Ed Miliband should get the carving knife - this turkey Government is done

Ed Miliband deserves an extra spoonful of Christmas pudding this year.

The Labour leader skillfully set much of the political agenda in 2013.

He brilliantly made the cost of living crisis the overriding economic issue, not the return of growth after three wasted years.

And he stopped David Cameron disastrously plunging Britain into Syria’s bloody civil war, ­simultaneously halting President Obama’s cruise missile strikes.

Not a bad year’s work with his party retaining a stubborn if ­unspectacular advantage in the polls, the latest YouGov research putting Labour 6% ahead of the Conservatives.

Miliband’s vow to freeze energy bills remains a popular retail offer and put the Cons and their Lib Dem allies into a tailspin that they’re yet to end.

Nor is it the only attractive gift.

A living wage, closing the Bedroom Tax, curbing zero-hours contracts and building one million new homes are worth delivering.

But it’s valuable recalling ­Miliband’s silly blunders in the hope he’ll learn lessons.

The summer of silence, Labour packing up in August, was a gaffe.

His greater folly was panicking over Falkirk, reporting Unite to the police and distancing himself from the unions.

I laugh when Cameron, the first PM to lose a vote on war since 1782, calls Miliband weak.

He isn’t feeble but he’s prone to dithering and, as I discovered, ­thin-skinned. He also reacts ­petulantly to criticism.

Miliband should trust his values and ignore siren voices urging him to lurch Right-wards.


The Tory toff in Cameron gives Dave an inherited sense of ­entitlement and it’d be no surprise if he stuck an image of himself on top of the Chequers Christmas tree.

The Buller Boy’s a throwback to the amateur Prime Ministers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries – late starts, early finishes and tennis weekends.

No.10’s tenant is living proof that a belief you’re born to rule doesn’t guarantee you’ll be any good at ruling.

The Syria vote was truly humiliating, the red rage of a ­warmonger decommissioned by democracy, hilarious as well as serious politics.

Little Lord Fauntledave stamping his feet, blaming all around except himself, exposed a psychopathic isolation.

He ignored the warning signs but thankfully the British public, Labour rebels who stiffened Miliband’s backbone and a motley crew of Con and Lib Dem rebels did their duty for the nation.

If Cameron suffers indigestion sipping his port he’ll know a little about how millions are feeling.

People’s lives are getting worse as a direct result of the austerity he imposes as an article of ­Conservative faith, the deficit a smokescreen for a fearsome ideological project.

Low-paid, insecure jobs provide the human material for the rampant bosses that are on Cameron’s Christmas card list.

He doesn’t lose sleep that four out of five new jobs are in sectors paying less than £8 an hour – under £320 for a full week, barely £16,000 a year – because it’s central to the plan.

Cameron’s interested in the top line, the profits of squillionaires he gifted a huge tax cut.

The strongest growth in Britain is in poverty, low pay and inequality. Growth on the high street is the explosion of food banks, charity shops and loan sharks. Cameron’s henchmen George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith put the boot in, then add insult to injury by lecturing victims that it’s their own fault.

Osborne, one of Cameron’s posh boys, is the Scrooge who’d kick snow in Tiny Tim’s face instead of buying a turkey.

Downgraded in February when he lost the bauble of his AAA credit rating, Osborne’s a Chancellor who takes credit for everything and blame for nothing.

Santa should leave Osborne a tin of polish for his brass neck under the tree on Wednesday.

Year after year he missed official OBR growth targets, even when they were slashed; tax rises and spending cuts – especially in investment in schools and roads – throttling the 2010 recovery.

Osborne’s likely to go into the May 2015 election never beating the 1% economic growth of April, May and June 2010 bequeathed by Gordon Brown. His record on debt is worse than Labour’s, borrowing more in five years than Labour did in 13.

Again Osborne rewrites history, focusing on his latest fleeting target to clear the deficit six years from now. He’s banking on the nation collectively having the memory of a goldfish.

Labour bruiser Ed Balls is the opponent the Tories love to hate, but I’ve got news for gormless George. When he pulls the turkey wishbone and silently begs ­Miliband to give Balls a P45, he’ll be disappointed.

Two Eds are better than one, and the wrecking Balls will swing at the Tory Treasury all the way to the election.

There’s little left that I can write in a family ­newspaper about ­fantasist Iain Vanishing Thick, a hardliner who married into a house with a swimming pool and is contemptuous of the poor he creates. Dickens could’ve based an evil tale on the callous ignoramus.

Contortionist of the year is ­Sideshow Nick.

Clegg, Cameron’s Deputy Prime Minister, was once overheard by a microphone joking that the two chaps would have nothing to ­disagree on at the next election.

Now the Liberal Democrat leader pretends the coalition Government is nothing to do with him, ­highlighting differences where he used to focus on agreement.

Pretending to be on the side of the angels doesn’t wash when Tories can only be Tories, draining livelihoods and poisoning the NHS, because Clegg and his Lib Dem MPs vote for True Blue policies.

Discredited Clegg is the genuinely weak man of British politics. No Houdini, he’s tying himself up in knots.

And what will UKIP’s Nigel Farage wish for this Christmas?

The Turbo Tory immigrant-basher with the German wife leads a cult of his own personality.

I’ve never been to Farage’s home, you may be unsurprised to be told, yet I imagine he’s the type of ­egomaniac to keep a life-size ­cardboard cut-out of himself near the front door.

Farage will be hoping for another mirror when he wakes up on the 25th so he can spend all day admiring his hero: Nigel Farage.

Merry Christmas, everybody – even my enemies.



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   Great article!

It is and hopefully this government's turkey is well and truly stuffed.