Ed Milliband has shown himself to have ‘no strategy and little energy’ in his role as leader of the Labour Party. A par for the course insult if thrown at him by a Tory hack; a pretty hard punch below the belt if thrown by someone who is supposed to be on his side; the comments were made in an article written for the New Statesman by Maurice Glasman one of his former advisors.
Among the criticisms aimed at Ed Milliband by Lord Glasman are that too many ‘old faces from the Brown era still dominate the shadow cabinet and they seem to be stuck in defending Labour’s record in all the wrong ways.’ As a result the party ‘has not won and shows no signs of winning the economic argument’ and in general Labour have failed to ‘articulate a constructive narrative’ about its policies that takes ‘the argument to the coalition.’
The party, Lord Glasman says, show ‘no relish for reconfiguring the relationship, between the market and society. The world is on the turn, yet we do not seem equal to the challenge.’
He concedes that Ed Milliband has done well when it comes to holding the party together after a crushing defeat in the 2010 general election, but that as leader of the opposition he has failed to ‘break through’ and has ‘flickered rather than shone and nudged not led’; Red Ed has, he concludes ‘not exerted his power. It is time that he did so.’
There are a number of ways to interpret Lord Glasman’s comments all of which are, to some extent correct.
This could, for example, be one of those acts of staggering ingratitude that are such a prominent feature of political life. Ed Milliband elevated an obscure academic to the lords on his election as parry leader only for the peer formerly known as Maurice Glasman to turn on his benefactor when he was at his lowest political ebb and, having first covered him with BBQ sauce, begin waving his arms to alert the vultures circling over his leadership that a free buffet has just opened in their neighbourhood.
There is also the small matter of Lord Glasman having a ‘theory’ to peddle; he is the leading light of the annoyingly named ‘Blue Labour’ movement. A project that seeks to revive the party’s flagging fortunes by returning it to a sepia toned, and not at all accurate I should think, version of the past when a quiescent membership allowed an intellectual elite to decide what sort of Jerusalem should be built on England’s green and pleasant land. His star waned more than a little when he made some ill thought out comments on immigration and all of a sudden the guru started to sound more like just another saloon bar grump. Attacking an already damaged party leader might then present an opportunity to move the debate on to less embarrassing territory.
The sad, but unavoidable, truth is that Ed Milliband has proved to be a dud as party leader. He landed a few good punches over the phone hacking scandal and Labour have won by-elections under his leadership, but overall he has presented himself as out of touch, hesitant and not up to the challenge.
The danger though lies in the dissatisfaction articulated by Lord Glasman and felt by many Labour MPs with the current leadership translating into a campaign to replace him with the wrong sort of leader. A sort of Blair 2.0, maybe in the shape of Yvette Cooper or Chuka Umunna with rising star Rachel Reeves thrown into the mix as a wildcard, who will somehow persuade the public that Labour cuts are kinder than Tory ones and that the atomisation of society is nothing to worry about.
It won’t work; in fact it could push Labour even further into the political wilderness. Lord Glasman is right the world has turned and the Labour Party has failed to notice; so, for that matter has almost everyone else in the political mainstream. The public have grown tired of the old top down politics, the stale arguments between parties that have long ago become brands and feel deeply cynical about everything connected to politics.
What they want isn’t a more photogenic person to lead the opposition, they want a new sort of politics where power flows upwards from the grassroots. Where the interdependence of groups with different starting points but shared values matters more than conforming to the ‘vision’ of a remote party hierarchy.
Responding to the criticisms in an interview given to the Guardian Ed Milliband said that he was a ‘man of real steel’ and that he was determined to fight to hold onto his post. I’m not sure that whether he survives as leader or not what the Labour Party needs is someone who shows ‘real steel’. What they need their leader to be is a man or woman with the humility to recognise that having a strong, active and engaged grassroots movement matters more than who holds the top job.
Showing posts with label ed-milliband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ed-milliband. Show all posts
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Sunday, 2 October 2011
Official: Ed Milliband isn’t Tony Blair; so who is he then?
Ed Milliband is back in town, the town in question being Liverpool home to last week’s Labour Party conference, and he’s out to wage war on the ‘predatory asset stripping’ and the ‘fast buck culture’ that has caused a ‘quiet crisis’ in the UK. If politics were an old time western then Red Ed would be the hero in a white Stetson riding to the rescue of the nations ‘grafters.’
In his set piece speech to the party conference on Tuesday afternoon he hit out at the government’s austerity plans which are, he says, to blame for the ‘quiet crisis’ and at the political and economic settlement of the past thirty years for too often rewarding ‘not the right people with the right values, but the wrong people with the wrong values.’
People such as former care company Southern Cross and the former masters of the financial universe exemplified by the likes of ex RBS chief Sir Fred, ‘the shred’ Goodwin, to whom Gordon Brown gave first a knighthood and then rather a lot of taxpayers hard earned cash when the banking system nearly went into meltdown in 2008. These all round bad hats would be shunned in favour of companies such as Rolls Royce that actually make things rather than simply shifting money around.
He admitted that during its time in government Labour had ‘lost trust on the economy’ and pledged that under his leadership a future Labour government would ‘only spend what it can afford.’ You might think that all governments intend to do this but then tend to get blown off course and into debt by what Harold Macmillan called ‘events dear boy’, however in a world where the right wing media blames everything from the global financial crisis to it raining on the proprietor’s birthday on Labour profligacy it is a point worth making.
Ed Milliband is also in favour of a ‘new bargain’ between the government and the British public, one based on a ‘something for something’ culture where responsibility and hard work are rewarded. This would apply to those people at both ends of the economic spectrum, so no more free handouts for people on benefits and a bit more tax for the rich to pay. Not a bad idea in itself and one that resonates with the public, but it does sound a little bit ‘motherhood and apple pie.’
This wasn’t a bad speech, even though by now we know the bar set for Mr Ed isn’t all that high to start with. His delivery was as pedestrian as ever and, as his attempt to tell a joke about his recent operation to correct a deviated septum demonstrates, a second career on the stand up circuit does not beckon.
There were though several things to commend in what he said, he struck the right note between nailing the failings of New Labour and being aware of those of the more traditional wing of the party. He was also right to highlight then need for Labour to champion the building of a new type of society, one that avoids a retreat into cosy utopianism and that rejects on principle the cynical calculations of the Blair years.
The problem is that after a year in opposition Labour under Ed Milliband are still unable to articulate what that new bargain would look like when translated into reality. This is partly a result of their leader’s difficulties communicating with the lobby correspondents at Westminster let alone the wider British Public; say what you like about Saint Tony the one thing he did better than anyone else was work a room.
This inability to get over a message that should resonate powerfully with the public as the spending cuts begin to bite shows itself in the fact that when ComRes polled a thousand voters for the Independent only 24% saw Ed Milliband as a credible prime minister in waiting. That figure probably dropped even further amongst voters who heard him denying on Radio Four’s Today programme that he was ‘weird’, something floating voters in another poll conducted for Tory grandee Lord Ashcroft claimed to see him as.
This accusation in itself was rather childish, for the record all senior politicians are a little bit odd, they have to be to cope with the years of ridicule and rejection they have to go through as they climb the greasy pole. Far more damaging was the claim made by the same poll that even voters who were ‘warmly disposed’ to Labour see Ed Milliband as being ‘a blank canvas onto which they projected what were essentially hopes, or at least the benefit of the doubt.’
