changed his mind on various subjects. As he puts it, 'There was a period in the 80s and 90s and the first decade of this century when people said the market has the answer to everything and I honestly don’t think it has .

So far in the run-up to this election, we've had Ed Miliband saying he feels 'respect' whenever he sees a white van, and now Tristram Hunt clarifying that he didn't want to offend nuns. Damian covers the Labour Shadow Education Secretary's comments here, and today Hunt did the inevitable and clarified his comments. On BBC QT I was trying to make a generalised point about the use of unqualified teachers in schools. I obviously meant no offence to nuns. — Tristram Hunt (@TristramHuntMP) February 6, 2015 Which other groups can we think of that politicians might have to apologise to following social media outrage? In an election campaign where tiny slips leave MPs suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous twitter, anything is possible.

If you want an illustration of just how damaging tribalism can be in politics, look no further than this Westminster Hall debate, held yesterday. Labour's Lisa Nandy had organised it, which was on ‘effects of government policy on UK poverty’, partly, it seems to raise some stories from her constituency about benefit sanctions that had been unfairly applied, and partly, presumably, to take a few party political pot shots at the Tories. That’s fair enough with an election coming up, and it would have been fair enough for the Tories in the debate to defend their record robustly. What doesn’t seem to be fair enough or indeed at all sensible is the response that Tory MP Mark Spencer offered to a specific case that Nandy listed.

How did he get away with that? We’re assured that somewhere inside Labour HQ there toils a crack team of sleuths, analysts, Cameron-watchers, policy-fetishists and high-IQ saboteurs who spend all week devising Miliband’s Wednesday assault on the prime minister. And yet these world-class strategists seem to get beaten every time by the most predictable of dodges. Cameron doesn’t even prepare his defence. He just makes it up on the spot. Today Miliband went for the big one: hit Cameron with corruption charges. Or as near as damn it. The government has spared hedge funds from the duty payable on share dealings which is levied on all other financial players. The sums saved amount to well over 100 million quid.