Politicos were left bemused earlier when Diane Abbott, facing the media for the first time over her unwise race remarks, interrupted a live interview with Sky News to answer her mobile phone. Paul Waugh has revealed the phone call was from none other than Ed Miliband, with Labour sources claiming the Hackney MP was given “a severe dressing down”:
This must surely be the first time a leader’s “hairdryer treatment” phone call to a front bencher has been caught on camera.
Panic grips the broadcast press section, above, at the Labour Conference in Liverpool, as for a few minutes the live video feed of Ed Miliband’s speech vanished. In an accusation regularly levelled at party leaders, Ed was left literally talking only to conference, as broadcasters frantically struggled to return the Labour leader to the airwaves.
The loss of footage seems to have resulted from a power cut, and affected BBC and Sky News channels. The timing of the technical problem might yet provide fodder for conspiracy theorists, as the feed died while Miliband was attacking Rupert Murdoch.
An elderly Australian was sighted in the Albert Dock area carrying a large length of electrical cable.
Blue Labour guru Maurice Glasman fell asleep while waiting to meet Ed Miliband for the first time, Scrapbook can reveal. The academic was caught off guard by the energy saving lighting system at Miliband’s old Whitehall department, plunging the waiting room into darkness and luring the wonk into the land of nod.
The anecdote was leaked to Scrapbook from an advance copy of a new book on Blue Labour by Guardian and New Statesman hack Rowenna Davis. The launch is given added piquancy by its publisher, former LabourList editor Derek Draper, who seems to have inherited his former boss Peter Mandelson’s political hardiness.
But Liberal Conspiracy report the former spinner, now surely on the last of his nine lives, will be keeping his head down:
“sources say Draper will keep a low profile this time around [and] avoid interviews.”
Draper’s Ruskin Publishing may yet come to rival Iain Dale’s Biteback imprint, until now relatively unchallenged in niche-interest political publishing.
But it remains to be seen whether the Blue Labour brand can be revived from its own sickly torpor in the wake of its figurehead’s recent comments on immigration.
With a number of MPs planning to put their razors to one side this autumn, a petition has been launched for Ed Miliband to take part in Movember, the annual moustache-growing exercise in aid of men’s cancers:
“As someone who is influential and constantly in the public eye – the leader of the Labour Party ought to take part in Movember. Putting his pride to one side for the month of November, we would like the see Ed Miliband grow a moustache in order to raise awareness of prostate cancer in men”
Parliamentarians adopting soup strainers last year included John Healey, Michael Crockart, John Leech and Tom Brake. Click here to see Scrapbook’s pictorial evidence from 2010.
It would take a valiant effort from Ed to beat his shadow health secretary’s efforts.
So moved was MP and former heavy metal groupie Louise Mensch to see the apparent fall of Tripoli to rebel forces last night, that she used it as an opportunity for a cheap smear of Ed Miliband.
The Tory’s mediagenic rising star sent a tweet early this morning which claimed the opposition leader had treated the idea of a Libyan no fly zone as a subject of hilarity:
“Just tremendous. I remember Ed Miliband’s mocking Cameron’s call for a no fly zone at PMQs. This intl triumph owes much to PM’s leadership”
However, Mensch’s “memory” of this incident appears to be a rather imaginative work of fiction. A quick search of Hansard reveals no such mockery in any of the seven occasions Miliband has mentioned the no fly zone. In fact, he could hardly have been more supportive of the idea:
28 February: “We welcome what the Prime Minister said about a possible no-fly zone.”
14 March: “when the Prime Minister first publicly floated the idea of a no-fly zone two weeks ago, that we welcomed the possibility. It is disappointing that Friday’s communiqué did not mention it … it seems to us that the priority must be to translate the no-fly zone phrase into a practical plan.”
28 March: “I welcome the fact that the military operation to enforce the no-fly zone and protect civilians is showing signs of success.”
Miliband also mentioned the Western air blockade in the context of troop cuts and the initial scepticism of foreign governments such as the US — but even the most of creative of interpretations would not cast this as “mockery”.
Of course, Mensch is no stranger to making things up in the hope of dealing damage to her opponents. Just last month, she invented whole sections of former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan’s autobiography in front of the DCMS committee – for which she was later forced to apologise.
Perhaps someone should point out to her that Twitter is not covered by parliamentary privilege.
As the government struggles to control the phone hacking scandal, a survey published today puts Ed Miliband eight points ahead of the prime minister as public approval of David Cameron slumps to a four year low.
“Cameron’s satisfaction ratings have fallen and are his lowest since becoming Prime Minister (and lower than any of his ratings as leader of the Opposition since September 2007)”
The monthly tracker for Reuters asks a number of questions, including a crucial assessment of voters’ satisfaction with party leaders. While Miliband still has a negative rating, his handling of the hacking crisis has sees him up 7 points in one month while Cameron’s net approval has crashed, dropping by 13 percent.
Things are looking even worse for the Government as a whole, with only 29% of respondents expressing overall satisfaction.
That Nick Clegg is on minus 25 will be of little comfort to the prime minister.
PMQs saw David Cameron struggling to justify measures in the Welfare Reform Bill which will penalise cancer patients whose recovery means they are unable to work for more than one year. Ed Miliband made particular reference to lobbying on the issue by the charity MacMillan Cancer Support.
While emphasising that they wished to work constructively with the government to resolve the issue, MacMillan later told Sky News that:
“It was clear that David Cameron wasn’t on top of all the details.”
Presumably frustrated by Ed Miliband’s more assured performance, right wingers have instead launched a disgusting ad hominem attack on MacMillan representative Mike Hobday simply for doing his job. Along with hundreds of other staff in the charity sector, Hobday previously worked in a party political role.
But claims he is involved in some form of Labour Party “stitch up” unravel when we see that thirty other cancer charities wrote to Iain Duncan Smith in March, raising precisely the same issue:
“Proposals that ESA claimants who are expected to carry out work-focused activities will only receive the benefit for one year, without being means-tested, will hit cancer patients particularly hard.”
The letter was signed by:
Are we to believe these charities, rather than representing the interests of cancer patients, are pursuing some form of party political vendetta?
Kudos to the Predictable Paradox blog for exposing some potentially unparliamentary language during PMQs. Referencing the hitherto restrained use of private health providers under New Labour, Nick Clegg could be seen to lash out across the dispatch box as Ed Miliband took the government to task over the NHS this week.
To the untrained eye, the deputy prime minister appears to say:
“You were the ones who privatised it, you fucking bastard.”
Sat impotently alongside his political masters each Wednesday, the best Nick Clegg can come up with is the parliamentary equivalent of the naughty schoolboy’s refrain:
“But he started it, Miss!”
