Ed Miliband aims to engage non-voting youth with Russell Brand encounter
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Version 0 of 1. Ed Miliband is seeking to shift up a gear in his election campaign with the broadcast of a surprise conversation with comedian Russell Brand about the value of voting and a warning about the threat to living standards posed by Conservative spending cuts. The Labour leader agreed to be interviewed on camera by the iconoclastic comedian, who has previously urged young people not to vote, in a video that had been due to be released this weekend until he was spotted visiting by a neighbour of Brand’s in east London on Monday night. Those who have seen the film of the discussion say it is a serious political interview in which Miliband refuses to give ground. In an excerpt released by Brand on Tuesday, Miliband said many voters shared his outrage over multinationals who use complicated tax arrangements to minimise the amounts they pay, and assured him: “We’ve got to deal with that.” Related: Stop the sneering – Ed Miliband’s best route to young voters is Russell Brand | Owen Jones The Labour leader added: “It can be dealt with, but you’ve got to have a government that is willing to say there’s something wrong with this and we are going to deal with it.” And when Brand asked him “You are that government?” Miliband responded: “Yeah.” In the 35-minute interview, due to be cut to eight minutes and broadcast on Wednesday, the two men discussed whether change was achievable through democracy rather than direct action and whether elected politicians have the power to confront corporate vested interests. Miliband said on Tuesday that he profoundly disagreed with Brand’s previous declaration that voting did not make a difference. Brand is not registered to vote, but an endorsement by the comedian with his 9.5 million Twitter followers could persuade some younger voters to go to polling stations and convince sceptics that Miliband is not the cautious conventional Westminster politician of repute. An endorsement would represent a volte face for Brand, but it is said he believes in the urgency of stopping Cameron’s re-election. Miliband insisted: “I’m going to go anywhere and talk to anyone to take that message out to people about how we can change this country so it works for working people again. I say to all of the politicians in this campaign, here is the danger: the danger is that politics is being played in an increasingly empty stadium. “If we don’t recognise that, if we don’t engage in different ways with the people who aren’t engaging in this election, then we will have fewer and fewer people voting.” Conservatives claim Miliband’s visit to someone like Brand is not prime ministerial and amounts to a public relations disaster. On Tuesday, David Cameron denounced the encounter as a joke, arguing “he says ‘don’t vote’, that’s his whole view, don’t vote, it would only encourage them or something. That’s funny, it’s funny. But politics and life and elections and jobs and the economy is not a joke. Russell Brand’s a joke. Ed Miliband, to hang out with Russell Brand, he’s a joke.” At a Wednesday presentation in London, Miliband will try to persuade the electorate to focus on the scale of the welfare cuts certain to hit voters, including £3.8bn of cuts to tax credits, leaving a family with one child losing £1,600 a year once their incomes reach £23,000 a year. With the media frustrated by the lack of access to high profile politicians in the campaign, Miliband is due to host a press conference, taking questions alongside shadow chancellor Ed Balls and shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves. Miliband will say millions of family budgets are at risk from a second-term Tory government planning to double the pace of cuts next year. He will promise that Labour will allow working age tax credits to line at least in line with inflation. He will say: “No government led by me will cut the tax credits that working people rely on while giving tax breaks to the richest. Instead, a Labour government will raise them at least in line with inflation in every budget”. Independent thinktank the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which has unimpressed by the opaqueness of all the main parties’ tax and spending plans, expressed its frustration that the Conservatives had given no details of how they would cut £12bn of welfare by 2017-18, a move that will take working age welfare spending to its lowest level since 1990-91 as a proportion of GDP. It estimates that the welfare cuts will involve a 10% cut in working age welfare. Setting out the scale of the Conservative challenge, the IFS says the Tory plans require George Osborne to deliver around £10bn of cash cuts to benefits in the first two years of the next parliament, compared to £15bn of cash cuts over the whole of the current parliament. The most that the coalition managed during the last parliament over a two year period was less than £8bn from 2011–12 to 2013–14. The IFS says: “More than two years after first announcing a desire to cut £12bn from the social security budget in 2017–18, the Conservatives have provided details of just a 10th of this. It is hard to see how such savings could be achieved without sharp reductions in the generosity of, or eligibility to, one or more of child benefit, disability benefits, housing benefit and tax credits.” The Conservatives have doggedly refused to specify how these cuts will be achieved, leaving Labour to claim that the cuts are likely to fall on tax credits including for those in work and that families earning £12,000 or more would lose at least £500 a year. The Brand controversy overshadowed the screening on Tuesday night of a Labour election broadcast heavily focused on Miliband, directed by Paul Greengrass. The film is relatively conventional given the pedigree of the Oscar-nominated director, the man behind Hollywood blockbusters The Bourne Ultimatum, Captain Phillips and United 93. |