Tag Archives: ed miliband

Stephen Barber

Progressive politics needs Starmer to ‘definitely’ be a better Labour leader

By Stephen Barber | Thu 2nd July 2020 - 7:27 pm

Embed from Getty Images

Let’s hope that Ed Miliband’s candid admission is right: that Keir Starmer is ‘definitely’ a better Labour leader than he was.  Miliband’s failed strategic approach, after all, helped put the cause of progressive politics back a decade. And as the Liberal Democrats pick a new leader, it’s essential that those lessons are learned – for both parties.

When ‘Red Ed’ snatched the Labour leadership from his heir apparent brother David in 2010, it was in the aftermath of a crushing election defeat: the lowest share of the vote since 1918 and seat numbers back to 1980s levels.  There was resentment, of course, that the Liberal Democrats did not cobble together a coalition to keep Gordon Brown in Number 10 but any rational assessment would conclude this was never going to happen: the numbers simply did not add up and frankly voters had resoundingly rejected Labour after 13 years in office.

There was talk, in those early days of the coalition, with David Cameron’s Conservatives, of ‘New Politics’. That is a new era of cooperation and consensual discourse.  The sort of politics that would come about in a system where all votes count and which represents the views of all voters. This was, after all, the first government since before the Second World War able to claim it represented more than half of all those who voted.  It was an idea promoted by David Miliband who soon left the Westminster stage.  But for Ed Miliband, it was never on the agenda.

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Caron Lindsay

Latest Brexit poll shows that Liberal Democrats are on the right side of the argument

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 11th December 2016 - 10:25 am

Back in August, I said that I couldn’t support the Open Britain organisation (the evolution of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign) because it was too enthusiastic about restrictions on free movement of people and because it wasn’t calling for a referendum on any Brexit deal.

I still can’t sign up to them for the same reasons. However, I do accept that there are areas of common ground between our organisations. This weekend they have conducted some very useful research which shows that half of Leave voters are not prepared to be a penny worse off as a result of leaving the EU.

That YouGov poll, conducted this week, also obliterates the Leave majority. When asked how they would vote if the referendum took place tomorrow, 44% said Leave and 44% said Remain. That is a dramatic reversal of fortune.

Ed Miliband writes about this in today’s Observer:

This chimes with the experience in my constituency, where seven in 10 voted to leave. Many of them were desperate for a new beginning for themselves and their families. The government will rightly be subject to an almighty backlash from Leave voters if it makes decisions that make them far poorer and leaves less money for public services. Having voted for a better future, for them this would be the ultimate betrayal.

The evidence is already there that people will be worse off after Brexit. And this isn’t just Europhile hyperbole. It’s actual government fact as we saw in the Autumn Statement.   This is where Miliband’s article is so depressing. What on earth is the problem with giving the people the chance to determine for themselves whether the final deal on offer is in line with their expectations? What could possibly be more democratic?

Let’s look at it this way. If you decide you are going to buy a house, you state your intention to do so by putting in an offer. If it is accepted, you can still pull out if you don’t like the terms of the sale. The same thing applies to Brexit. If people realise the true extent of the cost, and that the stuff they were told was “Project Fear” was actually an underestimation, then they may well choose to reconsider their decision. The You Gov research proves that.

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The Voice

Elaine Bagshaw: Don’t let your opportunities be snatched away: Register to vote

By The Voice | Sat 28th May 2016 - 7:17 pm

The young Liberal Democrat who has led such a strong effort in East London, Elaine Bagshaw, today urged young people to register to vote so that they could make sure Britain stays in the European Union. Speaking at a Stronger In event in London, she said:

We have nothing to gain from leaving Europe. We have everything to lose. We’ll have a privilege that we have enjoyed and benefitted from taken away from us and the generations that will follow us.

If you don’t want that snatched away, you need to speak up and use your voice.

If you haven’t already, register to vote here. Here’s her speech in full:

Voting in this referendum is incredibly important because this time every vote counts. Whether you’re in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh or Liverpool. Whether you’re 19 or 90. Your votes are equal. Your vote and your voice is powerful and it matters.
It’s so important to have your say because this vote really matters. We won’t get another crack at this in 5 years like a general election. This is it.

