Tim Montgomerie The nation may not have quite decided but I get a sense that the commentariat have decided that Ed Miliband isn't up to the job. There have been some devastating pieces about the Labour leader recently. Iain Martin in today's Mail (scroll down this link) wonders if Saturday's rally was Ed Miliband's William […]
Tim Montgomerie Quotes from Ed Miliband's historic speech yesterday, comparing his anti-cuts crusade to the struggle of women for votes, black Americans for equality and South Africans against apartheid… "We come in the traditions that have marched in peaceful but powerful protest for justice, fairness and political change. The suffragettes who fought for votes for […]
Tim Montgomerie Ed Miliband used his speech to today's TUC march to compare the struggle of public sector workers to the campaigns against apartheid, for women's votes and for equality in segregated America. The man has no judgment or sense of history. Sky and BBC didn't stick with his speech for long but offered split […]
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 […]
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: […]
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 […]
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 […]
Tim Montgomerie The Sun has been making grumpy noises about the Coalition for some time. It's been complaining about the Coalition's Afghanistan policy, the tax on petrol, the balance struck between civil liberties and security and, most of all, crime and sentencing. Last week the newspaper called for Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, to be […]
by Paul Goodman The Daily Telegraph's Andrew Porter has the story. Team Miliband clearly tried to pulp what's clearly a public relations embarrassment. However, they weren't entirely successful – "But those hoping for enlightenment from the 35-page pamphlet entitled My Fresh Ideas will be disappointed. The pages are blank. "The glossy booklets, produced for a […]
By Jonathan Isaby I've only just got round to properly reading the whole Piers Morgan interview with Ed Milband in the latest issue of GQ magazine. Piers spends much of the interview taunting him about "doing over" his elder brother in the leadership election, and during one such passage the Labour leader makes a statement […]
by Paul Goodman Today's Guardian story about Ed Miliband's young people-centred speech today leads on his plans to involve non-party members in its leadership election. "Labour is to look at broadening its electoral base by offering the chance for Labour sympathisers, and not just members or union levy payers, to be given a vote in […]
by Paul Goodman Perhaps the most pressing political question about Ed Balls is: will he treat a clearly distrustful Ed Miliband in the way that he treated Gordon Brown…or Tony Blair? Will he toil to put Labour's leader in Downing Street, as he did for Gordon Brown – and settle for being Chancellor of the […]