Analysis: Ed Miliband minor stands up to the bullies and wins the day

AT THE outset it looked as if Ed Miliband would be on the receiving end of a bit of a beating from the ageing school bullies at the top of the Conservative Party.

With his patrician bearing and public school sneer, George Osborne did a pretty fair Flashman impression when he presented his Budget yesterday.

For Miliband minor, the bad news was that the ragging began long before Osborne stood up to speak. As the Tories’ head boy, David Cameron was keen that the Chancellor should not have a monopoly on cruel invective.

At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Cameron used a planted question about ill-health and employee absence to tease the Labour leader for missing a political event because he had been feeling a bit poorly.

“We do have a problem of a sick-note culture, and the problem can sometimes go to the very top,” Cameron said. “The leader of the opposition pulled a sickie and three hours later was at a football match.”

In fairness to the wretched Miliband, he should be commended for making it to the football. Most boys with sick-notes from Matron are desperate to skive games.

How the Labour leader must have wished for another matronly epistle yesterday when Osborne took over Cameron’s mantle of tormentor-in-chief. As if flicked by a wet towel, Miliband was stung by an insult that had Tory members in joyous, if pathetically sheepish, uproar.

Announcing a tax-break that will help firms like the animator Aardman remain British-based, Osborne looked at Miliband and Ed Balls and proclaimed: “I want to keep Wallace and Gromit exactly where they are.”

But leaving aside Miliband’s alleged resemblance to the Aardman comic creation, the Labour leader responded in true Tom Brown fashion and overcame Flashman’s beastliness.

Osborne’s plans to cut the tax rate for those fortunate enough to be earning more than £150,000 per year persuaded Miliband to stand up for himself (as well as those in the dormitory to whom a £150,000 salary could hardly be imagined – even after lights-out in their wildest dreams).

“This is a millionaires’ budget that squeezes the middle… it is the government’s very own bankers’ bonus,” blasted an impressive Miliband. No longer was he a victim of the school bullies. He was standing up to the arrogant ruling classes.

Likening the government to the upstairs characters in Downtown Abbey, he said Cameron’s cohorts were “a group of out-of-touch millionaires, who act like they are born to rule, but turn out not to be very good at it.

“We all know that it is a costume drama, but they all think it is a fly-on-the-wall documentary.”

By now the worm had turned as Miliband turned to the government benches.

“Hands up in the Cabinet, if you are going to benefit from the income tax cut?” he said.

At that point, the fixed stares and frozen body language on the government benches suggested that it was Cameron’s mob who could have done with some Wallace and Gromit-style animation.