I’m really passionate about opportunity. About everyone having the chance to succeed regardless of where you’re born, the colour of your skin, who you love and anything else that makes you, you.

Staying in Europe gives us so many opportunities. To live and work in other countries, experience different cultures, to live alongside people from Europe and to learn about them and ourselves.

If we vote to leave, we lose all of that. Those opportunities that you and I have now, and that our younger relatives, friends and siblings have will be quickly and cruelly snatched away.

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Paul Walter

Cameron needs to stop the BS, remember his studies and behave like a statesman/person

By Paul Walter | Thu 7th May 2015 - 10:00 pm

It’s ten o’clock and the polls have just closed all over the country. From St Agnes island hall in the south to North Unst Public Hall in the north, the presiding officers have just locked the doors and are preparing the ballot boxes for transportation to the local counting centre. I can now say what I like!

There has been much dangerous talk in the election campaign. David Cameron has implied that a government with the tacit support of Scottish MPs would somehow be illegitimate. He has accused Ed Miliband of preparing a “con trick” to enter Downing Street with the support of the SNP. Even Nick Clegg has joined in by referring to a “coalition of the losers” – being a possible bloc of MPs led by the leader of the second largest party.

All this sort of talk must now stop.

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Paul Walter

Labour minority government – or coalition with the Lib Dems – would not actually need the SNP’s support

By Paul Walter | Wed 6th May 2015 - 9:25 am

Professor Colin Talbot of Manchester University has written an interesting blog which reinforces many of the points made here by Tony Greaves.

He mentions that much of the talk of “Confidence and supply” deals, Queens Speech votes and second 2015 elections ignores the reality of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011, which is kind to minority governments.

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Paul Walter

The interesting thing about the first of those Milistone promises

By Paul Walter | Sun 3rd May 2015 - 7:01 pm

The first promise on Ed Miliband’s eight foot limestone slab is:

1. A strong economic foundation

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Joe Otten

My challenge to Ed Miliband – your core message may be a fabrication

By Joe Otten | Fri 1st May 2015 - 11:15 am

Ed,

Yesterday on Question Time, you said, as you have said many times during this campaign:

There are some people who tell you that the way we succeed as a country is as long as a few people at the top do well and large corporations, that’s what powers the economy…

Here’s a good question, which you’ll be glad I asked you: Who are these people who tell us this? Have we heard of any of them? Are they standing for election? Can you give us a direct quote or two?

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Paul Walter

Constitutional position in the event of a hung parliament

By Paul Walter | Tue 28th April 2015 - 1:15 pm

I have been blundering around trying to nail down the likely choreographic arrangements after the election result. You know, who leaves Number 10, who drives down or up the Mall at which particular time etc..

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Paul Walter

On May 8th, could David Cameron just lock the doors of Downing Street and stay put?

By Paul Walter | Mon 20th April 2015 - 9:25 am

24 days ago, I wrote that We’re heading for a Labour minority government backed by the SNP.

Since then, there have been thousands more people polled, millions more pounds spent on campaigning and millions more words written/said about the election. So, I now have a ++BREAKING NEWS++ update!

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Caron Lindsay

Five observations about last night’s debate

By Caron Lindsay | Fri 17th April 2015 - 1:57 pm

I actually enjoyed last night’s BBC Debate much more than I expected. Sure, I was livid that Nick Clegg had been excluded, but it was the price that had to be paid for David Cameron taking part in any debates at all. It was an interesting affair. There was no huge drama but it was mostly conducted in reasonable style. Nicola got her chance to bid for a coalition, Ed got the chance to rebuff her so honour was satisfied on that score. Conservative spin doctors trying to extrapolate post election chaos from that display just looked silly.

