Winner of the award for hypocrisy: Red Ed

WEEK one of the election campaign and the award for unashamed hypocrisy and incompetence is effortlessly won by Ed Miliband and Labour.

It was embarrassing enough to find that Ed Balls and 67 other Labour MPs – along with 37 Labour-run councils – had been employing staff on zero-hours contracts which Red Ed falsely claims ‘undermine living standards and family life’.

But yesterday they couldn’t even get their excuses in order.

The MPs said it was all the fault of the Parliamentary expenses watchdog, which forced them to use zero-hours contracts. Nonsense, said IPSA in a humiliating rebuke: ‘The MP is the employer – it is a matter for them.’ Meanwhile, it emerged that Red or Dead designer Wayne Hemingway – one of the ‘ high-profile supporters’ who signed a letter hastily cobbled together by Labour in support of its ill-judged crackdown – had used zero-hours deals.

The letter, of course, was a shambolic response to the fact 120 of Britain’s most senior business leaders (including six Labour backers) had issued a statement supporting the Tories and expressing profound concern about the impact of Mr Miliband’s policies on Britain’s future economic well-being.

Significantly, the letter was also signed by trade unionists and a millionaire wind farm tycoon who benefited hugely from the last Labour government’s ruinous obsession with green energy. So much for the sneering by Labour that it’s the Tories who are the party of ‘vested interests’.

As for the 50 ordinary ‘workers’ on zerohours contracts who signed the Labour letter, they included two wealthy Manchester University under-graduates, pictured on social media in black-tie, smoking cigars, and a Nigerian woman convicted of a £27,000 benefit fraud! Never mind Labour’s dishonesty in pretending there is an epidemic of zerohours contracts (only 2.3 per cent of the workforce have the deals and, of those who do, two-thirds – including many mothers and students – say they have no wish to work more hours.)

If the party is incapable of even vetting the people it is pitching into the heat of an election battle, why on earth should the public trust Red Ed and his frankly useless advisers to run the country?

But then none of them has ever had a job in the real world. All they are good at is spending other people’s money.