We’ve heard that the business council will be announced later today, a body of the great and good to advise David Cameron. It will meet four times a year and there will be 20 business leaders from sectors that are “strategically important to the UK”. A list of some members is below — some of the more well known names include Sir James Dyson and Justin King of J Sainsbury.
But will it be little more than a talking shop? (Just think of Gordon Brown’s Business Council for Britain.) My source says the idea is that business will provide high level advice on business and economic matters in the UK, while the PM is also keen on setting up smaller advisory groups as part of his efforts to make sure each minister and department across business are listening and talking to business. Let’s see if it works.
Congratulations are in order for Chris Huhne. We’ve heard he has provisionally settled the energy department budget, winning him a place on the so-called “star chamber”.
This makes him the first Lib Dem spending department ministers to join the “Public Expenditure Committee”, the cabinet appeals court for the spending review. He attended his first meeting today, sitting alongside other “high achievers” such as Eric “thrifty” Pickles and Caroline Spelman. Six departments in total have now provisionally settled.
George Osborne was particularly keen to fast-track Huhne in order to balance out the star chamber, which was beginning to look a bit Tory heavy. Until now the only Lib Dem member was Danny Alexander, the Treasury chief secretary, who’s supposed to be in charge of putting the case for the prosecution. As one Whitehall official put it to me, there was a danger it would look like “Tories beating up on Lib Dems”.
Huhne’s settlement covers resource spending, rather than capital. While it is an achievement, it does not mean the battle is over. Some details have still to be nailed down and there are plenty of contentious issues in the energy department capital budget that may still go to the wire. This is progress for the Treasury, but there are some rather important loose ends to sort out, and not much time left.
You may remember that the last batch of numbers for 2009 exposed lots of officials spending time at race courses and plush hotels (something they insist were for boring conferences and legitimate work purposes).
Well, we haven’t looked through all the 2008 numbers, but someone has pointed us towards a few gems:
– The Audit Commission spent £13,000 at London Zoo and £16,000 at Newbury racecourse. Presumably conferences but I doubt any folk in Whitehall will be taking that presentational risk again.
– The DCLG spent £1,200 at the “All Star Bowling Alley”. Fun I’m sure. But for Thrifty Eric that is definitely a strike out.
There are various other items — including £180,000 for press clippings and millions of pounds on polling and PR — that are questionable. Some of it will probably have a reasonable and sensible explanation. But the crusade against waste will not be lost on officials.
Sitting by the fireside in a woolly beige cardigan, he said: “All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.”
Wouldn’t you like to hear Pickles giving the same cost-savings tips to the nation in a woolly jumper?
You can watch an interview with Miliband here on Sky. Meanwhile here is his formal resignation statement:
Dear Alan,
For nine years South Shields and the South Shields Labour Party have given me great support. I look forward to that continuing for many years to come. The extraordinary efforts of party members – from Shields and across the country – during my leadership campaign made me feel very proud indeed of our shared values and shared vision.
Ed Miliband has just released a letter to Nick Brown welcoming his decision not to run for chief whip – the job he had held under Gordon Brown.
The decision came after Nick Brown sought assurances from the new leader that he had his confidence; I’m told that the answer was no. Brown, MP for Newcastle East, won’t stand for the shadow cabinet and is now returning to the back benches. The word sweeping conference is that Rosie Winterton is likely to replace him.
Conspiracy theorists could see a bigger story in this; it has been reported that David Miliband would only take the post of shadow chancellor if Nick Brown was not the chief whip. Could this development herald David’s decision to stay after all? I wouldn’t have thought so. More logical is the theory that Ed Miliband would simply like to draw a line under the events of the past – which includes a clearout of some of the old personnel.
UPDATE: Nick Brown’s letter says.
“As you know I intended to stand for election as chief whip. During our meeting earlier today you indicated that you wished me not to do so. The chief whip must have the full confidence of the party leader. I fully respect your wishes and will no longer be standing for the position.”
FT sketchwriter Matthew Engel and I discussed over breakfast the best way for David Miliband to bow out; which now seems 99 per cent likely. Does he do a speech? A written statement? Some kind of pooled TV interview?
The former carries the risk of him overshadowing Ed once again. The second option may not be sufficient to satisfy the media hunger. So we are presuming the third option some time this afternoon – no doubt near the 5pm deadline by which time MPs have to say whether they are running for the shadow cabinet.