The real problem though is that even had Ed Milliband delivered a latter day Gettysburg Address in Liverpool this week it would have made little difference because as a means of political discourse set piece speeches made by leaders to their party conference are a busted flush. They are too carefully choreographed to make a lasting impact, it would have been more effective to have heard Ed Milliband make a shorter and more passionate speech about the three thousand BAE workers thrown on the dole this week than for him to have run through his over rehearsed paces so the massed ranks of the press could hold up score cards like this was the Olympic ice skating championships.
At the end of this year’s conference Ed Milliband is no more or less secure in his position as leader than when it started, mostly because there are no credible challengers waiting in the wings. Ed Balls would dearly love to make a grab for the crown, but made too many enemies when he was Gordon Brown’s strong arm man to have any serious backing. Yvette Cooper may make a more realistic challenge at some time in the future, but not until after the next election in all probability.
Things could be worse for the Labour Party; they have the germ of a message about change and fairness that could resonate powerfully with the electorate if only it were articulated properly. The trouble is it is hard to see how they are going to get any better with a leader who, at best, can only inspire voters to give him the ‘benefit of the doubt.’
In his set piece speech to the party conference on Tuesday afternoon he hit out at the government’s austerity plans which are, he says, to blame for the ‘quiet crisis’ and at the political and economic settlement of the past thirty years for too often rewarding ‘not the right people with the right values, but the wrong people with the wrong values.’
People such as former care company Southern Cross and the former masters of the financial universe exemplified by the likes of ex RBS chief Sir Fred, ‘the shred’ Goodwin, to whom Gordon Brown gave first a knighthood and then rather a lot of taxpayers hard earned cash when the banking system nearly went into meltdown in 2008. These all round bad hats would be shunned in favour of companies such as Rolls Royce that actually make things rather than simply shifting money around.
He admitted that during its time in government Labour had ‘lost trust on the economy’ and pledged that under his leadership a future Labour government would ‘only spend what it can afford.’ You might think that all governments intend to do this but then tend to get blown off course and into debt by what Harold Macmillan called ‘events dear boy’, however in a world where the right wing media blames everything from the global financial crisis to it raining on the proprietor’s birthday on Labour profligacy it is a point worth making.
Ed Milliband is also in favour of a ‘new bargain’ between the government and the British public, one based on a ‘something for something’ culture where responsibility and hard work are rewarded. This would apply to those people at both ends of the economic spectrum, so no more free handouts for people on benefits and a bit more tax for the rich to pay. Not a bad idea in itself and one that resonates with the public, but it does sound a little bit ‘motherhood and apple pie.’
This wasn’t a bad speech, even though by now we know the bar set for Mr Ed isn’t all that high to start with. His delivery was as pedestrian as ever and, as his attempt to tell a joke about his recent operation to correct a deviated septum demonstrates, a second career on the stand up circuit does not beckon.
There were though several things to commend in what he said, he struck the right note between nailing the failings of New Labour and being aware of those of the more traditional wing of the party. He was also right to highlight then need for Labour to champion the building of a new type of society, one that avoids a retreat into cosy utopianism and that rejects on principle the cynical calculations of the Blair years.
The problem is that after a year in opposition Labour under Ed Milliband are still unable to articulate what that new bargain would look like when translated into reality. This is partly a result of their leader’s difficulties communicating with the lobby correspondents at Westminster let alone the wider British Public; say what you like about Saint Tony the one thing he did better than anyone else was work a room.
This inability to get over a message that should resonate powerfully with the public as the spending cuts begin to bite shows itself in the fact that when ComRes polled a thousand voters for the Independent only 24% saw Ed Milliband as a credible prime minister in waiting. That figure probably dropped even further amongst voters who heard him denying on Radio Four’s Today programme that he was ‘weird’, something floating voters in another poll conducted for Tory grandee Lord Ashcroft claimed to see him as.
This accusation in itself was rather childish, for the record all senior politicians are a little bit odd, they have to be to cope with the years of ridicule and rejection they have to go through as they climb the greasy pole. Far more damaging was the claim made by the same poll that even voters who were ‘warmly disposed’ to Labour see Ed Milliband as being ‘a blank canvas onto which they projected what were essentially hopes, or at least the benefit of the doubt.’
The real problem though is that even had Ed Milliband delivered a latter day Gettysburg Address in Liverpool this week it would have made little difference because as a means of political discourse set piece speeches made by leaders to their party conference are a busted flush. They are too carefully choreographed to make a lasting impact, it would have been more effective to have heard Ed Milliband make a shorter and more passionate speech about the three thousand BAE workers thrown on the dole this week than for him to have run through his over rehearsed paces so the massed ranks of the press could hold up score cards like this was the Olympic ice skating championships.
At the end of this year’s conference Ed Milliband is no more or less secure in his position as leader than when it started, mostly because there are no credible challengers waiting in the wings. Ed Balls would dearly love to make a grab for the crown, but made too many enemies when he was Gordon Brown’s strong arm man to have any serious backing. Yvette Cooper may make a more realistic challenge at some time in the future, but not until after the next election in all probability.
Things could be worse for the Labour Party; they have the germ of a message about change and fairness that could resonate powerfully with the electorate if only it were articulated properly. The trouble is it is hard to see how they are going to get any better with a leader who, at best, can only inspire voters to give him the ‘benefit of the doubt.’
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Ask Ed- just don’t expect much in the way of an answer.
In the latest wheeze to emerge from its ‘Refounding Labour’ consultation document members of the public are to be invited to take part in a series of policy workshops taking place at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool later this month followed by a Q and A session with leader Ed Milliband. This will be paired, bizarrely, with a talent contest for sixteen to twenty four year olds with skills in music, acting, filmmaking or with an idea for a new business or invention where the prize is a paid work placement.
The open day, claimed by party insiders to be the first of its kind staged by a British political party, will cover three topics, youth opportunity, the cost of living and economic growth and building stronger communities. All worthy stuff no doubt, but hardly the sort of thing that will have people queuing around the block for tickets.
As for the talent show aspect of proceedings, that, said a party spokesperson, was designed to ‘celebrate the potential of young people;’ again this is all very worthy and a definite change from the vilification of the young as obese, benefits scroungers with an inflated sense of entitlement that has been a staple of the media coverage of the riots and their aftermath.
Earlier this week the wing of the Labour Party that still longs for Tony Blair to make a comeback was said to be ‘dismayed’ by Ed Milliband’s plan to attack David Cameron as an old style Tory grandee with little idea about how ordinary Britons live. This, they seemed to think, was evidence that Ed really was a red and any day now would be donning a donkey jacket and calling for Trident to be scrapped.
On one level you can see why the party might have been concerned by their leader’s analysis of the man he wants to replace as Prime Minister. Elections aren’t won by stating the obvious; but on the whole it seems the boys and girls in the New Labour bubble have nothing to worry about. Ed isn’t red; he’s barely even pink.
If you need evidence of this then look no further than the plan described above. Let’s just count the ways in which it can be shown to be damaging nonsense.
