Category: Labour

Ed Miliband ends the Baldwin controversy

July 20, 2011 2:54 pm by Kiran Stacey

Every time Labour raises the issue of Andy Coulson during a debate on phone hacking, someone from the Tory benches (usually Graham Stuart, for some reason) gets up to ask about his press chief, Tom Baldwin, the former Times journalist.

Baldwin has been attacked by the prominent Tory funder Lord Ashcroft for an investigation he carried out into Ashcroft’s finances, and been accused of illegally accessing his bank details.

Labour have pointed out that no wrongdoing has ever been found, and that his investigation was more clearly in the public interest than hacking into phones of celebrities and missing children. But to no avail – the questions about Baldwin persist.

Now Ed Miliband appears to have killed it, with one line: “Tom Baldwin’s line manager at the time was the current education secretary.”

Now any time a Tory MP wants to raise the issue, they may end up finding themselves discussing Michael Gove instead.

Cameron’s response? There was little more he could do than laugh along.

Tags: Michael Gove, phone hacking, Tom Baldwin
Posted in Conservatives, Ed Miliband, Labour, UK politics | Permalink

Is Labour coming close to calling for Cameron’s head?

July 18, 2011 1:08 pm by Kiran Stacey

Sir Paul Stephenson

Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation yesterday was a significant moment in the phone hacking affair: not only because of the fact of his resigning but because of what he said afterwards.

He made two subtle but important criticisms of the prime minister:

1) He said he had resigned in part for having employed Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World, who has since been arrested, but did not have to resign from the NotW for his part in the scandal. He compared this to Andy Coulson, who had been forced to resign, but was also given subsequent employment – by the prime minister.

Continue reading: “Is Labour coming close to calling for Cameron’s head?”

Tags: Neil Wallis, News International, Paul Stephenson, phone hacking, Yvette Cooper
Posted in David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour | Permalink

Watch BSkyB plummet

July 12, 2011 5:38 pm by Kiran Stacey

This is what happened to BSkyB’s shares just after the government announced it would back Labour’s motion on Wednesday calling for Rupert Murdoch to abandon his bid for the shares in the company he does not already own:

Labour officials tell us they think it would be “inconceivable” for Murdoch to continue his bid if there is a House of Commons majority against it. Investors obviously agree.

Tags: BSkyB, News Corp, phone hacking, Rupert Murdoch
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, Labour, UK politics | Permalink

How bad is phone hacking for David Cameron?

July 7, 2011 12:40 pm by Kiran Stacey

I wrote yesterday that David Cameron and the Tories in general are finding themselves on the wrong side of public opinion over phone hacking. Some think it is far worse than that.

Peter Oborne has written columns in both the Spectator and the Telegraph today ripping into Cameron and his government for their ties to News International. In a piece for The Telegraph headlined David Cameron is in the sewer because of his News International friends, Oborne says phone hacking will be as damaging for Cameron as Iraq was for Tony Blair. He says:

David Cameron, who has returned from Afghanistan as a profoundly damaged figure, now faces exactly such a crisis. The series of disgusting revelations concerning his friends and associates from Rupert Murdoch’s News International has permanently and irrevocably damaged his reputation.

Continue reading: “How bad is phone hacking for David Cameron?”

Tags: News International, News of the World, phone hacking, Rupert Murdoch
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour | Permalink

Tories look like they’re on the wrong side of public opinion on phone hacking

July 6, 2011 6:31 pm by Kiran Stacey

David Cameron did not have an easy PMQs today. Ed Miliband took the most of the opportunity and made him squirm over phone hacking at the News of the World.

There is no reason Labour should necessarily be making the running on this: it is essentially a non-political matter that politicians could unite behind to give journalists a good kicking. And that’s what Cameron tried to do: backing calls for a public inquiry into the allegations and inviting the other party leaders for talks on how that inquiry should proceed.

The problem is that he is on the back foot about other elements of this story: the bid by News Corp for BSkyB and his relationship with both Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks.

Continue reading: “Tories look like they’re on the wrong side of public opinion on phone hacking”

Tags: Andy Coulson, News of the World, phone hacking, Rebekah Brooks
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour | Permalink

Labour opens up a gap on the NHS, but Miliband tracks IDS

June 23, 2011 12:21 pm by Kiran Stacey

Good and bad news for Labour from this month’s political trends report by Ipsos Mori.

First the good news: The party is re-establishing a clear lead on the NHS – the issue on which David Cameron has worked so hard to win voters’ trust. Since March 2010, the percentage of people who think the Tories have the best policies on the NHS has gone from 24 to 21, while Labour has risen from 33 to 37.

Continue reading: “Labour opens up a gap on the NHS, but Miliband tracks IDS”

Tags: ipsos mori, Polls
Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Labour | Permalink

Questions on the government’s justice bill

June 21, 2011 6:04 pm by Kiran Stacey

Headlines about the government performing a U-turn on reduced sentences for offenders who plead guilty early risk distracting attention from the hole in the budget that has just been created by the move. It is a policy that throws up more questions than it answers, some of which are:

1) Where will the extra £130m come from? Government sources suggest it will be from probation and courts services. But where, and what effect will this have? Clarke was pretty vague in the Commons:

The savings are not coming from any particular area. We are achieving more efficiency. Half is coming from administrative costs. If there are any new policies I will come forward with them.

