Tag: “Ed Miliband”

If there is one thing Margaret Thatcher liked it was a good argument; and if there was one place where she felt those arguments should be held, it was in the House of Commons. So whilst it is right and proper that MPs pay genuine respect to her strengths and achievements in Parliament today, and [...]

Below is a piece published by Portland and Labour List yesterday. Among the responses I saw was one suggesting that the problem with manifestos is the word manifesto. It does seem remarkable that so few people are interested enough to read the programmes for government being put forward by parties who could form the government. [...]

As David Cameron seemingly spends another weekend deciding whether, where and when to make his much vaunted speech on Europe … as the rest of us ponder the remarkable failure of leadership that has got him into a mess of his own making … as Ed Miliband rightly signals no truck with the idea of [...]

You did not have to be a genius to imagine there might have been a statutory element to the proposals brought forward by Lord Justice Leveson. Indeed, the longer the inquiry went on, the more his tone of questioning suggested such a move might happen. Certainly, by the time David Cameron gave evidence, it was [...]

It is not often that I give over this space to a Tory MP, let alone one who was closely involved in David Cameron’s failed efforts to secure a Parliamentary majority. However, as the bulk of the press seeks to shape the pre-Leveson debate in a way that suits their own political and commercial interests, [...]

Ed Miliband’s speech on mental health today is a significant – and good – moment in the campaign to improve understanding and treatment of mental illness in Britain. It is perhaps particulalry significant that this is his first major policy speech since he launched the theme of One Nation Labour at the party conference a [...]

So, to the excellent question I was asked at a software conference yesterday – is David Cameron doing anything right, does Nick Clegg have a future, and is Ed Miliband electable as Prime Minister? I ended up answering yes, yes and yes, but with varying degrees of caveat and qualification. For Cameron, the problem I [...]

To the Institute of Directors this morning and a speech to a large room full of experts from public and private sector, at a conference organised by software specialists KANA. It is always good to get an audience laughing before going into serious stuff like economic mayhem, political shambles and transport fiasco. So I told [...]

David Cameron is likely to feign indifference to Ed Miliband’s speech when asked about it, as he will be in the coming days. But he will be worried about it. When he PM was busy ‘decontaminating the brand’ of the Tory Party, there were a few notions that were central to that. One Nation was [...]

I missed Ed Miliband on the Marr programme and so, as is increasingly the case these days, I rely on twitter for a sense of how it went. According to some, Marr was a tad tougher than he tends to be on the other leaders, whilst the general reaction to Ed seems to have been [...]