For a start even though he might not like to admit it Ed Milliband is the leader of a political party, an organisation that depends for its survival on having a strong grassroots membership who feel they have a stake in what their party stands for. A key part of that is being involved in making the policies they will have to go out and sell to the public on the doorstep. Inviting people with no link to the Labour Party and who might not even vote for it at the next election to take part in the process makes a mockery of the commitment shown by ordinary members without whom there wouldn’t be a party for Ed Millibad to lead.
It is also far from clear what real impact these chit-chats will actually have on policy. Participation will be so tightly controlled by the party’s full time organisers, a paranoid bunch at the best of times, that anyone with anything remotely controversial to say will be ruthlessly weeded out. All that will be produced will be a pile of spoilt flip charts and a neatly ticked box marked ‘engagement’, allowing the party to scamper on down the road to disaster in the way it had been planning to all along.
There is also something deeply patronising about the fact that it is deemed necessary to include a spurious talent show element in proceedings. It is almost as if the hierarchy of what used to be the people’s party now think the people will only pay attention to things if they are a bit like the X Factor.
Worst of all this whole sorry performance will bring us no clearer to understanding what the Labour Party stands for. Have lessons been learnt from their defeat in May 2010 and the slow crumbling of its core support that has taken place over the preceding two decades?
The one thing it does tell us is what a Labour government led by if not Ed then by one of the members of the shadow cabinet waiting patiently for him to slip off the narrow ledge over a bottomless pit that is leadership of a political party in its first term out of office would be like. It would be the same sorry New Labour story, all focus groups and spin; endless initiatives and targets hiding a deep dislike of the party membership and a patronising approach towards the wider voting public that we came to know so well and like so little from 1997 onwards.
If the best Ed Milliband and his shadow cabinet can come up with after almost a year spent gazing into their collective navels is to turn the party conference, a body that should be about giving grassroots members a voice in the making of its policies, into a tawdry talent show; then perhaps it is time the membership responded in kind by not voting them through to the next round.
Sunday, 3 July 2011
‘What a disgrace!’- Feeble Ed ducks the fight that could save Labour from irrelevance
This week pubic sector workers across the UK went on strike and, despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail to persuade us otherwise, the world didn’t come to an end. There were no scuffles on the picket lines and a march through London organised by the TUC resulted in just thirty arrests, rather less, I imagine, than on an average Saturday during the football season.
What happened instead was that, as Brendan Barber of the TUC put it at a rally in Exeter, people came together to protest quietly and peacefully about ‘The living standards of low and medium paid public sector workers being hammered in the name of reducing the deficit. Meanwhile those who caused the crisis go scot free.’
An event further from an orgy of militant anarchism it would be hard to imagine, participants in the London march even picked up their own litter. As the late great Gil Scot Heron might have put it the revolution won’t tidy up after itself.
Let’s knock two myths propagated by the right wing media and the coalition on the head before we go any further. The public sector workers who took to the streets on Thursday weren’t doing so to defend ‘gold plated pensions’; because for the most part they don’t have the sort of gold plated salaries that would produce such pensions. As for the wider public not supporting their cause, I’d say there is more concern and anger over the way private sector employers failed to invest in their pension funds when times were good and then pulled the rug from under the feet of their staff when they turned bad.
There is much in this strike to support, not least since it turns on the issue of fairness which is at the root of how the British see the world, and yet Labour leader Ed Milliband has chosen to stay on the sidelines.
In a speech to the conference of the Local Government Association (LGA) given on the day of the strikes Milliband said that he ‘understood the anger of workers who feel they are being singled out by a reckless and provocative government’, but the he believed that taking strike action was a ‘mistake’ and that it would not help public sector workers to ‘win the argument’ over pensions.
The responses from the unions were swift and angry; Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers said with the sort of irony that could chill the most riotous of classrooms that it would have been ‘nice if Ed Milliband had felt he could have supported what we’re doing.’ Mary Boustead of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said that the Labour leader’s response was a ‘disgrace’ and that he ‘should be ashamed of himself’; before adding ‘I’m glad we’re (meaning the ATL) not affiliated to Labour.’
Later in his Birmingham speech Ed Milliband condemned the government for declaring their final position while negotiations were still ongoing and described their attitude towards public sector workers as ‘high handed and arrogant.’
Too little, too late; as a sad sounding John McDonnell MP put it the public sector unions had ‘expected more’ from the Labour leader; once again Ed Milliband had failed to deliver. It probably didn’t help that he made the point that he didn’t support the strikes five times in a weirdly robotic TV interview that brought back unwelcome memories of Gordon Brown’s odder moments in front of the cameras.
Trades unions, by their very nature, are able to organise large scale campaigns that capture the attention of the media and the public alike, on this occasion they are linked to a much wider movement than seems at first apparent. Thursday’s strikes were about more than how much public sector workers get paid in retirement, they were about the sort of society we want to live in. Do we want a society where people work together for the common good or one where the market drives us into endless and divisive competition?
All across the country individuals and communities are taking action to defend services they see being threatened with destruction by a government that is making cuts in line with the dictates of a flawed ideology rather than sensible economics. These may attract less attention than Mark Serwotka leading 100.00 civil servants out on strike, but they still share a common cause.
What is needed is an organisation capable of drawing these disparate strands together into a single coherent campaign. That could and should be the job of the Labour Party.
So why isn’t it? In part it is because the Labour Party as reinvented by Tony Blair and his followers feels awkward around the unions, they’re happy to take their money but don’t want their political input. The largest share of the blame though rests with Milliband himself, as has been the way with weak leaders since the dawn of political time he lets the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers dictate his policies.
Real leaders do exactly what the name suggests; they lead the way. Sometimes that means walking head first into a storm of criticism and fighting battles that are hard and often thankless, what it doesn’t mean is sitting on the fence while your aides find a way of triangulating things to get the Mail to say something nice about you.
In an interview given to the New Statesman PCS leader Mark Serwotka said of this dispute and, I suspect the struggles of the unions in general ‘if you fight in life, you’re not guaranteed to win. But if you never fight, you lose every time.’ That sounds like advice Ed Milliband should take to heart, he should either gird his loins for a fight to defend the things so many people believe to be under threat from a government composed of individuals who are too rich to care; or step aside and let someone else take on the job.
What happened instead was that, as Brendan Barber of the TUC put it at a rally in Exeter, people came together to protest quietly and peacefully about ‘The living standards of low and medium paid public sector workers being hammered in the name of reducing the deficit. Meanwhile those who caused the crisis go scot free.’
An event further from an orgy of militant anarchism it would be hard to imagine, participants in the London march even picked up their own litter. As the late great Gil Scot Heron might have put it the revolution won’t tidy up after itself.
Let’s knock two myths propagated by the right wing media and the coalition on the head before we go any further. The public sector workers who took to the streets on Thursday weren’t doing so to defend ‘gold plated pensions’; because for the most part they don’t have the sort of gold plated salaries that would produce such pensions. As for the wider public not supporting their cause, I’d say there is more concern and anger over the way private sector employers failed to invest in their pension funds when times were good and then pulled the rug from under the feet of their staff when they turned bad.
There is much in this strike to support, not least since it turns on the issue of fairness which is at the root of how the British see the world, and yet Labour leader Ed Milliband has chosen to stay on the sidelines.