If half are coming through administrative costs, where is the other half coming from?

Continue reading: “Questions on the government’s justice bill”

Tags: Ken Clarke, Sentencing
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Home affairs, Labour | Permalink

Labour proposes speeding up pensions changes

June 21, 2011 10:46 am by Kiran Stacey

Yes, that headline is right. Labour, half the Lib Dems and some Tories have been calling for the timetable to raise the women’s state pension age to 65 and 66 to be delayed. This would avoid penalising 330,000 women who were expecting to claim their pensions up to two years earlier.

Labour admits this will cost money, so in order to pay for it, Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, has asked whether DWP has looked at bringing forward the dates on which the pension age is due to rise to 67 and 68 by two years.

It is a smart move in one way, as it avoids the accusation that Labour are full of uncosted economic policies. But it nullifies their argument that changing the system is unfair to those who suddenly see the goalposts move and their planned retirement fade into the distance. DWP officials say such a change could affect millions of people, not just the 330,000 hit by Iain Duncan Smith’s proposals.

Continue reading: “Labour proposes speeding up pensions changes”

Tags: Iain Duncan Smith, Pensions, Rachel Reeves
Posted in Conservatives, Labour | Permalink

More importantly – how are Ed Balls and Ed Miliband getting on now?

June 9, 2011 11:54 pm by Jim Pickard

Tonight’s Telegraph splash is in one aspect sensational: how on earth did they get hold of Ed Balls’ private correspondence? (UPDATE: He left the documents in his old desk at the Department of Education. Sir Gus O’Donnell is set to order an inquiry into the leak, according to Politicshome.)

In another, it is less so: The letters show that the Brownites were agitating to wrest Tony Blair’s hands from the keys to 10 Downing Street six years ago, if not earlier; this we already knew. Not least because it was a very public Brownite coup by half a dozen government aides, led by Tom Watson, who finally held the gun to Blair’s head and forced him to put a timeline on his departure. The poisonous relationships at the heart of New Labour has been well documented by Andrew Rawnsley and countless others.

Continue reading: “More importantly – how are Ed Balls and Ed Miliband getting on now?”

Tags: Ed Balls, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair
Posted in Labour, UK politics | Permalink

Private and company donations to Labour dry up

June 6, 2011 4:42 pm by Jim Pickard

We wrote this morning on page 3 of the FT about the drying-up of private and invidual donations to Labour in the six months to March 31. (ie the period covering Ed Miliband’s leadership). Part of the issue is that the party has no policy platform – given all policy is up in the air for two years – and therefore little to offer business other than criticism of the coalition. The other is that political donors are often rather fickle. Here is more of our analysis.

The crucial calculation we made was to look at donations for the same period for all of the last decade – excluding the two general election years. In a typical six-month period Labour used to get about £2.4m a year. This time it only received a tenth of that figure.

Only thanks to the unions (£4.7m) and state funding (£5.7m) is the party staying afloat.

UPDATE: I should point out, however, that the party is now getting an extra £1m-plus a year from the 70,000 people who have joined the party since the general election.

Posted in Ed Miliband, Labour, UK politics | Permalink

Labour level-pegging with Tories: ComRes poll

May 31, 2011 9:58 pm by Jim Pickard

The latest opinion poll by ComRes is far from heart-warming for Labour, suggesting that the party has lost its poll lead over the Tories for the first time in seven months. The survey was done for tomorrow’s Independent newspaper.

The poll finds that Labour support has dropped two points since the last ComRes survey to 37 per cent, putting the party level with the Tories, whose support has fallen by one point. Liberal Democrat backing has recovered by one point to 12 per cent.

Luckily for Ed Miliband he is still on honeymoon and therefore, one presumes, not reading political opinion polls. But at this stage in the cycle – new leaders usually enjoy a fair wind in their initial few months - you might expect him to be doing rather better.

Not least given that the coalition has announced huge cuts in public spending, unveiled an unpopular shake-up of the NHS and launched a quixotic* military campaign in Libya.

* Perhaps a bit unfair on David Cameron but there is very little public support for the Libyan campaign and still no clear endgame in sight.

Tags: comres, labour and tories level, labour lead, opinion poll
Posted in Coalition, Conservatives, David Cameron, Deficit, Ed Miliband, Labour, UK politics | Permalink

FT video: Miliband defends troubled AV campaign

April 28, 2011 6:21 pm by Financial Times

Two tests await Ed Miliband, Labour leader, and his party: polls across the country, and a referendum on the alternative voting system for which he is a principal campaigner. George Parker, political editor, talks to the leader of the UK opposition about the upcoming ballots, his call for a cultural change in the City of London, and the coalition government’s deficit reduction strategy.

Tags: AV, city of london
Posted in Ed Miliband, Labour | Permalink