In three weeks time, voters go to the polls to elect their representatives to the European Parliament. Not surprisingly, Labour and a majority of the affiliated Trade unions have been very vocal on the need for a big push in the European elections to kick out the scourge of UKIP and BNP MEPs plus valiant […]
Posts Tagged ‘Ed Miliband’
This is no time for Labour to play it safe
Mar 25th, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Should Labour aim to slide past the electoral finish-lines with (as one senior civil servant once said to me) ‘minimum exposure of flank’? Or should the party make clear what it really stands for today, and what its central objectives for government really are? The argument for the former is obviously that it entails fewer […]
The return of the Whig Party
Feb 25th, 2014 by John Lilburne.Lord Andrew Adonis, former SDP councillor, turned Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, former speechwriter to Paddy Ashdown and latterly a New Labour Minister has told The Observer that he is right behind Ed Miliband’s ‘party reform plans’. Lord Adonis is conincidentally heavily involved with Lord Sainsburys’ militant tendency, Progress organisation. Well, to paraphrase Mandy Rice Davies; “he would […]
Ed Miliband, the NHS and the lurch back towards Blairism
Feb 14th, 2014 by John Lister.Ed Miliband’s Hugo Young lecture this week represents a giant step back to Blairism, and an extended statement of Labour’s failure to get the message. Who is Ed Miliband talking to? Who does he want to impress? Delivering a 6,000 word Hugo Young lecture this week, Miliband calls for “a new culture in our public services”. But in […]
After Collins: how will the unions respond?
Feb 5th, 2014 by Andy Newman.There is certainly a plausible argument that Ed Miliband has been one of the most effective leaders of the opposition in modern British history, demonstrating an ability to set the political agenda that exceeds what either Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair achieved from the opposition benches. Miliband has stood up to the power of the […]
Party reform explained. Or why sack anyone who suggests a Clause IV moment
Jan 30th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.Labour’s national executive committee meet next Tuesday to consider the Collins review of the party structure. Time has therefore run out to decide what is to be done to get Ed off the hook for the ill-thought through and ill-advised speech he made last summer after he’d had a pasting at PMQs and wanted to avoid […]
So when will the Labour Party apologise to Stevie Deans?
Jan 22nd, 2014 by Jon Lansman.Yesterday, the Scottish police confirmed that they had found “no evidence of any criminality” in their inquiry into the activities of Stevie Deans, who was until three months ago full-time convenor at the Ineos plant at Grangemouth (where he’d worked for 25 years) and Chair of Unite in Scotland as well as the sometime Chair […]
The battle for the soul of the Labour Party (part 47 – the unions are sold a dummy)
Jan 17th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.Sometimes, news stories simply distract the reader from what is really happening. Yesterdays ‘news’ on the Collins review of the Labour Party — trade union link is that Ed Miliband’s reform plans are faltering: there’s a hiccup in the negotiations between Paul Kenny on behalf of the affiliated unions and the Leader’s office, but it’s about […]
2014: the year Miliband’s Labour turns left?
Jan 4th, 2014 by Thomas Butler.In 2014, Ed Miliband and his colleagues need to understand once more the reasons The Labour Party came into fruition. And they need to articulate a clear, radical alternative to Tory Austerity with a vision of a post neo-liberal Britain that appeals to swing voters, but also many of those ‘don’t knows’ and stay at […]
Miliband takes on corporate power again… and this time it’s house-builders
Dec 17th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Ed Miliband’s speech today targeting the ‘big four’ developers – Barratt, Berkley, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey – for hoarding land and not building the houses that Britain desperately needs is a textbook for political strategy as the election fast approaches. The shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing, has been a public scandal for years. Up […]