In a speech to the conference of the Local Government Association (LGA) given on the day of the strikes Milliband said that he ‘understood the anger of workers who feel they are being singled out by a reckless and provocative government’, but the he believed that taking strike action was a ‘mistake’ and that it would not help public sector workers to ‘win the argument’ over pensions.
The responses from the unions were swift and angry; Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers said with the sort of irony that could chill the most riotous of classrooms that it would have been ‘nice if Ed Milliband had felt he could have supported what we’re doing.’ Mary Boustead of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said that the Labour leader’s response was a ‘disgrace’ and that he ‘should be ashamed of himself’; before adding ‘I’m glad we’re (meaning the ATL) not affiliated to Labour.’
Later in his Birmingham speech Ed Milliband condemned the government for declaring their final position while negotiations were still ongoing and described their attitude towards public sector workers as ‘high handed and arrogant.’
Too little, too late; as a sad sounding John McDonnell MP put it the public sector unions had ‘expected more’ from the Labour leader; once again Ed Milliband had failed to deliver. It probably didn’t help that he made the point that he didn’t support the strikes five times in a weirdly robotic TV interview that brought back unwelcome memories of Gordon Brown’s odder moments in front of the cameras.
Trades unions, by their very nature, are able to organise large scale campaigns that capture the attention of the media and the public alike, on this occasion they are linked to a much wider movement than seems at first apparent. Thursday’s strikes were about more than how much public sector workers get paid in retirement, they were about the sort of society we want to live in. Do we want a society where people work together for the common good or one where the market drives us into endless and divisive competition?
All across the country individuals and communities are taking action to defend services they see being threatened with destruction by a government that is making cuts in line with the dictates of a flawed ideology rather than sensible economics. These may attract less attention than Mark Serwotka leading 100.00 civil servants out on strike, but they still share a common cause.
What is needed is an organisation capable of drawing these disparate strands together into a single coherent campaign. That could and should be the job of the Labour Party.
So why isn’t it? In part it is because the Labour Party as reinvented by Tony Blair and his followers feels awkward around the unions, they’re happy to take their money but don’t want their political input. The largest share of the blame though rests with Milliband himself, as has been the way with weak leaders since the dawn of political time he lets the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers dictate his policies.
Real leaders do exactly what the name suggests; they lead the way. Sometimes that means walking head first into a storm of criticism and fighting battles that are hard and often thankless, what it doesn’t mean is sitting on the fence while your aides find a way of triangulating things to get the Mail to say something nice about you.
In an interview given to the New Statesman PCS leader Mark Serwotka said of this dispute and, I suspect the struggles of the unions in general ‘if you fight in life, you’re not guaranteed to win. But if you never fight, you lose every time.’ That sounds like advice Ed Milliband should take to heart, he should either gird his loins for a fight to defend the things so many people believe to be under threat from a government composed of individuals who are too rich to care; or step aside and let someone else take on the job.
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Electing Tony not Ed as leader was the real ‘disaster’ for Labour
Its all gone pear shaped for troubled Labour leader Ed Milliband; again. The party has dropped two percentage points to lie neck and neck with the Tories at 37% according to a ComRes poll published this week.
By contrast the Liberal Democrat dead cat has bounced up to 12% thanks to a minor boost provided by leader Nick Clegg’s timid objections over NHS reforms. Smaller parties including the Greens, UKIP and the SNP have also seen their approval ratings rise recently.
This should be a time when Labour is making hay whilst the political sun shines, leading economists are queuing up to criticise the coalition for cutting the deficit too quickly, savage spending cuts are about to hit the Tories core vote in middle England and David Cameron’s plans for a ‘big society’ are still utterly incomprehensible; yet the official opposition has missed a string of open goals. As a result Ed Milliband is under fire for failing to convince party activists he has the ability to win a general election; worse still he sent them out on the campaign trail for the recent local elections without a slate of coherent alternative policies to sell to the voting public.
What he has done though is saddle the party with twenty five different policy reviews with titles ranging from ‘Family life. What helps?’ to the utterly baffling ‘X Factor for the many, not the few.’ What does Red Ed want, free entry for all to television talent contests? Your guess is as good as mine mate.
What is crystal clear though is that however many policy reviews he has launched Ed Milliband is still no clearer to defining what Labour stands for than he was when he stood on the platform at last year’s party conference prattling brightly about a ‘new generation’ taking the reins. People were inclined to cut him a little slack then because he was new to the job, they won’t do so now.
This week the Daily Mail reported with barely restrained glee the opinion of an, unnamed, member of the shadow cabinet that by launching endless policy reviews Ed Milliband had ‘created a monster’ and proved himself to be a ‘disaster’ as party leader. To be fair the Mail, like much of the media and what passes for ‘informed opinion’ has had it in for Red Ed from day one and not without good reason.
He has proved himself to be an intelligent, if a little too earnest policy wonk promoted beyond his abilities with no ability to connect with the grassroots membership. Worse yet his atrocious performances at Prime Minister’s Questions have too often given a boost to the government by letting David Cameron appear to be cleverer and wittier than he really is by bashing him out of the park every Wednesday afternoon.
The truth though is that in the disaster movie into which the end of the New Labour project is rapidly turning Ed Milliband isn’t so much the iceberg as the poor sap who has been made captain just in time to go down with the ship. The real ‘disaster’ for the Labour Party happened when Tony Blair became party leader and got worse when Gordon Brown took over in 2007.
Between then those two men destroyed the Labour Party as a distinctive voice in British politics. One did it by turning the party into a tool of his vaunting ambition; the other by using it to act out his ever multiplying neuroses; both Blair and Brown colluded in the creation of a party structure that removed policy making from the membership and put it in the hands of a cosy cabal. For all his talk about making the party more open to new ideas Ed Milliband has done nothing to change that.
The received wisdom is that all Labour has to do is move back onto the centre ground, appoint a suitably slick son or daughter of Blair as leader and all will be well again; it won’t be. Back in 1997 people wanted to vote for a party that had a conservative approach to economics but phrased it in a ‘nicer’ way, hence the success to New Labour, times have changed though, Citizen Dave has detoxified the Tory brand whilst George Osborne has smuggled all the things even Margaret Thatcher recoiled from doing into his budget under the guise off cutting the deficit. Why then would anyone who wanted a Tory government not vote Tory then?
What Labour needs to do to survive, never mind about winning elections for the moment, is to go back to being a real Labour Party again. Back to speaking up for the poor and the many people who fear they soon will be poor if our country continues to be at the mercy of the markets and the sort of people who when shown a rainbow can’t help thinking how it would be so much more cost effective if it used fewer colours.
They need to talk in simple, but never simplistic or patronising, language about the possibility of creating a different sort of society. One that may be a little harsher for the very rich; but that will be so much fairer for everyone else.
Ed Milliband has proved that he isn’t the man for that job, if it can’t find a man or woman who is than a financially and ideologically bankrupt Labour Party will have come to the end of its natural life. It will be time for those people, and I count myself amongst their number, who think there is still a role for the sort of party Labour used to be before the advent of Tony Blair will have to set about building a new one from the wreckage of the old.
