Churchill, Mosley, Powell, Prentice, Owen, Berkeley, Taverne…There are the awkward men of principle. Those whose parties have changed radically. And the lost souls.
By Mark WallaceFollow Mark on Twitter. Back row: David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman. Standing in middle: Hillary Benn, Chuka Umunna. Front row: Fiona McTaggart, Tristram Hunt, Tessa Jowell. It's become a regular refrain from Labour ranks that the Tories are posh. The infamous Bullingdon photo, which Carla Millar today mimics above, is used as […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Never let it be said that the Daily Mail is incapable of squeezing every last drop of vinegar from the sponge. As I highlight in the newslinks below, the paper manages to cram into its headline reporting the Labour Deputy Leader's interview with Total Politics that she is: An […]
By JP Floru. It has nothing to do with Cameron riding horses or Osborne being the 18th Baronet of Ballintaylor and Ballylemon. Labour front men and women were and are from privileged backgrounds too: Blair was a boarder at the independent Fettes College; Harriet Harman has been called “a public school educated minor aristocrat”; Ed […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter. A photograph of one of the Miliband brothers. Some light relief… 23% of people see a photo of Ed Miliband and think it's David Miliband and 26% of people think David Miliband is Ed Miliband. 33% of voters correctly recognise Yvette Cooper as Yvette Cooper but 20% think she's […]
by Paul Goodman Whatever one thinks of the Wikileaks saga, the American Embassy's view of Gordon Brown, his potential successors (the Embassy doesn't seem to have spotted Ed Miliband) and his aides is irresistable. Gordon Brown "The US embassy in London wrote off Gordon Brown within a year of his arrival in No 10 after […]
by Paul Goodman Bad news day for Labour, with this morning's MP expenses fraud court judgement, and earlier detailed accounts of Harman's mauling at yesterday's Labour Parliamentary Party meeting. A lot's been written about why Woolas has so many Labour backers. He's a long-standing trade union operator with GMB connections. He's part of the big […]
Harriet Harman's response to the Budget was remarkable for the ferocity with which she went for the Liberal Democrats. The plain text does not capture the anger and loathing she demonstrated for the junior partners in the Coalition but here it is: "This reckless Tory Budget would not be possible without the Lib Dems. The […]
Honestly. Labour's Deputy Leader wants the rules for shadow cabinet elections to be changed so that 50% of members have to be female. The Press Association has the story. Tim Montgomerie 1pm: Crunching the maths, FT Westminster blog looks at the current number of Labour women MPs and concludes: "By proposing that half the cabinet […]
As I was passing through the precincts of the Palace of Westminster after lunch today, I was met with the sight of (almost) the entire female membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party posing for the cameras. It was the similar shot taken with Tony Blair after the 1997 election that launched the whole "Blair Babes" […]
Amazing recent news. It’s emerged that a very senior Shadow Cabinet member once said that sexually explicit photographs or films of children should be legalised – unless there was evidence that the child had been harmed. And at the time (the late 1970s), the spokesman was a senior figure in a libertarian group that wanted the […]
After interviewing Labour MP Jon Cruddas for this week's New Statesman, the magazine's editor Jason Cowley concludes that "he's in the race" to be Labour leader after the general election. Iain Dale has pointed out several flaws in this argument, not least the fact that there is an increasingly high chance that he will fail […]
The Christian campaigning charity CARE has issued a new report today to coincide with the Committee Stage in the Lords of Harriet Harman's Equality Bill. It concludes that urgent changes are needed to the Bill to prevent a serious clash with the Catholic Church and other religions over a number of issues. CARE is concerned, […]
Sky News are reporting that Labour deputy leader and Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman has pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention. A second charge of driving while using a mobile phone was apparently withdrawn. She was not in court for the hearing. Since the Telegraph reported that the maximum penalty she […]
Today's Sunday Times reveals that Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman's latest attack on the Conservatives will be to grotesquely distort the party's backing of marriage as rewarding "philanderers on their second or third marriages with tax breaks, while stigmatising former wives left to bring up the children." The piece states: In an early salvo in […]