Tim Montgomerie He was elected by the trade unions. His party is funded by the trade unions and today Ed Miliband will march with the trade unions in protest at the Coalition's attempts to clean up the economic mess left behind by Gordon Brown (advised throughout by Ed Balls). In today's Daily Mail Stephen Glover […]
By Jonathan Isaby On the eve of the Budget, CCHQ has published a brilliant illustrated guide which puts into context just how appalling the economic legacy bequeathed by the last Labour Government actually is. It demonstrates how debt interest payments cost us more each day than many of the traditionally highest spending departments… …it highlights […]
Tim Montgomerie I've used my Sunday Telegraph Q&A column to look at Labour's electoral position. It's bright and sunny here in Salisbury so it might not have been a good day to deploy wintry metaphors but I argue that Labour's support may be as wide and narrow as the icy crust of a frozen lake: […]
By Jonathan Isaby Ever since the announcement was made last year, Labour have refused to accept that capping housing benefit at £20,000 per year is reasonable – despite the fact that people earning far less than that are currently paying their taxes to fund payments of housing benefit in excess of that amount. And whilst […]
By Jonathan Isaby On the day that Ed Miliband is to make a half-hearted attempt to rally support for adopting Alternative Vote in May's referendum, more than 200 Labour MPs and peers have launched Labour No to AV, making the case against changing the voting system. Three members of the current shadow cabinet have signed […]
Jesse Norman is Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire. We should expect some party-political knockabout before a Budget. But by any objective measure Labour's economic relaunch on Tuesday was a car crash. First, on substance. As my colleague Matt Hancock highlighted yesterday, the two Eds managed to promote a 2.5% VAT cut on fuel […]
Matthew Hancock is Conservative MP for West Suffolk and was Chief of Staff to George Osborne until shortly before the last General Election. Yesterday’s press conference by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls revealed a central truth about the Labour opposition. Not just the highly insensitive attempt to score a political point from the tragedy in […]
Tim Montgomerie More signs today that the Conservative operation is getting on the front foot and exposing the three major problems with Labour's economic strategy: Zero apology for the Brown legacy; Partisanship before national interest in opposing every saving that the Coalition is implementing; Chasing of headlines by making new unfunded spending promises and tax […]
Tim Montgomerie Are Labour MPs given a bonus for how many times they accuse Downing Street of "incompetence" in a single interview? In last week's Mail on Sunday James Forsyth explained how painting the Coalition as incompetent is central to Labour strategy: "Labour’s strategy over the past few months has been to paint the Coalition […]
Tim Montgomerie Ed Balls writes for The Sun this morning and recommends four things that the Chancellor should do in his forthcoming budget: "While he gave banks a tax cut compared to last year, they are now going to pay £800million more than this Government was planning. He should use the extra money to reverse […]
Tim Montgomerie The extent to which the Labour Party has become dominated by the trade union movement was underlined yesterday by the latest figures for giving to political parties (FT (£) report). 88% of the money received by Labour in the first quarter of Ed Miliband's leadership came from the trade unions. Not one private […]
by Paul Goodman The Justice Secretary wasn't the only politician on Marr earlier today. And he wasn't the only one called Ken, either. Livingstone (as some of us are more used to calling him) was also wheeled on, to review the papers in his case. Labour's London Mayoral candidate was presumably recovering from the "ProLondon […]
By Jonathan Isaby Earlier this week Paul Waugh revealed on PoliticsHome that Ed Miliband had instructed all his shadow ministers to clear all policy announcements, statements and press releases with his and Ed Balls' offices in order that Labour's spending commitments were "clear, costed and affordable". The letter to his colleagues stated: "Whilst we will […]
By Jonathan Isaby As part of the latest ConservativeHome reader's survey, aside from seeking the latest Cabinet ratings and pollong on other topical issues, we asked party members which of Labour's Shadow Cabinet they found to be most impressive. The findings – summarised in the bar chart below – show that Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls […]
by Paul Goodman MPs met on Monday to discuss the future of an All Party Group on Islamophobia. What took place sounds complex (according to reports) but was essentially simple. One body of Parliamentarians – all Conservative – voted for Engage to be removed as the secretariat to the group. Another body (mostly Labour) voted […]