It told only half a story, though. Each of the four smaller party leaders outlined their own narrow (and in the case of Farage abhorrent) interests. The ideal coalition partner, who would govern for the whole country with fairness, responsibility and respect for civil liberties was not in the room. We have his pitch, though. I just wish the party would put the speech he made at the manifesto launch on Wednesday on You Tube. Particularly this bit:

At its heart is one word that is absolutely central to what Liberal Democrats believe: opportunity. No matter who you are, where you were born, what sexuality or religion you are or what colour your skin is, you should have the same opportunity to get on in life. We want to tear down the barriers that stop you from reaching your potential. We want to smash the glass ceilings that keep you from achieving what you want to achieve. Your talent and your hard work, not the circumstances of your birth, should decide what you can be.

Here are five quick observations from me about last night’s event.

Nigel Farage was a disgrace

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NewsHound

Sorry seems to be the hardest word for Mr Miliband

By NewsHound | Thu 9th April 2015 - 7:38 pm

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Nick T

A foreign-policy-free election?

By Nick T | Thu 9th April 2015 - 12:37 pm

RAF lightning II aircraft photo by defence imagesFor all its crudeness, the barrel bomb has to be one of the most brutally effective weapons around. An old oil drum, filled with that now all too familiar combination of explosives and steel detritus, dropped onto its fuse-laden nose from a helicopter, it seems, kills and maims in just the right proportions to terrorise those left behind.

It is little wonder, then, that the barrel bomb is Bashar al-Assad’s weapon of choice in his effort to wear down those parts of Syria with the impudence to have thought they could do better. It tells you all you need to know about the man that, having discovered that the wretched things seem to be particularly effective when aimed at young children, the regime, like so many despots before, has found schools to be an especially desirable target.

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David Allen

Opinion: The Conservative campaign – some concerns

By David Allen | Mon 6th April 2015 - 10:57 am

 

It is an opportune time to take issue with some of the key planks of the Conservative campaign.

Mr Crosby, who likes simple messages, has primarily put forward just two.  The first is that the Tories have a long term economic plan.  The second is a clever cartoon presenting Miliband as a puppet in Salmond’s pocket.

It might perhaps be argued that George W Bush, who repeated endlessly that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al-Qaida, was the original inspiration for the “Long Term Economic Plan” campaign.  Surveys showed that a majority of Americans came to believe a story known to be entirely false.  Constant repetition of the untruth helped Bush justify the invasion of Iraq.

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Simon Foster

Opinion: The silence of the Miliband

By Simon Foster | Fri 3rd April 2015 - 9:06 am

Yesterday I got an email from Ed Miliband, which included part of his online Q &A session:

“I am stuck as to whether to vote Labour or Lib Dem. I am not interested in past records either, I am looking to the future. Many people fall in an “in-between zone”, not poor enough to receive help with living costs, but not rich enough to be able to stay on top of general living costs. How would Labour deal with this? — Zoe, Norfolk

Ed: Hi Zoe, you’re absolutely right that the problem in our economy right now is that recovery just isn’t reaching working people — just a few at the top. Many working people aren’t getting paid enough to be able to stay on top of the bills. Tackling this cost of living crisis will be the key mission of the next Labour government. Unlike the Tories, Labour understand that Britain only succeeds when working families succeed, and that’s why only a Labour government can tackle the cost of living crisis. One of the ways we will do this is by freezing your energy bills until 2017 and giving the regulator the power to cut bills this winter so that people can afford to heat their homes. To make sure work pays, we will ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, raise the minimum wage to £8, and provide 25 hours free childcare per week for working parents with three or four year olds. We’ll also introduce a new, lower 10p starting rate of tax, paid for by scrapping the unfair marriage tax allowance, which will benefit 24 million people on middle and lower incomes…”

Well the minimum wage should go up to £8.25 in the long run anyway, and the 10p tax rate is completely wrong, we should be looking at national insurance now instead.

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Paul Walter

Something nasty – why the Tories aren’t making headway

By Paul Walter | Wed 1st April 2015 - 9:54 am

“I saw something nasty in the woodshed”- Ada Doom, ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ by Stella Gibbons
There is some bafflement in the Tory ranks as to why their party isn’t shooting ahead of Labour in the polls. David Cameron is very popular. People think Ed Miliband is a “muppet”. So why aren’t the Conservatives surging ahead?

