MILIBAND AND HIS TABLET OF SCORN

Labour leader mocked for ‘acting like Moses’ over 8ft stone monument for No 10

ED Miliband was accused of hubris ‘on a Biblical scale’ f or unveiling an e i ght- f oot monument carved with Labour pledges t o be erected in t he Downing Street garden.

The Labour leader, who commissioned the giant slab of limestone despite polls being too close to call, said he would look out on it every day if he became prime minister.

Sources suggested the monument, featuring Mr Miliband’s signature and the Labour logo, could be installed in No 10’s rose garden.

Opponents claimed it had echoes of Stalinist architecture, with David Cameron saying it resembled a tombstone.

London mayor Boris Johnson declared: ‘Who does he think he is? Moses? Future archaeologists will gaze with bafflement at this waste of good stone.’

George Osborne said ‘the Milistone’ was worse than the ‘Sheff i eld r all y moment’ – Neil Kinnock’s triumphalist event that may have cost Labour the 1992 election.

Experts also cast doubt on whether Mr Miliband would be able to secure planning permission for the stone because No 10 is a Grade 1 listed property.

‘Any addition to a listed building – and the garden is part of that listing – would need listed building consent,’ said a spokesman for Historic England.

Mr Miliband’s monument might also fall foul of civil service regulations, which state that No 10 is a government property and not a vehicle for party political propaganda.

Rumours that the Labour leader intended to unveil a monument were initially dismissed as too absurd to be true.

But Mr Miliband duly appeared in a rainy car park in the marginal seat of Hastings to unveil the carved stone, which has apparently been months in the planning.

Posing in front of the monument, the Labour leader said his six promises have been ‘carved in stone because they won’t be abandoned after the election’.

‘I want the British people to remember these pledges, to remind us of these pledges, to insist on these pledges,’ he said.

‘If I am prime minister, I will keep our stone in a place where we can see it every day as a reminder of our duty to keep Labour’s promises.’

The stone featured commitments to control immigration, introduce rent controls, increase living standards, improve the NHS and ensure Britain is a country where each generation does better than the last.

It lacked any detail on how these would be delivered.

Aides told ITV News the stone might not be in place on day one of a Labour government since it would probably have to be manoeuvred over the Downing Street wall with a crane.

Chris Leslie, Labour’s Treasury spokesman, confirmed the plan was to locate the stone in the garden.

Even as it was unveiled, Mr Miliband’s deputy leader Harriet Harman was appearing on TV to insist the party was taking nothing for granted and ‘not measuring the curtains’ of No 10.

Tory Party chairman Grant Shapps said: ‘ This isn’t just measuring the curtains – it’s commissioning an eight-foot garden feature before people have even gone to the polls.

‘It’s hubris on a Biblical scale. It reminds me of the Ten Commandments. At Sheffield, Neil Kinnock got carried away in the moment – but this is something that must have been considered and planned f or weeks and months and signed off at the highest level.’

Asked what he made of the carving, the Prime Minister yesterday said: ‘When you are prime minister, a lot of the questions are questions about judgment, about the things you choose to do, the things you choose to

‘The SNP will take their chisels to it’

spend your time on. Putting up an eight foot six stone monument – a tombstone – in the Downing Street garden, I don’t think, if you’ve a problem with judgment, that’s going to help.’

Former Tory leader William Hague said: ‘Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP will take their chisels to Miliband’s vanity stone and write their own demands all over it.’

Last night, Labour spin doctors were in retreat – claiming the stone could be i nstalled in another ‘prominent’ location such as the party’s London HQ.

Fingers of blame were pointing at one of Mr Miliband’s senior aides, Torsten Bell, as the architect of the idea – although it was clear it had been enthusiastically approved by party leaders.

ED Miliband has a ‘ kind of Marxist’ philosophy that struggles to connect with ordinary voters, a supporter said yesterday.

Jason Cowley, editor of New Statesman magazine, said the Labour leader believed it was his destiny to ‘lead Britain in a different direction’.

And he warned he had an ‘obsession’ with the idea that people’s political and moral views could be changed through economic policy. He described the idea as ‘kind of Marxist’ and claimed it had been shared by Margaret Thatcher. He suggested Labour would do better with a more ‘pragmatic’ leader.

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