Miliband ‘doesn’t know how the world works’

ED Miliband does not have the right ‘mind-set’ to run country and has an unrealistic view of how business works, a leading economist says today.

Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to the highly respected Ernst & Young Item Club, says he is ‘concerned’ about the prospect of a Labour government after the general election in May.

The former Treasury mandarin says ‘even Neil Kinnock’ would have been a safer pair of hands than Mr Miliband because ‘he knew the way the world worked’.

The unflattering comparison with the former Labour leader – who lost the 199 election to John Major – will delight Tories hoping for a similar result in May.

Mr Spencer says George Osborne’s plans to cut state spending to the lowest level since the 1930s will not lead to ‘Armageddon’ despite protest from the left.

‘The world has moved on from the 1930s,’ says Mr Spencer, dismissing claims from Labour and the unions that the Tories’ plans would cripple public services. He says whoever is Chancellor after the election will need to return Britain to the black and start paying down the national debt after two decades of borrowing.

The comments, in an interview with the Daily Mail, will come as a boost for Mr Osborne ahead of the budget next week.

Mr Miliband has pledged to ‘bring back socialism’ and is planning to raise taxes on business, high earners and owners of expensive homes.

The boss of chemist chain Boots has warned a Labour government would be a catastrophe and Mr Spencer says he is now also worried about the prospects of a Labour government.

‘This is the first election where I have not been able to wholeheartedly support Labour’s policies,’ he says.

‘Labour used to be quite concerned about the way the economy actually works. Labour’s heart has always been in the right place, no question, but they do have a little bit of a problem in understanding the way the world works.’

FOR many, Ed Miliband is remarkable chiefly as the wonk who so brutally stabbed his brother in the back. Now he emerges as something of a hypocrite, too, as he parades his wife and children for the cameras, welcoming the BBC into his spotless kitchen (has a meal ever been cooked there?) in an effort to boost his image.

Could this be the same Mr Miliband who declared last year that the ‘photo- op culture diminishes our politics’?

But such objections need not seriously affect his chances of becoming Prime Minister on May 7.

No, far more important is the verdict of nine out of ten company directors, polled by accountancy firm BDO, who say the Tories have the ‘most credible fiscal policies’ to support their businesses.

Significantly, they include the bosses of more than 1,000 medium-sized firms, the ‘producers’ Mr Miliband seeks to woo.

True, many voters are exasperated by the Coalition and impatient for change. But with the economy at last gaining strength, are we prepared to entrust it to a politician so overwhelmingly rejected by the people who make it work?

Let the last word go to Mr Miliband. ‘If you want a politician who thinks that a good photo is the most important thing,’ he said, ‘then don’t vote for me’.

After his invasion of his family’s privacy for the cameras this week, that could be his soundest advice yet. WITH risible Gallic pettiness, French President Francois Hollande – one of his country’s most unpopular leaders since the Bourbons – blocks a plan for a €2 coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Waterloo, the battle that freed Europe from Napoleon’s tyranny. Such a coin, he says, would undermine European unity and ‘risk engendering unfavourable reactions in France’. A bit like you, then, Monsieur Le Président. AFTER the Mail’s devastating exposé of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust on Saturday, a clutch of Labour luvvies has written to the Times, backing the body that funded Muslim fanatics, former Irish terrorists and anti-semitic groups. When figures such as Neil and Glenys Kinnock, Vanessa Redgrave and Baroness Kennedy speak up for the defence, isn’t it a sure sign that the case against the accused is proven? AS Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson awaits his fate, how galling it must be for the environmentally conscious, equality-obsessed, multicultural BBC to reflect that its most politically incorrect show is also its most successful.