PMQs: Miliband exposes Cameron vulnerabilities
It was no surprise that Ed Miliband led on the economy today, on the day that GDP figures showed a drop in output in the last quarter of last year.
The Labour leader’s questioning was more effective than usual. He has a new line that looks like it could pay off:
He and his chancellor are the byword for smug, self-satisfied complacency.
It certainly gives us all some relief from the previous ubiquitous epithet Labour applied to the prime minister and his party of “out of touch”. Read more
If tomorrow’s growth figures are bad, ministers will blame global instability
Chancellors have always seen the all-important GDP numbers a day before they are formally published, which makes any event involving the chancellor on that day a fascinating game of bluff and second-guessing.
So what could we tell from Monday’s press conference with George Osborne, which was ostensibly about the UK-India trade relationship?
Osborne walked slowly and confidently into the room, his head held high and smiling. But read nothing into that: others have commented before on how he always manages to grin, whatever storm he is facing. Read more
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Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT 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.
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