The Staggers: Ed Miliband

It was little reported but Ed Miliband welcomed David Miliband's elegant, cogently argued and stimulating essay last week on Labour's direction.

We all believe it is right that the Labour Party as a whole talks about how we deliver fairness in tough times. Even if the Westminster bubble wrongly sees this as division we should encourage a genuine debate be heard through the din.

So let's try. ... read more

Since he became Labour leader, Scotland has often been a weak spot for Ed Miliband. His decision to turn last year's Holyrood election into a referendum on the coalition proved disastrous and he was famously unable to name all three of the candidates for the Scottish Labour leadership. But his speech in Glasgow today on Scotland and the Union was one of his most impressive to date.

Buoyed ... read more

The fair capitalism debate that has rumbled on throughout this week looks likely to continue into the next one.

Business Secretary Vince Cable is delivering a speech on Tuesday on the subject of executive pay. (The coalition thinks some of it is too high, or rather, it isn't adequately indexed to commercial success.) Cable is speaking at an event hosted by the Social Market Foundation think tank, although Chuka Umunna, shadow ... read more

Unlike Tony Blair, Ed Miliband has never sought to define himself by picking fights with his own party. Miliband and Ed Balls's admission that Labour would have to keep most or even all of the coalition's cuts was not an attempt to antagonise the trade unions but an acceptance of fiscal reality. As I wrote this morning, George Osborne will leave the next government a deficit of at least ... read more

As another less than stellar week for the Labour leadership draws to a close, it seems to me that the Labour Party has become -- and I mean this as a compliment -- the West Ham United of British politics, and this will be the saving (at least until the electorate get a say) of Ed Miliband.

The Tory Party, by contrast, act like the trigger happy Premier League Chairman for ... read more

Amid Ed Miliband's fraught exchanges with John Humphrys on the Today programme this morning there was a flash of new policy. For the first time, Miliband suggested that Labour would consider freezing (or means-testing?) the winter fuel allowance in order to reduce the £79bn deficit George Osborne will leave. He told Humphrys:

What does that mean in concrete terms? Let me give you an example. We ... read more

Ed Miliband might have been hoping for a new start to go with the New Year. But, so far, 2012 has provided no let up for the Labour leader.

In last week's New Statesman, the Blue Labour thinker Maurice Glasman summed up many of the doubts currently circulating:

On the face of it, these look like bad times for Labour and for Ed Miliband's leadership. There seems to be no strategy, ... read more

A newscycle focussed on the short-term is a disincentive for politicians to look any further than scoring as many points as possible in the days, even hours, ahead. Breaking news, Twitter; a constant stream of reaction and counter-reaction leave little time for analysis or original thought. The Westminster version of this is PMQs. Good political theatre, proof that the protagonists have quick wits or quick-witted gag writers, but it does ... read more

A new year has deepened old splits. This week Ed Miliband's guru Lord Glasman politely excoriated the party for seemingly having "no strategy". If anyone thought it was a direct attack on Ed Miliband, they missed the point. It was a thinly veiled assault on Ed Balls and the shadow chancellor's associated vision for the state.

Glasman is not alone. Labour MP Jim Murphy reached out to join him ... read more

As a coda to what must rank as one of Ed Miliband's worst weeks ever, here's a screengrab of his (now deleted) tweet from a few minutes ago. It never rains but it ... read more

The media, like nature, abhors a vacuum but this week Ed Miliband has created one. As a result, the void has been filled by Maurice Glasman's critical New Statesman article, Diane Abbott's tweet and Tom Baldwin's leaked memo, all stories, in their own way, that are damaging for the Labour leader.

Even Jim Murphy's pledge to accept £5bn of ... read more

We live in perplexing political times. Ed Miliband delivers a conference speech praising the best of British business in the highest possible terms, and is dismissed by so-called Labour bloggers as an anti-business leader. Long-time anti-racist campaigner Diane Abbott is denounced on national television for racial stereotyping through Twitter. And now Maurice Glasman writes an article for the New Statesman calling on Miliband to deploy the gifts that only ... read more