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Eddie Sammon

Opinion: Ed Miliband has taken the left along for a ride

By Eddie Sammon | Mon 30th March 2015 - 1:34 pm

 

Ever since Ed Miliband was elected as Labour leader in 2010 all the talk has been about how he is taking Labour back to the left, but the truth is very different. The problem is he has gone along with this narrative and now runs a deeply divided party, saying one thing, but doing another.

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Paul Walter

We’re heading for a minority Labour government backed by the SNP

By Paul Walter | Fri 27th March 2015 - 9:54 am

whitehall
The Guardian have a very useful web page called Election 2015: The Guardian poll projection. On it, each day, they update their state-of-the-parties graph with the latest polling data, which then flows into an infographic showing the parliamentary arithmetic and possible government options after May 7th.

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Caron Lindsay

Did Charlie Whelan really put his cigarette into Ed Balls’ coke can?

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 14th February 2015 - 5:27 pm

The Telegraph has unearthed an STV documentary on the early days of Labour in the Treasury in 1997. It makes fascinating watching for all sorts of reasons. It feels not unlike an episode of The Thick of It, with Ed Balls a bit like Ollie Reeder to Whelan’s Malcolm Tucker. Everyone looks so young, Gordon Brown particularly.  Ed Miliband has become significantly less geeky over time, too.

The Telegraph article is full of derision for Labour’s removal of regulatory powers from the Bank of England.  That principle seems fine to me, and fairly logical. If you give the bank the power to set interest rates independently, then you need to get someone else to do the regulation. Labour’s failure to build an effectively regulatory framework for the banks can’t be pinned on that.

There is an arrogance about the way they went about it. The Permanent Secretary of the time was clearly worried about all this change. If you are going to reform, you need to just get on and do it, but they did seem to be enjoying smashing the established order a little bit too much.

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Caron Lindsay

Yet again Scotland’s political leaders outclass their Westminster counterparts

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th February 2015 - 7:57 pm

Prime Minister’s Questions was even worse than usual today. Both Cameron and Miliband jumped into the gutter from the start and neither of them emerged. It was bizarre watching these people who had blocked every single attempt to reform party funding argue about each other’s paymasters. It was a matter of some considerable annoyance that Cameron kept saying how his government had done more to make sure people paid their taxes than the last one. Does anyone seriously think the Tories, left to their own devices, would have done that? Errr, no. That’s all been down to our man in the Treasury, one Danny Alexander. Cameron taking credit for our policy is bad enough. Using our success to cover his own party’s issues is worse.

It was all a bit classier in Scotland, though. Remember a couple of weeks ago how Scotland’s party leaders joked on Twitter about cancelling FMQs and drinking Pimms in Nicola Sturgeon’s office while watching Andy Murray’s semi-final in the Australian Open instead?

Well, they’ve done it again. After a journalist teased Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson about the fundraiser where a mega-rich Tory donor paid £17500 for a shoe-shopping session with Theresa May.

To cut a long story short, a shoe shopping session with all of Scotland’s political leaders is now to be auctioned to raise money for Scottish charity Cash for Kids. Buzzfeed has the story.

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Caron Lindsay

Three moments from today’s PMQs

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 4th February 2015 - 6:58 pm

I’ve taken to avoiding Prime Minister’s Questions. However today, I had no choice. At the moment it feels like a particularly angry and vindictive goat has stuffed my sinuses full of bits of cardboard box and is now kicking me in the head. I couldn’t even muster up the energy to get up from the sofa, where I was lying feeling sorry for myself, to find the remote control to switch it off.

The impending election doesn’t seem to have persuaded MPs to behave in a more grown-up fashion. I don’t think anything will change until Speaker John Bercow actually starts throwing people out. It’s nasty, shouty, brawly and hideously unpleasant and it’s all most people see of the work of the Mother of Parliaments. In fact, much goes on that is consensual, professional and pleasant from people of all parties.

Anyway, here are three moments in the half hour which were noteworthy.

Cameron takes credit for Liberal Democrat policy klaxon

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Caron Lindsay

Clegg’s #asktheleader session

By Caron Lindsay | Mon 2nd February 2015 - 10:28 pm

Sky News have put all their Stand up and be Counted #AsktheLeaders sessions on their website. Nick Clegg’s is here.

