Ed Miliband ushers in Chinese New Year of the Rabbit

Anna and Labour's Ian McCartney

Ed Miliband ushering in the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit may not be an event a testosterony communications team might see yielding the best headlines, but I had a pleasant evening meeting him and other Labourites at the Portcullis House bash tonight (Thursday 9th February).

About fifty UK Chinese tucked into great dimsum (canapés to you with nobs on), including Chinese sushi (heh!), and chatted about politics.

My own concerns regarded the pitiful response from Labour over the deficit when the ConDem coalition were able to take the high ground and make their narrative the dominant, unassailable one: that Labour had created the deficit and that we all had to pay for it. Bankers? I see no bankers.

It's no good telling us the screeching silence was because energies were taken up with over-extended leadership contests and childbirth. No, the dog did not eat your homework, although it was a dog's dinner of sorts. It was your job to stay on top of the most important issue staring us in the face because you let in the Tories with your wars and screwed values: a fullscale assault on Labour's constituency — the working and middle classes — by the evil Bullingdon bullies.

Someone was asleep at the wheel.

Anyhow, I told Peter Hain that many of us were, ahem!, 'disappointed' with their performance, and a few minutes later, he returned from doing the room with new communications director Tom Baldwin in tow. Further fun was only terminated when Chinese for Labour Chair, the wonderful Sonny Leong who has campaigned tirelessly for the rights of UK Chinese, made a speech.

I chatted to Sir Comrade Ian McCartney, who has allowed his hair to grow and looks years younger since he stopped being an MP. He was knighted in October and apparently told the Queen she was dubbing him in the wrong month because he is, 'the shortest knight of the year'. Boom, boom!

I look forward to seeing whether Labour will wrest control of our services from the unelected Tories and their snivelling LibDem sidekicks, or allow us to be beaten into the ground as the modern Enclosures Act takes its toll. Fingers crossed but I'm not holding my breath.