Party Lines: November 19th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today’s political events were dominated by the Lords. Firstly over the comments of Lord Young (an adviser to David Cameron) who told Telegraph journalists that we’ve “never had it so good”. Angela Eagle called for his head this morning, and by early afternoon he was gone. Also released today was the list of new Labour peers, including some surprising names, and Douglas Alexander urged IDS to come clean over reports that he mislead the house over housing.

Speaking to Sky News this morning, Angela Eagle called for David Cameron to sack Lord Young “before lunch”, and said that his comments claiming that British people “never had it so good” showed that he was out of touch:

“This is a man that has been personally appointed by the prime minister. The prime minister should recognise the insult and he should sack him and he should sack him today.”

“How can he give that advice when he’s so blatantly out of touch and dismissive of the fears and worries and real struggles that millions of people are going to have next year?”

Eagle got her way this afternoon when Young resigned, although Cameron took a number of hours to make his move, with the news breaking early afternoon. Ed Miliband took time out from paternity leave this afternoon to speak to the BBC about the resignation – and labelled the government “out of touch”:

“Lord Young is right to go. I think his remarks are frankly disgraceful and many of the people who are struggling up and down this country with the consequences of the recession that we had, the consequences of the spending cuts that we are seeing, will be insulted by his comments.”

“Part of what this government has to do is show they really do understand the consequences of the decisions that they are making and the way people are struggling every day in our economy. I’m worried that people like Lord Young indicate a government that doesn’t understand that.”

Miliband also described Young’s comments as “insulting” and said that a small business owner would think “what planet is this guy on?” in light of his comments.

Miliband had released a statement earlier welcoming Labour’s new peers, including outgoing General Secretary Ray Collins, Oona King and (perhaps surprisingly) his strategist Stewart Wood:

“I am delighted with the new Labour peers that will be joining our team in the House of Lords. They are all excellent appointments and they will be working peers who will actively hold the government to account.”

“They were chosen for their experience across a broad range of fields, and I am sure that they will add to the work of parliament.”

Douglas Alexander wrote to Iain Duncan Smith today, urging him to come clean on his use of statistics after embarrassing reports that figures he claimed in the House were supported by the ONS were actually from findaproperty.com. Douglas Alexander said:

“Iain Duncan Smith should be more careful about his use of statistics.”

“We want to have a grown up debate with the government about their policies but that requires confidence in the statistics used by the DWP.”

“He should now come clean and identify once and for all the true source of these statistics.”