I felt he was best at making it more like a conversation with the young people, listening to what she had to say. He was also much more confident on the facts and details on all the issues, particularly housing and the NHS.

As for the others, Natalie Bennett’s heart is in the right place but her party’s policies are not well thought through and I didn’t need to listen to her for half an hour to find out that she’d push for action on the environment and climate change in a hung parliament. I suspect every woman in the country was briefly on her side when she described how being denied a bike at the age of 5 because she was a girl made her a feminist.

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Iain Roberts

Opinion: Labour’s Tuition Fees policy is a tax cut for the rich, paid for by the poor

By Iain Roberts | Mon 2nd February 2015 - 4:27 pm

University of the West of England, laboratory, science. Some rights reserved by JiscEd Miliband is announcing that a Labour government would cut university tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000. It’s more of a re-announcement as the policy’s been knocking around for a while – and you can understand why. On the surface it sounds good.

In reality, Labour want a tax hike for the poor and a tax cut for the rich.

The Coalition’s Tuition Fees policy cut the cost of university for poorer graduates (but increased it substantially for the wealthiest) and has seen not only record numbers going to university, but also the highest ever number of young people from poorer backgrounds signing up. And yes, not the Lib Dems finest hour with the pledge and all that – no doubt commentators below the line will find new and interesting things to say on that topic that no-one’s thought of in the last four-and-a-bit years.

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Caron Lindsay

So, the Labour Party pledge a positive campaign

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 1st February 2015 - 5:59 pm

Oh look, the Labour Party is pledging not to get personal during the election campaign.

From the BBC:

Labour has vowed not to feature Prime Minister David Cameron on billboards ahead of the general election.

The party said it would focus on issues rather than personalities. and not use negative personal campaigning.

Its election strategist Douglas Alexander said the Conservatives were preparing to spread “fear and smear”.

This is in response to poorly photo-shopped Conservative posters of Ed Miliband costing up to Alex Salmond.

It’s always nice to see a pledge of positive campaigning, even if it does come from masters of the dark arts of the real, nasty, personal stuff. I mean, could this possibly be the same Labour Party who, just 9 months ago, devoted an entire Party Election Broadcast to doing a hatchet job on Nick Clegg? “The un-credible shrinking man” they called it. Stephen Tall gave a run down of the plot at the time:

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Caron Lindsay

Ed Miliband has his economic deficiencies but is the Liberal Democrat response adequate?

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 11th December 2014 - 11:07 pm

I’m getting as fed up with arguments about the economy as I was about the quality of the debate in the independence referendum. We seem to be stuck in a yah-boo soundbite fest that is deeply uninspiring.

Ed Miliband’s latest contribution on the deficit was pretty risible if you looked at it in terms of facts. He’s opposed practically every single cut the Coalition has made over the last four years but presumably his “sensible cuts” won’t actually affect anyone. Of course he’s not actually told us what they are, so we can’t really judge. Our problem is that with the way our newspapers and broadcasters work, neither Labour nor the Tories have to be that good to get their message across. Already we seem to be being demoted to an afterthought in most news reports. We have to work ten times as hard as everyone else to grab even a tiny bit of attention.

The nagging worry I have about Labour appropriating policies like our Mansion Tax is that they can then position themselves to say “vote for us, we come without their baggage”. This, I grant you, is pretty much the same as “vote for us cos we’re fairer than them and more economically responsible than them” which seems to be our pitch.

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Caron Lindsay

Vince would have put Myleene Klass in her place on the Mansion Tax

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 18th November 2014 - 1:27 pm

It’s not every day that you wake up and find that you’ve been quoted in the Daily Fail. The story starts late last night when Ed Miliband got into an argument with Myleene Klass over the Mansion Tax. You can see here on ITV Player how he got his backside handed to him on a plate as Myleene took him to task over his policy. Well, actually, it’s our policy. He nicked it. Maybe if he’d had his own policies, he might have been better at defending them.

