Uk politics

The Labour party held a briefing this morning for party campaigners on how they can follow up Ed’s speech on the doorstep. Activists had arrived at conference hoping for a simple message that they can sell to a voter in a dressing gown with their arms crossed and a sceptical expression on their face, and now they’ve got one: frozen energy bills. They were told that campaigning on energy bills wasn’t just something they can use on the doorstep this weekend, but a major digital and ground war campaign that is going to go on for months. The idea is to demand that David Cameron freeze bills now, using petitions.

Following the announcement of his plan to tackle rising energy prices — and the accompanying backlash — Ed Miliband has fired a warning shot at energy providers this morning, suggesting unless they get on board with his proposals, they will be seen as part of the problem, not the solution, by their customers. Here is the full text of his letter: ‘In recent years we have discussed the need to rebuild public trust in the energy market many times. I think we all agree on the importance of that objective if we are to build a market that both delivers for consumers and underpins the investment in future clean energy

Far be it from anyone to criticise a party that wants to build more homes, but Ed Miliband’s plan to announce in his speech that Labour would build 200,000 new homes a year by 2020 isn’t a particularly interesting one. It’s not that it’s not a good idea to fix our broken housing market, but that politically it’s a reasonably predictable move. Which probably means it’s a good thing, and it certainly fits in with the party’s cost of living drive. But there is another policy being unveiled today that’s more interesting because it tells us something important about the way Labour relates to groups and organisations around it. Labour

Every morning throughout party conference season, we’ll be providing our pick of the fringe events on Coffee House. We’ve reached the third day of Labour’s annual conference in Brighton, and as the saying goes, the early conference bird catches the fringe worm. There’s plenty of past and present frontbenchers making appearances, on a variety of topics, throughout the day: Title Key speaker(s) Time Location Governing from the Left: Economic competence… Margaret Hodge 08:00 Lancing 1, Holiday Inn Returning to growth: How can Britain build a stronger economy? (invite only) Lord Adonis 08:00 Brighton Media Centre Value and values: What is a One Nation business model? Tessa Jowell, Toby Perkins 08:00

Ed Balls has just taken the scalpel to HS2 in an interview with Steve Richards. He talked about the project having ‘huge fiscal implications’ and questioned whether the ‘benefits are really there’. He then went on to stress that the question was not just whether HS2 provided value for money, but whether it was the best use of £50 billion. As he emphasised, £50 billion could be used on other transport projects or new housing, hospitals and schools. One could see Balls gleefully contemplating just how much fiscal wriggle room cancelling HS2 would give him. Now, Balls did say that Labour had not reached a final decision on what to

I was at a funeral on Friday and so late catching-up with the latest entertainment provided by UKIP. But, gosh, thank heavens for Godfrey Bloom. Not just because he and his ilk have injected some welcome craziness into British politics – the circus always needs new clowns – but because by doing so they have reminded us of the stakes involved. Bloom – last heard decrying aid squandered on feckless Bongo Bongo Land – one-upped himself with his talk of sluts who fail to clean their kitchens properly. Sure, there was something refreshing about hearing Nigel Farage admit all this amounted to a disaster for UKIP but the bigger point is that