By contrast the Liberal Democrat dead cat has bounced up to 12% thanks to a minor boost provided by leader Nick Clegg’s timid objections over NHS reforms. Smaller parties including the Greens, UKIP and the SNP have also seen their approval ratings rise recently.
This should be a time when Labour is making hay whilst the political sun shines, leading economists are queuing up to criticise the coalition for cutting the deficit too quickly, savage spending cuts are about to hit the Tories core vote in middle England and David Cameron’s plans for a ‘big society’ are still utterly incomprehensible; yet the official opposition has missed a string of open goals. As a result Ed Milliband is under fire for failing to convince party activists he has the ability to win a general election; worse still he sent them out on the campaign trail for the recent local elections without a slate of coherent alternative policies to sell to the voting public.
What he has done though is saddle the party with twenty five different policy reviews with titles ranging from ‘Family life. What helps?’ to the utterly baffling ‘X Factor for the many, not the few.’ What does Red Ed want, free entry for all to television talent contests? Your guess is as good as mine mate.
What is crystal clear though is that however many policy reviews he has launched Ed Milliband is still no clearer to defining what Labour stands for than he was when he stood on the platform at last year’s party conference prattling brightly about a ‘new generation’ taking the reins. People were inclined to cut him a little slack then because he was new to the job, they won’t do so now.
This week the Daily Mail reported with barely restrained glee the opinion of an, unnamed, member of the shadow cabinet that by launching endless policy reviews Ed Milliband had ‘created a monster’ and proved himself to be a ‘disaster’ as party leader. To be fair the Mail, like much of the media and what passes for ‘informed opinion’ has had it in for Red Ed from day one and not without good reason.
He has proved himself to be an intelligent, if a little too earnest policy wonk promoted beyond his abilities with no ability to connect with the grassroots membership. Worse yet his atrocious performances at Prime Minister’s Questions have too often given a boost to the government by letting David Cameron appear to be cleverer and wittier than he really is by bashing him out of the park every Wednesday afternoon.
The truth though is that in the disaster movie into which the end of the New Labour project is rapidly turning Ed Milliband isn’t so much the iceberg as the poor sap who has been made captain just in time to go down with the ship. The real ‘disaster’ for the Labour Party happened when Tony Blair became party leader and got worse when Gordon Brown took over in 2007.
Between then those two men destroyed the Labour Party as a distinctive voice in British politics. One did it by turning the party into a tool of his vaunting ambition; the other by using it to act out his ever multiplying neuroses; both Blair and Brown colluded in the creation of a party structure that removed policy making from the membership and put it in the hands of a cosy cabal. For all his talk about making the party more open to new ideas Ed Milliband has done nothing to change that.
The received wisdom is that all Labour has to do is move back onto the centre ground, appoint a suitably slick son or daughter of Blair as leader and all will be well again; it won’t be. Back in 1997 people wanted to vote for a party that had a conservative approach to economics but phrased it in a ‘nicer’ way, hence the success to New Labour, times have changed though, Citizen Dave has detoxified the Tory brand whilst George Osborne has smuggled all the things even Margaret Thatcher recoiled from doing into his budget under the guise off cutting the deficit. Why then would anyone who wanted a Tory government not vote Tory then?
What Labour needs to do to survive, never mind about winning elections for the moment, is to go back to being a real Labour Party again. Back to speaking up for the poor and the many people who fear they soon will be poor if our country continues to be at the mercy of the markets and the sort of people who when shown a rainbow can’t help thinking how it would be so much more cost effective if it used fewer colours.
They need to talk in simple, but never simplistic or patronising, language about the possibility of creating a different sort of society. One that may be a little harsher for the very rich; but that will be so much fairer for everyone else.
Ed Milliband has proved that he isn’t the man for that job, if it can’t find a man or woman who is than a financially and ideologically bankrupt Labour Party will have come to the end of its natural life. It will be time for those people, and I count myself amongst their number, who think there is still a role for the sort of party Labour used to be before the advent of Tony Blair will have to set about building a new one from the wreckage of the old.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Project Re-launch.
Speaking at his party’s national policy forum in Gillingham this weekend Ed Milliband said that it was time for Labour to ‘take back the term Big Society’ from the Conservatives and to become again the ‘people’s party.’
His comments came at the launch of a major review of party policy headed by former Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne that in many respects mirrors David Cameron’s mostly successful attempt to ‘detoxify’ the image of the Tories. The review will cover the party’s stance of troublesome issues such as tax, immigration and welfare and will see shadow ministers leading policy discussions with party members.
Speaking to assembled delegates Mr Milliband said the party needed to be ‘reconnected to the hopes and aspirations of the people of Britain’ and had to prove that the policy review was a genuinely open minded exercise not one run by ‘a bunch of experts gathered in a room in London’ and determined to prove their own opinions correct.
He also admitted that in government Labour had ‘got some things wrong’; try almost everything wrong from 2005 onwards Ed, and that the party had been guilty of ‘losing its way.’ Most tellingly of all he admitted that they had too often seen problems in communities and thought the answer was ‘a programme or a policy,’ sometimes the policy was right; often it wasn’t and Labour was equally often too insular to notice until it was too late.
There were more admissions from shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, who will chair the policy review, the party had, he said, to be ‘a changed Labour party for the next general election’, the public had grown tired of and cynical about the New Labour project and as a result the party had ‘got a hammering’ in May and needed to learn the lessons of that experience.
All this mea culpa stuff is very nice and cathartic in its way, but it needs more than well meaning navel gazing to turn around a party that doesn’t know what its for or who it represents. The policy review and the party as a whole will stand or fall on whether or not it can turn talk into action.
It will also stand or fall on what sort of figure Ed Milliband cuts as an opposition leader, perhaps the most thankless job in British politics. Every day is a struggle not to trip on one banana thrown in your path by the media or the government, so far, I’m afraid Red Ed’s report card would read ‘could do better.’
He appears awkward and earnest in public, making him a poor foil for Citizen Dave with his easy charm and has allowed the media to drag him into silly controversies about whether he plans to marry his long term partner or whether or not he has been recorded as the father on the birth certificate of his oldest child. When he comes into contact with ‘ordinary’ voters Milliband looks uncomfortable as evidenced by his bemused response to TESCO workers this week who told him they didn’t think the welfare system gave people an incentive to work.
There is also the small problem of having a shadow cabinet that seems to be pulling in two directions at once. For example shadow chancellor Alan Johnson wants to loosen the party’s ties with the unions, his leader knows only too well that he owes his position to the unions and that without their cash the party would be bankrupt.
The good news though is that despite a shaky start Ed Milliband is starting to sound like his own man at last. He cut several large donors out of the honours list and has admitted publicly that his in ‘unashamed’ about being a socialist; thank heavens for that for far too long socialism has been a naughty word in a party that would have no reason to exist without it.
Taking socialism out of mothballs and putting it at the centre of party policy might just be the saving of the Labour Party, however much their leader talks about replacing GDP with a ‘happiness index’ as a measure of national progress the spending cuts will drag the Tories and their Lib Dem accomplices to the right; that movement needs to be counterbalanced by an opposition that leans to the left, clinging to the middle ground is no longer an option.