Myleene was absolutely and utterly in the wrong as far as I’m concerned. If people are privileged enough to be able to afford a £2 million property, then they should be able to afford a relatively modest tax on that significant wealth.  Forgive me for not having much in the way of sympathy for those rich folk who complain about having to find an extra couple of grand a year. The poor have already been squeezed more than they should have been, by successive governments, including the one of which Ed was a member. If we’re going to be a fairer society, then the rich have to pay their share. It’s a total no brainer. It should absolutely be a no-brainer for the leader of a party which claims to represent the workers of the country.

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Joe Otten

Could it really not be any clearer than this?

By Joe Otten | Thu 25th September 2014 - 2:25 pm

Ed Balls MP, Denton - (Labour Leadership Campaign) - 2010Defending the clarity of his party’s position on the deficit after forgetting to mention it in his speech, Ed Miliband said

Ed Balls talked this week about our approach on the deficit. I have talked about our approach on the deficit. No one should be in any doubt about my approach on the deficit.

My approach is clear – we are going to get the deficit down, we are going to get the debt falling and we could not be clearer about that.

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Caron Lindsay

Wednesday in the Park with Ed

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 24th September 2014 - 9:34 pm

Ed Miliband park photo by ARCHIVE depart,ent of energy and climate changeBefore anyone says anything in the comments, yes, I know what follows is a little childish, but it is fun. I also know that all political leaders share personal stories in their speeches, but they do tend to do it with less clumsiness than Ed Miliband did it yesterday and there’s usually more substance from their speech to write about.

My mission to the world, or at least my friends on Facebook and Twitter this morning was simple. If you met Ed Miliband in a park, what would he say about you in his next Conference speech? the creative minds of social media went for it in style. Here are just a few of the replies.

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Caron Lindsay

No wow factor from Ed Miliband as he forgets part of his speech

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 23rd September 2014 - 10:16 pm

Joe Otten has already given you his inimitable take on Ed Miliband’s speech. I do love it when he gets cheeky.

I thought I’d stick my oar in as well with a few not quite so witty observations.

Six days ago, I was lucky enough to see Gordon Brown make one of the most incredible speeches I have ever heard. It had some welly behind it. It was absolutely superb. Close to the top of the list of things I never thought I’d say is that Gordon gave me goosebumps, but it really was electric. It had the melody that the Better Together campaign had been lacking, although it was definitely more Motorhead than Idina Menzel. Maybe it spooked Ed, because yesterday he forgot to thank Gordon for the role he’d played in the campaign to keep the country together.

Now Ed, shall we say, doesn’t quite pack the same punch. Today he spoke for far too long. It was all very earnest and it had a theme of Together that kind of worked, but it had no energy behind it. It had all the passion of the slogan of this year’s conference, the stultifying “Labour’s Plan for Britain’s Future”. I mean, 8 months out from an election you would assume they had one. Although Ed Balls seemed to spend half his speech yesterday apologising for everything from the 10p tax rate to their failure to regulate the banks – and now they’re asking for another 10 years to fix the country?

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Joe Otten

That Ed Miliband speech in full… (2)

By Joe Otten | Tue 23rd September 2014 - 5:12 pm

The following arrived in a brown envelope at Lib Dem Voice Towers, this morning. It is probably an early draft.

Ed speechThankyou so much.

Friends, this country will never turn our back on the world and on the principles of internationalism. Those values are reflected not just in this country but in this party, and in the great team of Manchester United.

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Stephen Tall

Ed Miliband’s speech: tricky message, poor timing

By Stephen Tall | Sat 26th July 2014 - 2:00 pm

Ed MilibandI’ve quite a lot of time for Ed Miliband. Politics needs intelligent, thoughtful folk with their hearts in the right place.

I respect, for example, that he held out last year against the superficially attractive urge to call for an in/out EU referendum advocated by more opportunistic Labour colleagues who relished the idea of stirring Tory discontent with Cameron. Miliband, rightly, decided to put national interest ahead of narrow party interest.

But there are evident troubles with his leadership, crystallised by his speech yesterday in which he acknowledged his own image problems: “I am not trying to win a photo-op contest in the next 10 months. And I wouldn’t win it if I tried.”

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