What a difference a week makes

In an era in which party conferences are supposedly of diminishing importance, Ed Milband's speech was perhaps the exception that proves the rule. This morning's YouGov poll has Labour maintaining a post-conference 14 point lead over the Conservatives, with a 45% vote share. This is small but significant shift compared to immediately before the Labour conference. Most notably, Ed Miliband's personal ratings are well up, and now approaching positive territory after many months in the doldrums.

This is mirrored in a poll by Survation, which found the number of people seeing Miliband as 'statesmanlike' almost doubling since last week (albeit from a low base). At the same time, Opinium has shown Labour maintaining (or possibly slightly increasing) its double-digit lead over the Tory Party.

Although much of the increase in Miliband's personal ratings are from Labour-supporting respondents, this isn't a bad thing at all for the opposition leader. Until recently, one of his underlying weaknesses has been the fact that many Labour supporters expressed unease about his leadership. Rallying these voters around him means that he may well have strengthened the Labour vote itself, avoiding a potential melting away of the vote as the election nears.

One of the most striking things about the speech, though, was the effect on the commentariat - and notably the fact that it won plaudits from everyone from the trade unions to the Spectator. Below are some of the many post-speech pieces that have all but ensured that Ed is now the safest of the three party leaders.

Ed Miliband’s speech verdict: a resounding success (Spectator)

Ed Miliband has just pulled off something that few politicians achieve (Daily Mail)

Ed Miliband takes a lesson in belief from Tony Blair (Telegraph)

Ed Miliband's breathtaking bravura and a One Nation stroke of genius (Guardian)

Today he gave an outstanding speech, without notes or text, a performance that was assured and confident, engaging and near-faultlessly delivered (BBC)

The most confident and fluent speech of his leadership (Daily Mail)

Ed Miliband's One Nation claim is cheeky, but David Cameron has a fight on his hands (Telegraph)

Five thoughts on Ed Miliband's speech of his life (Liberal Conspiracy)

Ed’s speech owes as much to Danny Boyle as it does to Disraeli (Political Betting)

Ed Miliband stole the Tories’ One Nation mantle today in a barnstorming speech without notes (Standard)

A triumph for Ed: the best leader’s speech ever? (Left Futures)

So much for the Tories’ 'secret weapon’ (Telegraph)

Boris' vanity bus project costs London dear

Other bloggers, who have been admirable in their dissection of the vanity project that is Boris Johnson's new 'bus for London', have already pointed out the spiralling cost of the scheme.

The aim of the new bus project, for those not familiar with the background, is to continue Johnson's grand plan of replacing perfectly good and practical buses (that carry lots of passengers) with smaller ones that look nice from the outside for his core constituency of passing Chelsea Tractor drivers (and pretend journalist Andrew Gilligan, of course).

Anyway, in further developments shocking to those that have lived underground in a bunker for the last 4 and a half years:

• the cost of the scheme is now a pretty jaw-dropping £160 million for 600 buses - or over £75,000 more per bus than existing ones cost the London taxpayer. Oh, and unlike normal buses, London will be unable to sell these on, which means TfL - and not bus operating companies - will have to pay the costs upfront. 
• neither the Evening Standard and Taxpayers-and-definitely-not-a-Tory-Party-front-organisation-Alliance have made much of a fuss.
• the cost of having conductors on the bus will mean TfL will have to divert funding from other projects to the tune of £37 million per year to the scheme, on top of other costs. 

Why Cameron, Osborne and Lansley are so desperate for a Boris victory in London

An earlier post highlighted just how symbolically important the Mayoral election is on the national stage - the reactions of David Cameron and Andy Coulson sum up how much Tory candidate Boris Johnson's victory in 2008 meant to them

Well, this time, it means even more. The Conservative Party are currently trailing badly in the polls. They are lurching from one crisis to another. And, in between the staggeringly incompetent reforms to higher education and the jaw-dropping right-wing reforms to the NHS - of which voters where given no warning prior to the 2010 election - the Government are well on their way to alienating many of the key professions.

It is almost certain that the Conservative Party will get bruised at the local elections on 3 May. It is also likely that they will continue to suffer badly from the fall-out from Osborne's disastrous economic strategy, from the unravelling of Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms and from the aftershocks of years of Cameron's cosying up to the Murdoch empire now coming back to haunt the Party.

However, there is one chink of light, one symbolic contest, on which all Conservative hopes are pinned - on the contest for Mayor of London. This high-profile contest would give senior Tories enough of a victory to allow them to press on unhindered with their programme of government.

In policy terms, the two main candidates for Mayor are in fact fairly traditionally split between left and right, with Ken Livingstone focussed on housing, public transport, education (and in particularly the EMA) and energy bills; Boris, meanwhile, has a limited manifesto reflecting his right-wing small-government outlook, with his most noticeable policy being more public spending cuts (as if Osborne's strategy needs accelerating).