Matthew and I have come up with a formulation of words which would do the trick:
“It is with great sadness and only after days of deliberation that I have taken the difficult decision not to run for the shadow cabinet. With a heavy heart I have decided that it is the best thing for the party, my brother Ed and for the country that I remove myself from frontline politics to give the new leader the space to unite the party without constant media scrutiny of our relationship. I will remain an MP and look forward to spending more time in (where’s my constituency? DM) to spend more time with my hard-working constituents. This was not an easy decision. I have only great love and respect for Ed and he will be a strong and vigorous leader of the opposition and prime minister. I will enjoy having more time to spend with my loving wife and children.”
David Miliband’s advisers are confirming that he is leaving Manchester and is heading back to London. That is surely not the behaviour of a politician who is about to say he will run for the shadow cabinet and unite behind his brother. I could still be wrong – but it seems increasingly likely that he will quit frontline politics.
A key moment today, picked up by Channel 4, was when Ed Miliband criticised the Iraq invasion. David, stony-faced, refused to clap. He turned to Harriet Harman, politely applauding next to him, and whispered:
“You voted for it. Why are you clapping?”
She replied: “I am clapping because, as you know, I am supporting him.”
This follows yesterday’s moment when the brothers spoke after David’s triumphant speech. A lip-reader employed by Channel 4 (again) is sure that the younger brother said it was a very good speech: “I’ll be honest I thought it would be three or four minutes,” Ed said.
Your hosts are Jim Pickard (JP) Alex Barker (AB) and Beth Rigby (BR)
15.37 AB A few concluding points. This probably did enough for Ed’s team to be satisfied — it was a decent performance from a extremely difficult hand. It slowly won over the audience and by the end they were behind him. But it did seem as if they were willing him on, rather than being gripped by a compelling story. It certainly lacked the honesty that he said was important in politics. Most of the difficult issues were glided over. One passage stood out on education: Ed praised comprehensives but then pointed to an example of a poorly performing school that had been taken over and improved. Now, if you’re honestly making that point, why not mention the fact that is was probably an academy? Why miss out the name, if you are being straight with this Labour audience?
15:28 JP Time to wrap up. The judgment here – and from senior colleagues at the FT – was that it was a 6/10 speech at best. “At least he didn’t bomb,” says one. Ed started slowly with some bad anecdotes. There was no single narrative thread; he was too concerned to tick off a variety of subjects. It’s not clear where the heart of the speech lay – the only new line was his call to unions not to go on strike. Only at the end did his rhetoric pick up, with a rousing finale. Some colleagues thought that the anecdotes about his immigrant background was moving; others were not sure that it convinced. And maybe the whole thing was too long. Neither a failure nor a triumph.
15.25 AB One of the best applause lines in the speech was the Red Ed bit. But I’m wondering whether this was wise. Running through a list of insults — Red Ed, Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit, Forest Gump — and then saying “come off it” is not necessarily the best idea. It does a great favour to the hostile media. As most politicians are told when they start out in the business, the first rule of interviews is never to repeat a question, even if you want to say it is absurd. It gives people the quote they need. (JP Also, don’t admit that you sometimes find politics ‘depressing’. Your job is to inspire and lead.)
Several senior Labour figures believed, or at least hoped*, that Diane Abbott would not stand for the shadow cabinet. I’m not sure they will be universally delighted to find out – in a few minutes – that she is going to throw her name into the hat. Given her high profile, after running in the leadership contest, she is likely to get into the final 19 (especially given that at least 6 seats are guaranteed for female MPs).
Will Ed MIliband welcome her outspoken left-wing views when he is trying to shrug off the RedEd tag? Not necesssarily. And will she enjoy the discipline of having to stick to the party line on a specific policy beat? We shall find out.
Jim yesterday spotted the extraordinary number of spoiled ballots among the trade unions and affiliated organisations. More than 36,000 ballots were wasted — about 14.6 per cent of the votes cast in this section of the electoral college. The reason is that the voters simply failed to tick a box saying they supported Labour.
An absurd rule, I know. But did it make a difference? There was talk last night among some of the Ed Miliband camp suggesting this was an important factor. One aide claimed the campaign had managed to reduce the spoiled ballot rate in the unions backing their man. The ground campaign apparently handed out thousands of “how to vote” cards making clear that they vote wouldn’t count unless they ticked the box at the end. One Ed aide claimed the effort won them up to 6,000 extra votes. If true, it made a big difference to the result. Was it another Florida hanging-chad moment?
Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
Contributors
Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.
Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.
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