Labour has, though, to pick the right kind of socialism, the insular, sectarian and often silly incarnation practiced by the so called ‘loony left’ is a non starter because it frightens voters because its adherents seem to rejoice in not connecting with the public mood. Ed Milliband needs to go out and talk to party members and public alike about a form of socialism that is based on the fairness deeply engrained in the British character that doesn’t hold back personal ambition only requires it to be tempered with a responsibility towards the society we all share.
It won’t be easy, the media will pillory him as being out of touch because they, as all cynics do, instinctively fear anyone with a ‘vision’; his political opponents will try to shout him down, he must ignore all this and keep on talking about what he believes is right.
If Ed Milliband really wants to make Labour the ‘people’s party’ again and to be ‘back on people’s side, back in power making the fairer, the more equal, the more just country we believe in,’ as he claimed in his speech at Gillingham he has no other choice.
His comments came at the launch of a major review of party policy headed by former Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne that in many respects mirrors David Cameron’s mostly successful attempt to ‘detoxify’ the image of the Tories. The review will cover the party’s stance of troublesome issues such as tax, immigration and welfare and will see shadow ministers leading policy discussions with party members.
Speaking to assembled delegates Mr Milliband said the party needed to be ‘reconnected to the hopes and aspirations of the people of Britain’ and had to prove that the policy review was a genuinely open minded exercise not one run by ‘a bunch of experts gathered in a room in London’ and determined to prove their own opinions correct.
He also admitted that in government Labour had ‘got some things wrong’; try almost everything wrong from 2005 onwards Ed, and that the party had been guilty of ‘losing its way.’ Most tellingly of all he admitted that they had too often seen problems in communities and thought the answer was ‘a programme or a policy,’ sometimes the policy was right; often it wasn’t and Labour was equally often too insular to notice until it was too late.
There were more admissions from shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, who will chair the policy review, the party had, he said, to be ‘a changed Labour party for the next general election’, the public had grown tired of and cynical about the New Labour project and as a result the party had ‘got a hammering’ in May and needed to learn the lessons of that experience.
All this mea culpa stuff is very nice and cathartic in its way, but it needs more than well meaning navel gazing to turn around a party that doesn’t know what its for or who it represents. The policy review and the party as a whole will stand or fall on whether or not it can turn talk into action.
It will also stand or fall on what sort of figure Ed Milliband cuts as an opposition leader, perhaps the most thankless job in British politics. Every day is a struggle not to trip on one banana thrown in your path by the media or the government, so far, I’m afraid Red Ed’s report card would read ‘could do better.’
He appears awkward and earnest in public, making him a poor foil for Citizen Dave with his easy charm and has allowed the media to drag him into silly controversies about whether he plans to marry his long term partner or whether or not he has been recorded as the father on the birth certificate of his oldest child. When he comes into contact with ‘ordinary’ voters Milliband looks uncomfortable as evidenced by his bemused response to TESCO workers this week who told him they didn’t think the welfare system gave people an incentive to work.
There is also the small problem of having a shadow cabinet that seems to be pulling in two directions at once. For example shadow chancellor Alan Johnson wants to loosen the party’s ties with the unions, his leader knows only too well that he owes his position to the unions and that without their cash the party would be bankrupt.
The good news though is that despite a shaky start Ed Milliband is starting to sound like his own man at last. He cut several large donors out of the honours list and has admitted publicly that his in ‘unashamed’ about being a socialist; thank heavens for that for far too long socialism has been a naughty word in a party that would have no reason to exist without it.
Taking socialism out of mothballs and putting it at the centre of party policy might just be the saving of the Labour Party, however much their leader talks about replacing GDP with a ‘happiness index’ as a measure of national progress the spending cuts will drag the Tories and their Lib Dem accomplices to the right; that movement needs to be counterbalanced by an opposition that leans to the left, clinging to the middle ground is no longer an option.
Labour has, though, to pick the right kind of socialism, the insular, sectarian and often silly incarnation practiced by the so called ‘loony left’ is a non starter because it frightens voters because its adherents seem to rejoice in not connecting with the public mood. Ed Milliband needs to go out and talk to party members and public alike about a form of socialism that is based on the fairness deeply engrained in the British character that doesn’t hold back personal ambition only requires it to be tempered with a responsibility towards the society we all share.
It won’t be easy, the media will pillory him as being out of touch because they, as all cynics do, instinctively fear anyone with a ‘vision’; his political opponents will try to shout him down, he must ignore all this and keep on talking about what he believes is right.
If Ed Milliband really wants to make Labour the ‘people’s party’ again and to be ‘back on people’s side, back in power making the fairer, the more equal, the more just country we believe in,’ as he claimed in his speech at Gillingham he has no other choice.
Monday, 11 October 2010
Choosing a team.
Despite the bright promises being made by the Met Office about the possibility of an Indian Summer Autumn is upon us. The conference season has blown itself out and all across the country the trees in public parks and suburban streets are taking on the colours of a sunset painted by Turner.
Next week newly elected leader of the opposition Ed Milliband will take part in his first Prime Minister’s Questions and in honour of the even has spent the weekend choosing the members of his shadow cabinet. An activity the media has attempted to liken to picking them members of, say, a football team.
As analogies go this is pretty much of a dud. Unlike even the lowliest of Sunday league managers Ed Milliband doesn’t get to pick his players, the shadow cabinet is chosen on the votes of MP’s, just where they play on the pitch.
Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper both make the cut, but not, much to the disappointment of the press pack, in the role of Shadow Chancellor. Harriet Harman holds onto her job as deputy leader of the party, Andy Burnham gets the health brief and Sidiq Khan, former campaign manager to David Milliband gets to shadow the Justice Secretary.
Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward, big beasts in the last government, miss out on seats in the shadow cabinet but keep the briefs for, respectively, Northern Ireland and the Welsh Office. A list of eager young MP’s will bag junior appointments between now and mid-week and somewhere along the line scores will be settled and egos salved after the shocks and scares of the leadership election.
The BBC helpfully produced a chart comparing the new shadow cabinet to the real thing. Now we know that 44% of the shadow cabinet are women compared to 17% in the cabinet, 56% of the members are under fifty and only 37% went to Oxford or Cambridge. Fascinating stuff I ‘m sure, but the public interest will focus rather more on the fact that only a handful of the shadow cabinet voted for Ed Milliband to be party leader.
The surprise appointment is that of former Home Secretary Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, ever modest he joked to the BBC that his first act in his new post would be to ‘pick up an economics primer for beginners.’ For a man who claimed not to be up to the job of being party leader Mr Johnson has a strange knack for landing plum roles. A cynic might say that he has plans to come at the leadership by a roundabout route when public feeling towards Labour is a little less toxic; the cynic might well have a point.
Speaking about his new team Ed Milliband told the press they were ‘united in one central mission for the future, to win back the British people and take Labour back into power.’ They were committed, he said, to rejection the ‘pessimism’ of the coalition as they set out their ‘vision of what Britain can achieve.’
Brave talk I’m sure, but it is hard not to feel some agreement with the assessment of Liberal Democrat Tim Farron when he says ‘Ed Milliband claimed to represent a new generation, but his shadow cabinet looks very much like the New Labour establishment that came before it.’
This matters because it isn’t just Ed Milliband who will be choosing a team this autumn, we the voting public will be doing something similar.