For these reasons, an awful lot rides on Tory Mayor Boris winning to protect Cameron, Osborne, Lansley and colleagues from further pain. Don't want to take my word for it? Then how about the press:

City AM: "Defeat for Boris 'would be lethal' for Cameron and Osborne"


Daily Mail: "A Boris victory is the only thing that can save the Tories now"


Evening Standard: "Conservative ministers desperately need a Johnson victory in London"


Guardian: "If the London Mayor wins again, it will be hailed as a triumph for the Conservative Party"


Political Betting: "The big hope for the Tories now is that Boris hangs on in London"


Telegraph: "If Boris loses it will become Cameron’s Black Friday... Johnson is the final bulwark between his party and a complete rout"

Daily Mail: "Boris is out to win, and he could just save Dave's bacon"


Guardian: "Johnson's London Plan is the vision of a complete and utter1 Conservative... Boris is a facilitator of Tory policies in housing, welfare, transport and crime that are worsening London's woes" 

StandardWatch: bankers, fares and 'barons'

The last couple of issues have seen the Evening Standard continue its effortless impression of a very detailed Tory Central Office press release, with two new articles on why our Mayor is absolutely brilliant at everything and a few on why his opponent is really, really rubbish.

So, we get treated to a ratings agency and a 'financial commentator' lecturing us on why we aren't entitled to vote for lower transport fares. The 'commentator' in question is actually a merchant banker at the brokers BGC, to whom the Telegraph refers as the "man wheeled out often as the sole voice willing to justify the City's existence" during the financial crisis.

Now, there is something utterly baffling in hearing representatives of the City (hugely to blame for the financial crisis) and spokespeople from ratings agencies (so woeful in predicting the crash) lecturing the public on responsibility.

And, there is something quite galling about hearing the very rich and the even richer telling the public that they should have to pay ever higher public transport costs whilst many of the former wouldn't know what the inside of a bus looks like (we could go into the fact that many of these exact same people presume to lecture bus users on why a perfectly good and large bus should be replaced by a very expensive smaller one in the name of outside aesthetics, but we won't do it here).

Nevertheless, the irony of all of this washes right past Sarah Sands and her fellow true-blue travellers at the Standard, and instead we get a typically anti-Ken headline bellowing out at us. Like all good Standard headlines, this one is no doubt sandwiched between a set of articles fawning over the latest party held by the impossibly posh daughter of some impossibly rich daddy and/or a 'lifestyle' piece highlighting the tribulations of some impossibly posh young couple struggling to find a suitably expensive property in central London.

Hang on, you are probably thinking, just the one article in a few days backing Boris? Of course not - for the Standard has to fill its quota of Ken-baiting articles in the absence of the daily ramblings of Andrew Gilligan. So, onto a glowing piece about Boris, proud defender of the defenceless CEOs of large London-based multinationals, hedge funds and stockbrokers.

In this version of the reality, the Standard bemoans the "union barons" funding Ken's campaign "prompting concerns he could be held to ransom by the Tube unions if re-elected".

Never the mind the fact that the significantly larger sums Boris continues to receive from the City (no 'barons' there, of course) might beg the same question as to the willingness of Mayor Johnson to challenge vested interests in the financial sector.

No, never mind that. That would require a sense of proportion, of balance and a basic understanding of the lives of the millions of Londoners that the Evening Standard claims to represent.

Even an art auction is a chance for the Standard to attack Ken

The Standard is continuing its daily march back into a Pyongyang-style mouthpiece for the incumbent Mayor, even approvingly reporting on Boris' defence of the hard-done by folks living in properties with seven-figure values.  Yet another example of the Evening Standard demonstrating how far removed from most people's reality it now is.

Today was no different, with an article that managed to turn an art auction for the Livingstone campaign (attended by the usual high profile left-leaning art figures) into an excuse to attack him. Hence an auction that raised £15,000 is reported in such away that allows them to stick the boot into the former mayor by highlighting the difference in the amount of money raised by the most recent one to that raised in a similar auction held in the run up to the last mayoral election.

The fact that the difference in revenue raised between this week's auction and the one held four years previously was down to one particularly valuable Banksy being picked up in 2008 barely gets a passing mention.

Anyway, the Standard is a whisker from repeating its track record in 2008 - only avoiding it through a tad more subtlety. Having true-blue Sarah Sands as acting editor is hardly going to change matters. Maybe later in the year they'll run another 'Sorry' campaign...

The Evening Standard's re-run of 2008

Is it a fair accusation that the Evening Standard is slipping back into its 2008 role as a propaganda sheet for Boris Johnson?

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so lets have a look at today's Evening Standard web site and see what you think:

The Standard: Fair and Balanced