A Labour leader who says “I am a socialist… and I’m not embarrassed about it“. Much of the Left had not expected to hear that again in our lifetimes.Who chose not to distance himself from his links with the trade unions, saying: “if you take them out [of the structure] you make us more disconnected as a party.” Who says he was “quite tempted” to go out and speak to student protestors, adding: “I applaud young people who peacefully demonstrate.”
The cynical voices of Labour Uncut will complain about “the march to the left’s comfort zone“. They’re wrong. The public rejected New Labour because they were fed up with the cynics and the spinners and the liars. Why would the visionless New Labour Jesuits of cynicism who seek to restore our ideological pain as a point of principle understand the value of an honest leader with a clear vision? We won’t agree with everything he says, but, at last, we have a Leader who is comfortable with Labour, and with whom Labour will be very comfortable.
Great short article. It’s about time that Socialists in the Labour Party stop apologising for being a Socialists. I’m a Socialist – it’s the only pure and honest philosophy around. The problem is however that those who aren’t Socialists deliberately misinterpret what socialism actually is. New Labour fell for it and ought to be ashamed.
I won’t agree with everything Ed Miliband says or does. But that’s just the way it is. But he’s is proud to call himself a Socialist which now makes me proud to know he our leader.
Would his brother David say the same – or is he just another apologist like Mandelson.
Ed Milliband says ‘I am a socialist and I’m not embarrassed about it.’ My first thought is well done for coming out with such an unfashionable admission, for far too long socialism has been a naughty word in the part that has no reason to exist without it.
My second, and more serious, thought is that if he really is red then Ed has to come up with some policies that reflect that fact, socialists have always, quite properly, been judged by what they do rather than what they say. It would do no harm while he’s at it to dispense with the services of some of the New Labour throwbacks in the shadow cabinet.
As the cuts start to bite and the likes of Lord Young and Howard Flight (soon also to be made a peer in a spectacular failure of courage by David Cameron) let slip the bubbling nastiness behind the smiley mask of the new model Tories these should be golden days for Labour. If the party can put together a slate of policies that reflect its core values it could be the driver of real change.
‘I am a Socialist’, says Ed.
Forgive me for noting, but that should be a given.
New Labour, like Saddam’s Ba’athists knew how to restore order in the ranks.
He shot them.
New Labour, a little less dramatic, suspended, expelled and ‘guided them’.
The end result is a non-Socialist set-up, with set-up being the key word and plague they left behind.
I’m a little more critical of Ed’s brave attempt at being ‘normal’ within the Labour ranks and I don’t wear the identity badge he wears so easily, and I certainly don’t forgive his part in it at all.
This is the great(?) Labour Party of the people that still, yes still, does not allow current members a vote.
One member, one vote belongs to real Socialists and I’m afraid that here in Stoke-on-Trent, that privilege does not exist.
Ed cannot be taken seriously when the party that he leads (New Labour) continues to operate as it does now.
When Ed corrects this, then he can be taken seriously.
I agree, but unless the majority of voters see Ed as a potential PM we wont win on policy alone.