Tag Archives: jonathan freedland

Stephen Tall

Ed Miliband’s speech: 5 thoughts on what it means for Labour, Tories, Lib Dems and the 2015 election

By Stephen Tall | Wed 25th September 2013 - 3:45 pm

Ed MilibandI listened to, rather than watched, Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour party conference yesterday. On the up-side that meant I missed the three hammy mid-speech standing ovations (shades of IDS c.2003); on the down-side it accentuated the peculiar whooping of some of the more excitable delegates (calm down, it’s just a politician talking). In its own terms — getting noticed for its content rather than simply as an impressive no-notes memory feat — it was an undoubted success. Matthew Parris in The Times rather brilliantly captures the flavour:

Crikey

…

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 26 Comments
Stephen Tall

How the Westminster Village media is still struggling with concept of coalition

By Stephen Tall | Wed 21st July 2010 - 6:40 pm

It can be surprisingly easy to excite some journalists. Today is a case in point. Nick Clegg stood in for David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions. During his exchanges with Jack Straw (who was standing in for Labour’s Harriet Harman), the Deputy Prime Minister referred to the invasion of Iraq as “illegal”.

To most people watching this is not a surprise. The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Iraq war, which was supported by both Labour and the Tories, is pretty well-documented, I think it’s fair to say. The fact that the Lib Dems and Conservatives have reached a coalition agreement does not alter the past, nor does it alter politicians’ individual views. Why should it?

And yet the response from some journalists has been to label this a “gaffe” – a term otherwise known as a politician saying something he believes which a journalist hopes to be able to spin into a story.

Indeed, it’s interesting to see how a story like this can develop.

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Posted in Op-eds and PMQs | Also tagged , , , , and | 56 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Jonathan Freedland – Trust me, I’m Nick Clegg: How the also-ran stole the show

By NewsHound | Wed 5th May 2010 - 2:10 pm

There’s a fascinating on-the-campaign-trail profile of Nick Clegg by Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian highlighting quite how extraordinary has been the Lib Dem leader’s breakthrough in the 2010 general election, completely outshining both Gordon Brown and David Cameron:

In little over three short weeks, Clegg has gone from a face barely recognised outside the Westminster village to a phenomenon. Where once his party had to beg for attention, he now has to fend off questions not just from a British press pack at last treating the Lib Dems with respect, but from CNN and a clutch of other foreign reporters, who

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Posted in General Election and LibLink | Also tagged | Leave a comment
David Allen

Opinion: Losing in the Class War

By David Allen | Fri 19th February 2010 - 9:20 am

There’s a class war going on.  So the Tories tell us.  They treat it with distaste.  But they rather seem to revel in doing so.

It’s all about one man, David Cameron.  So the Tories tell us.  It’s all about the disgraceful proposal from Labour that we should vote against Dave simply because he went to Eton.

Pause for breath.

Labour, let’s face it, make a pretty implausible bunch of class warriors these days.  As Blair put it, they are all middle class now.  Recently, the Tory press pilloried Harriet Harman as a class warrior when she dared to point out that Labour …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 47 Comments
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