Ed miliband

As a Doncaster resident, Lesley Garrett is well acquainted with her local MP Ed Miliband. However, the soprano was left disappointed by Labour’s effort in the general election. In an interview ahead of her performance in Garsington Opera’s production of Così fan tutte, Garrett — who is a loyal Labour supporter — blamed their election defeat in part on the party choosing the wrong Miliband brother to lead the party: ‘Yes. I think most people do. I think his brother had more experience, and a more authoritative voice. I think Ed was very good at what he did, and I think the two of them together would have been unstoppable. My big sorrow is that they

Patrick Wintour is one of the best political editors around. For the Guardian he’s been for decades a cool and well-sourced voice: even-handed, informed, interesting but in the best sense dry. So when I heard he’d written the most comprehensive behind-the-scenes account yet of Labour’s failed general election campaign I hurried to read it. I was not disappointed. ‘The undoing of Ed Miliband, and how Labour lost the election’ is an insider account of a chapter of accidents, starting with Mr Miliband’s memory lapse about the deficit during Labour’s last party conference. Apparently he shut himself in his hotel room afterwards and wouldn’t come out. The story takes us through to

The dissection of Labour’s election defeat continues with a very thorough series of pieces in today’s Times by Rachel Sylvester and Michael Savage. Describing Ed Miliband’s tenure as leader as a ‘five-year suicide note’, the articles look at the countless errors of judgment and mistakes made by both Ed Miliband and those around him over the last five years. Here are five interesting things we’ve found out. 1. Philip Gould warned Miliband not to turn away from New Labour New Labour’s renowned strategist and pollster Philip Gould warned Team Miliband early on that they were defending the wrong points of the last Labour government, including the economy: ‘Philip Gould was close to death and painfully weak with cancer but

Earlier this month Patrick Wintour wrote an in-depth profile of Ed Miliband’s failed election campaign for the Guardian. In it, he went through the different things which had gone wrong for the Labour Party in the lead up to the election. He began the piece by focussing on Miliband’s speech in September at the Labour Conference where he forgot to mention the deficit – a mistake that cost him later in the campaign. Wintour says that according to a Labour source, a late change to his speech to include Isis meant he was ‘off his game’: ‘He was not quite sure in his head where he was, so when he got to the

Everyone in Labour is having their say about where the party went wrong in the run-up to the election. But what if it’s still making the same mistakes as it tries to elect a new leader? At a seminar on Friday on Labour’s defeat, Ed Miliband’s policy chief Jon Cruddas fretted that the way the party was running its leadership contest was giving the Tories the same advantage they were handed by the same sort of contest in 2010 He said: ‘Last time round we embarked on… a leadership election which worked through the summer and allowed our opponents to redefine the terms of debate that were locked in for

Just in case you missed the memo, the reason Ed Miliband lost the election has now been revealed. Labour supporter and founder of the Twitter account @cooledmiliband, Richard Biggs, appeared on the Daily Politics to discuss the future of the Milifandom now their beloved leader has returned to the backbenches. Revealing his disgust at the result of the general election, Biggs declared that Miliband is simply ‘too good for this f—ing country’. An interesting take, but given the fact he turned the air blue, Mr S can’t see the Milifan being invited back by the BBC anytime soon.

One of the funnier moments of the election involved Ed Miliband assuming that a turban-wearing Sikh gentleman he met on the campaign trail would, naturally, be helping him get the Sikh vote out for Labour.  In fact, the man was a Conservative parliamentary candidate. It seemed to exemplify the extent to which Labour assumed ethnic minorities would vote for them – but all that is changing. New research from British Future shows that 1 million BME voters helped keep David Cameron in Number 10. This means that one in three minority ethnic voters supported the Tories, which is the party’s best result to date. I was brought up in a pro-Labour

The failings of those around Ed Miliband are numerous. From the Edstone to the interview with Russell Brand, the disconnection between Team Miliband and the real world was one of the key factors contributing to Labour’s defeat last month. But I now understand they committed a far graver crime: taking Dr. Eoin Clarke seriously. Clarke, or @LabourEoin as he is better known, spends his days tweeting poorly produced infographics about various public policy matters — mostly related to the NHS. With 42k followers, plus 25k through his ‘think tank’ @LabourLeft and 10.4k with @LabourAndy, he has a decent reach within the hard left. Although there are a group of Labour MPs who retweet

With Ed Miliband’s leadership hopes well and truly over, the Labour MP returned to the backbench today: Miliband could be spied on the BBC’s Commons cam in the corner of the Chamber, flanked by his former PPS Karen Buck. His return to the Commons also appeared to attract the attention of his fellow MPs in the Chamber:

Is David Miliband Labour’s prince across the water? The elder Miliband brother appears to be watching the leadership contest closely avidly from afar, without backing any particular candidate. Speaking to his friend Fareed Zakaria on CNN this weekend, he was keen to stress that he has no plans to return to British politics in the immediate future: ‘We don’t have a presidential system as you know well and I am leading the International Rescue Committee in New York. Already three candidates have declared in the UK and it’s obviously vital that Labour is able to provide the kind of modern progressive alternative that is essential in democratic politics. As in

A few months after Ed Miliband was elected Labour leader I met with one of his supporters in the shadow cabinet. Who, I asked, were ‘Ed’s People?’ He began reeling off a list of names. ‘Chuka Umunna, Peter Hain, John…’ ‘Chuka?’ I said. ‘But he’s walking round the Commons with a giant target on his back. They’re out to get him.’ He was, even then, the bookies’ favourite – which, in politics, normally means that you are a dead man walking. The shadow minister smiled. ‘Well, they haven’t got him yet.’ Well, now they have. Umunna has finally been cut down, withdrawing from Labour’s leadership race just three days after entering. There