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Miliband visits Crystal Palace for his small business message

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Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, is in Crystal Palace today to show that, while the Conservatives are the party of big business, his party is backing small business.

Ed Miliband: visiting Crystal Palace

Accompanied by Streatham MP and his shadow business spokesman Chuka Umanna and Lambeth South MP Steve Reed OBE, Miliband will be highlighting Small Business Saturday.

Crystal Palace, through its local chamber of commerce and Transition Town, has established a thriving and successful street market, recently launched a Christmas-themed pop-up shop to promote local producers, and is today distributing thousands of copies of a booklet about businesses and shops in the area.

Miliband’s call for a fuel price freeze has dominated the national political agenda for two months, and today’s events will seek to position Labour on the side of new and growing business, where fuel costs has a significant impact on the bottom line.

A poll released by Ipsos Mori on Friday, based on interviews conducted after Thursday’s autumn statement by the ConDem chancellor Gideon Osborne, found that 42 per cent of respondents thought that the package of measures was bad for them; only 15 per cent said they thought it was good for them.

Ipsos Mori also found 40 per cent said they agreed with shadow chancellor Ed Balls’s claim that Osborne was in denial about the cost of living crisis, while only 24 per cent said they agreed with Osborne that his long-term plan for economic recovery was working.

That poll follows analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that backs Labour’s claims that people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.

Labour’s plan to freeze energy bills has generally been presented as a measure to help householders, but Miliband will argue that it could also save the typical small business £5,000 a year.

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