Arnie Graf, the man Ed Miliband asked to rebuild Labour, was kept waiting for an hour for a scheduled meeting before party election mastermind Spencer Livermore deigned to see him. Rudeness is a political weapon and a snout, cringing at the discourtesy, contrasted Old Ed with New Ed. Old Ed hired Graf, a mentor to Barack Obama when the future US president was a community organiser in Chicago, to revive the grass roots. New Ed’s latest best friend from America is David Axelrod, as Miliband’s team grabs power at the centre. Graf has been around the block a few times but he is, I’m assured, frustrated by the paranoia and politicking at the top of the Labour Party.
“I am recruiting for this year’s Lords v Commons full-bore rifle competition,” the 12th Baron Lucas emailed peers. “If you, or anyone you know who is connected with the Lords, a total novice or an experienced shot, would like to participate, please put them in touch with me.” There’s nothing like an Old Etonian hereditary to remind us that the House of Lords hasn’t changed that much.
David Cameron’s increasingly dictatorial style is irking Tory backbenchers. One MP recounted how the whips had vowed to make his life a misery and blame the poor chap personally if the party loses next year’s election. “We believe in one man, one vote democracy in the Conservative Party,” he grumbled, “and David Cameron is the man with that vote.”
The arts minister Ed “Hazy” Vaizey listed the pictures in the British embassy in Tehran when it was ransacked by rioters in 2011. Among the portraits of Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V was a picture of the deposed shah of Iran. Talk about a red rag to an Iranian mob.
Belated word reaches me of a London fundraiser for frontbencher Lisa Nandy’s Wigan constituency. Miliband’s policy guru Jon Cruddas was the guest speaker. Surveying the crowd drawn from the party’s left and right, he joked: “Here we are, in a room full of Progress people and Compass people. What others don’t understand is we are united by one thing: we all hate the Brownites.” Shadow cabinet meetings would be enlivened if the roguish Cruddas were placed between Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper.
Stop press: Ed Miliband might have avoided his Sun scorching if he had been better informed, reading newspapers instead of posing with a promo copy. For a man who claims to eschew public
prints, he has earned quite a reputation for griping to editors about journalists penning disobliging articles. I can’t help but wonder if the complaints are undermined by his not reading the papers he complains about.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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