When the times were good and the job of government was to keep things jogging along in the usual way politicians could settle comfortably on the centre ground and the public could retreat into the false comfort of thinking ‘they’re all the same.’ Now times are harder, and with the government poised to make the deepest cuts to public spending ever known in peacetime things are going to get a lot worse, positions will have to be taken if either the bitter medicine of spending cuts is to work or a viable alternative treatment be found.
However warm it may be outside, however much we would like it to be otherwise, you only have to look at the political meteorology of our present situation to see this is going to be a stormy autumn.
Next week newly elected leader of the opposition Ed Milliband will take part in his first Prime Minister’s Questions and in honour of the even has spent the weekend choosing the members of his shadow cabinet. An activity the media has attempted to liken to picking them members of, say, a football team.
As analogies go this is pretty much of a dud. Unlike even the lowliest of Sunday league managers Ed Milliband doesn’t get to pick his players, the shadow cabinet is chosen on the votes of MP’s, just where they play on the pitch.
Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper both make the cut, but not, much to the disappointment of the press pack, in the role of Shadow Chancellor. Harriet Harman holds onto her job as deputy leader of the party, Andy Burnham gets the health brief and Sidiq Khan, former campaign manager to David Milliband gets to shadow the Justice Secretary.
Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward, big beasts in the last government, miss out on seats in the shadow cabinet but keep the briefs for, respectively, Northern Ireland and the Welsh Office. A list of eager young MP’s will bag junior appointments between now and mid-week and somewhere along the line scores will be settled and egos salved after the shocks and scares of the leadership election.
The BBC helpfully produced a chart comparing the new shadow cabinet to the real thing. Now we know that 44% of the shadow cabinet are women compared to 17% in the cabinet, 56% of the members are under fifty and only 37% went to Oxford or Cambridge. Fascinating stuff I ‘m sure, but the public interest will focus rather more on the fact that only a handful of the shadow cabinet voted for Ed Milliband to be party leader.
The surprise appointment is that of former Home Secretary Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, ever modest he joked to the BBC that his first act in his new post would be to ‘pick up an economics primer for beginners.’ For a man who claimed not to be up to the job of being party leader Mr Johnson has a strange knack for landing plum roles. A cynic might say that he has plans to come at the leadership by a roundabout route when public feeling towards Labour is a little less toxic; the cynic might well have a point.
Speaking about his new team Ed Milliband told the press they were ‘united in one central mission for the future, to win back the British people and take Labour back into power.’ They were committed, he said, to rejection the ‘pessimism’ of the coalition as they set out their ‘vision of what Britain can achieve.’
Brave talk I’m sure, but it is hard not to feel some agreement with the assessment of Liberal Democrat Tim Farron when he says ‘Ed Milliband claimed to represent a new generation, but his shadow cabinet looks very much like the New Labour establishment that came before it.’
This matters because it isn’t just Ed Milliband who will be choosing a team this autumn, we the voting public will be doing something similar.
When the times were good and the job of government was to keep things jogging along in the usual way politicians could settle comfortably on the centre ground and the public could retreat into the false comfort of thinking ‘they’re all the same.’ Now times are harder, and with the government poised to make the deepest cuts to public spending ever known in peacetime things are going to get a lot worse, positions will have to be taken if either the bitter medicine of spending cuts is to work or a viable alternative treatment be found.
However warm it may be outside, however much we would like it to be otherwise, you only have to look at the political meteorology of our present situation to see this is going to be a stormy autumn.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Labour- the next generation.
New Labour is dead actually it died in May, but the death certificate didn’t arrive until this week. It was delivered by new party leader Ed Milliband in his first major speech.
Speaking from the platform at the party conference in Manchester on Tuesday he praised Labour’s achievements in power, but said the party had ‘painful truths’ to learn about why it had lost the election and with it the trust of the public.
These truths included failing to regulate the banks, sabotaging civil liberties in the fight against terrorism and, most of all, taking the country to war in Iraq. Mr Milliband said ‘we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that, a statement that didn’t meet with the unquestioning support of older brother David, who was caught by the TV cameras whispering something less than complementary to deputy leader Harriet Harman.
Mr Milliband the younger also hit out at claims that he was in the pocket of the unions, saying he would have ‘no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes’, cue footage of Tony Woodley looking less than delighted. Ed Milliband, went the implied message, isn’t ‘their’ man, he isn’t anybody’s man apart from his own.
He also joked about the ‘Red Ed’ tag attached to him over the weekend by the right wing media, calling for cheap jibes to be replaced by a ‘grown up debate’ on political issues. Labour on his watch, he said would have ‘different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.’ It would be diametrically opposed to the ‘miserable, pessimistic view of what we can do’ to combat the deficit being propagated by the Coalition. Labour were, he said, ‘the optimists and together we will change Britain.’
The delivery was a million miles away from the showmanship used by Tony Blair in years gone by, or his surprising heir Nick Clegg only last week come to that. At times it tipped over into the sort of earnestness you might expect from the captain of a sixth form debating society, but it took courage to admit that Iraq was a mistake and he showed a touch of humour that was a welcome change from the neurotic gloom of the Brown years.
It would, perhaps, be unkind to be too critical of what was a rather underpowered keynote speech, great political speeches, unlike say great pop songs aren’t written on the hoof. Ed Milliband had just seventy two hours in which to prepare for his big moment and it showed.
That said he did strike the right note by saying that Labour has to learn hard lessons and find a new direction if the party ever hopes to return to power. The question is what should that direction be?
It would be dangerously comforting for Ed Milliband to listen too closely to the siren voices telling him that what the party needs is more of the same, a newer New Labour if you like. The spin and cynicism of the Blair/Brown years has proved itself to be anathema to party members and public alike.
There is little call for Labour to return to the inward looking squabbles over arcane points of dogma that were a feature of their failure to engage in discourse with the wider voting public during the 1980’s. Ed can though afford to be redder than he thinks, at least he can if he can persuade the voters that Labour is committed to fairness and has a viable alternative to cutting services to the bone.
As first conferences in opposition go fortune has looked more kindly on the Labour Party than it might have done. It was certainly an improvement on last year’s awful train wreck which saw the Sun abandon its support for the party.
Despite the embarrassment of having the former Foreign Secretary David Milliband bow out of front line politics, for now at least, only hours after he made his first big speech having a new leader in place should give Labour a much needed fillip in the polls and, maybe, a renewed sense of purpose. How long either will last once the frivolity of the conference season is over and the hard work of being in opposition starts in earnest is anyone’s guess.
Speaking from the platform at the party conference in Manchester on Tuesday he praised Labour’s achievements in power, but said the party had ‘painful truths’ to learn about why it had lost the election and with it the trust of the public.
These truths included failing to regulate the banks, sabotaging civil liberties in the fight against terrorism and, most of all, taking the country to war in Iraq. Mr Milliband said ‘we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that, a statement that didn’t meet with the unquestioning support of older brother David, who was caught by the TV cameras whispering something less than complementary to deputy leader Harriet Harman.
Mr Milliband the younger also hit out at claims that he was in the pocket of the unions, saying he would have ‘no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes’, cue footage of Tony Woodley looking less than delighted. Ed Milliband, went the implied message, isn’t ‘their’ man, he isn’t anybody’s man apart from his own.
