Prime Minister Questions - 26th March 2014

In Wednesday's Prime Minister Questions, Ed's questions to David Cameron was mainly on the energy and gas prices. This was because one of leading gas company's decided to freeze its gas prices. 

This was one subject that Ed Miliband has campaigned heavily on. So now that gas companies are listening, Ed can really push is message about pushing for gas companies to freeze their prices. 

Ed did well again I don't think David Cameron had really prepared himself to answer questions on the energy. 

David Cameron made  little attempt to answer the questions put to him. He just really focused on personally attacking Ed Milliband and he will probably hope that this looks good to the wider audience.

Ed did well and hopefully he will carry it to the General Election and beyond. 

Spring Budget 2014 - Review

What stood out to me in George Osborne's budget speech was the parts on childcare, savings and personal tax allowances.  

This is George Osborne's  penultimate budget before the next General Election and to me everything he was offering today was about securing vital votes for the next General Election. 

George Osborne's  childcare proposals are welcome but for me and I am sure many families up and down this country it has come two years too late and do not really go far enough to alleviate the financial burden of childcare. 

Most economic commentators have described George Osbourne's increase of ISA annual limit to 15K as the 'rabbit in the hat'. 

Again I think it is a great initiative but stats show that people have started to save considerable less so raising the annual limit to 15k is great but not many people will benefit from it. 

Raising the personal tax free allowance  to £10,500 is also welcome and it means that very low income will get some additional financial help. 

But what George Osbourne's budget fails to address is the squeezed who are getting by on food banks and not much else. 

So the rather cynical side of me says that George Osbourne's will have mass appeal in the right demographic Tory voting areas. Only time will tell whether this appeal can be translated to votes on Election Day. 

Prime Minister Questions - 19th March 2014

In today's PMQ's Ed Miliband focused his two questions on the Russian/Ukraine crisis and mental health funding. 

The exchanges between Ed Milliband and David Cameron where pretty low key and this was due to the fact that the budget speech was due to take place after PMQ's. 

So neither Ed or David had the upper hand in today's exchanges. However some of the Labour back benchers asked the type of rhetorical questions which normally annoy David Cameron and made PMQ's a bit more interesting. 

So Ed gave another very assured performance but David Cameron managed to stay and look calm and collected so there was no obivious winner to me.  

UK immigration policy

As regular readers of this blog would note that I am not this current administration biggest fan.

 So when I reviewed the speech the new Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire made on immigration which included the controversial part about the rich elite employing foreign nationals. 

I couldn't believe the breathtaking hypocrisy, most of you will not have forgotten the recent advertisement that this administration run urging illegal immigrants to "go home".

We then find out that the Immigration Minister, Mark Harper, who sanctioned this advert was employing an illegal immigrant to clean his one bedroom flat. 

In the last week David Cameron, Teresa May and Nick Clegg have confirmed that they have employed foreign born nationals and two of which have gone on to get British passports. 

All this really means that the Tory chase for UKIP votes has backfired badly. What remains to be seen is whether it will matter when voters go to the polls this year for the European elections and next year General Election. 

Prime Minister Questions - 5th March 2014

In yesterday's Prime Minister Question Ed Miliband focused his six questions on the ongoing crises between Russia and Ukraine. 

It was a bit surprising as he could gone on various domestic topics like immigration or the resignation of the Downing Street adviser Patrick Rock.

It shows that Ed Miliband is not out to get cheap political points. As a mention of either of these topics would have been a guaranteed win. 

It probably might have impacted on how long David Cameron will stay in his job Prime Minister. 

I suspect that Ed is secretly hoping that David Cameron continues to stay in his job at least until General Election Day as he probably thinks he has a fair chance of beating him.

The actual exchanges between David Cameron and Ed Miliband was different to the weekly banter. 

It was not really about who came out on top but Ed's wise decision to avoid opportunistic wins.  

Countdown to the UK General Election

We are now fifteen months to the next General Election and things are beginning to hot up. 

The right wing media mainly the Daily Mail published articles about three senior Labour politicians Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt. 

It was mainly do with the roles in they had in the National Council of Civil Liberties and what they did or did do to get rid of affiliates the Paedophile Information Exchange. 

The Daily Mail run this story for about six days before Harriet Harman and her husband Jack Dromey responded. 

 

Although there response confirmed that they had nothing but contempt for this group. The Daily Mail have been determined to get some political capital out of this. 

I have to say that the Labour Party response was fairly late and it was somewhat a weak response. 

Ultimately if Labour want to get back in power they need up their game and be prepared for the mud slinging contest.

As the Tories aided and betted by the right wing media are ready sling some mud to get them reelected. 

If Labour want to get relected then they have to be prepared to fire back at the smears or sling some mud of their own.

Prime Minister Questions - 26th February 2014

In this weeks Prime Minister Questions Ed Miliband asked about the money being spent on flood defences and climate change. 

Both these areas are very sore point for David Cameron as the floods mainly affected areas that vote Tories.

 

During the floods it was quite evident many of these Tory supporters felt that the government response to the floods was inadequate. 

David Cameron gave is usual stock responses but you could tell that both questions really got under his skin. 

Ed Miliband has really upped his game and is doing a marvellous job and this has been reflected in the polls. 

He just needs to keep the pressure up and he is hoping that six point lead in the opinion polls will be reflected in the ballot box.