He also joked about the ‘Red Ed’ tag attached to him over the weekend by the right wing media, calling for cheap jibes to be replaced by a ‘grown up debate’ on political issues. Labour on his watch, he said would have ‘different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.’ It would be diametrically opposed to the ‘miserable, pessimistic view of what we can do’ to combat the deficit being propagated by the Coalition. Labour were, he said, ‘the optimists and together we will change Britain.’
The delivery was a million miles away from the showmanship used by Tony Blair in years gone by, or his surprising heir Nick Clegg only last week come to that. At times it tipped over into the sort of earnestness you might expect from the captain of a sixth form debating society, but it took courage to admit that Iraq was a mistake and he showed a touch of humour that was a welcome change from the neurotic gloom of the Brown years.
It would, perhaps, be unkind to be too critical of what was a rather underpowered keynote speech, great political speeches, unlike say great pop songs aren’t written on the hoof. Ed Milliband had just seventy two hours in which to prepare for his big moment and it showed.
That said he did strike the right note by saying that Labour has to learn hard lessons and find a new direction if the party ever hopes to return to power. The question is what should that direction be?
It would be dangerously comforting for Ed Milliband to listen too closely to the siren voices telling him that what the party needs is more of the same, a newer New Labour if you like. The spin and cynicism of the Blair/Brown years has proved itself to be anathema to party members and public alike.
There is little call for Labour to return to the inward looking squabbles over arcane points of dogma that were a feature of their failure to engage in discourse with the wider voting public during the 1980’s. Ed can though afford to be redder than he thinks, at least he can if he can persuade the voters that Labour is committed to fairness and has a viable alternative to cutting services to the bone.
As first conferences in opposition go fortune has looked more kindly on the Labour Party than it might have done. It was certainly an improvement on last year’s awful train wreck which saw the Sun abandon its support for the party.
Despite the embarrassment of having the former Foreign Secretary David Milliband bow out of front line politics, for now at least, only hours after he made his first big speech having a new leader in place should give Labour a much needed fillip in the polls and, maybe, a renewed sense of purpose. How long either will last once the frivolity of the conference season is over and the hard work of being in opposition starts in earnest is anyone’s guess.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Ed has beaten David to win the party leadership; now he must win over the country.
After a race that felt like it would go on forever Ed Milliband has beaten his brother David to take the role of leading the Labour Party.
The result, announced on the eve of the party’s annual conference in Manchester yesterday, saw Ed Milliband win with 50.65% of the votes cast by MP’s, MEP’s, party members and members of affiliated organisations, David Milliband polled 49.35% with Ed Balls coming third.
David Milliband attracted the largest number of votes from MP’s, MEP’s and party members, but backing from the big unions swung things in favour of his brother by a small majority, prompting some sections of the UK press to dub him ‘Red Ed’ and accuse him of being in the pocket of his union backers. A charge the new leader refutes claiming to be very much his ‘own man’ and pledging to unify the party in the name of a ‘new generation’ that had brought to an end the New Labour project.
Just now everything in the tight bubble of the party conference will be sweetness and light, the defeated challengers have rallied behind him and it is safe to predict that his first speech as leader will be hailed as a triumph. The real hard work will begin when parliament sits again in October and the comprehensive spending review stops being an alarming rumour and becomes a painful reality.
It is then and only then that Ed Milliband will discover the problems and opportunities that face him in his new role.
The problems are clear; the small majority with which he won the leadership means that his position will be vulnerable for the foreseeable future. He might not face a challenge from his brother, the bonds of filial love are stronger than the demands of political ambition, but there is no guarantee that his colleagues will have such strong scruples. There is also the small matter of finding a distinctive identity for a party that has spent too long on the sterile centre ground. Neither problem will be overcome quickly or easily.
If the problems that face Ed Milliband seem to loom large, so do the opportunities. Opposition leaders have the opportunity to travel the country meeting party members and ordinary voter, something that the pressures of business and security concerns prevent members of the government from doing easily. He must take full advantage of this, even if it means initially taking a considerable amount of flack from a core vote that feels it has been taken for granted.
On the subject of the budget cuts it is not enough to simply oppose the government; Labour must go beyond protest politics to provide a credible alternative. In doing so he must not be distracted by the siren voices within his party calling for consolidation on the centre ground or the ‘Red Ed’ jibes thrown about by the media. Many of the ideas once attributed to the ‘loony left’, concern for the environment or fair treatment for minority groups for example, have been accepted by the political mainstream; if a strong enough case is made for an economic system that strikes a fairer balance between growth and equality it too could be accepted by the electorate.
Whatever happened once the euphoria of the conference season has dissipated Ed Milliband will need a thick skin and the stomach for a fight that will be long and in all likelihood dirty. The same goes for the ‘new generation’ of Labour politicians for whom he claims to be the standard bearer.
The result, announced on the eve of the party’s annual conference in Manchester yesterday, saw Ed Milliband win with 50.65% of the votes cast by MP’s, MEP’s, party members and members of affiliated organisations, David Milliband polled 49.35% with Ed Balls coming third.
David Milliband attracted the largest number of votes from MP’s, MEP’s and party members, but backing from the big unions swung things in favour of his brother by a small majority, prompting some sections of the UK press to dub him ‘Red Ed’ and accuse him of being in the pocket of his union backers. A charge the new leader refutes claiming to be very much his ‘own man’ and pledging to unify the party in the name of a ‘new generation’ that had brought to an end the New Labour project.
Just now everything in the tight bubble of the party conference will be sweetness and light, the defeated challengers have rallied behind him and it is safe to predict that his first speech as leader will be hailed as a triumph. The real hard work will begin when parliament sits again in October and the comprehensive spending review stops being an alarming rumour and becomes a painful reality.
It is then and only then that Ed Milliband will discover the problems and opportunities that face him in his new role.
The problems are clear; the small majority with which he won the leadership means that his position will be vulnerable for the foreseeable future. He might not face a challenge from his brother, the bonds of filial love are stronger than the demands of political ambition, but there is no guarantee that his colleagues will have such strong scruples. There is also the small matter of finding a distinctive identity for a party that has spent too long on the sterile centre ground. Neither problem will be overcome quickly or easily.
If the problems that face Ed Milliband seem to loom large, so do the opportunities. Opposition leaders have the opportunity to travel the country meeting party members and ordinary voter, something that the pressures of business and security concerns prevent members of the government from doing easily. He must take full advantage of this, even if it means initially taking a considerable amount of flack from a core vote that feels it has been taken for granted.
On the subject of the budget cuts it is not enough to simply oppose the government; Labour must go beyond protest politics to provide a credible alternative. In doing so he must not be distracted by the siren voices within his party calling for consolidation on the centre ground or the ‘Red Ed’ jibes thrown about by the media. Many of the ideas once attributed to the ‘loony left’, concern for the environment or fair treatment for minority groups for example, have been accepted by the political mainstream; if a strong enough case is made for an economic system that strikes a fairer balance between growth and equality it too could be accepted by the electorate.
Whatever happened once the euphoria of the conference season has dissipated Ed Milliband will need a thick skin and the stomach for a fight that will be long and in all likelihood dirty. The same goes for the ‘new generation’ of Labour politicians for whom he claims to be the standard bearer.
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