Ed Miliband’s interview with the BBC yesterday afternoon about the strikes has to rate as one of the worst performances, if not the very worst performance, by a British politician in my memory. Mark Ferguson rightly slammed it:
It evoked the clumsy attempts of the Brown years. It’s a video nasty to rival Brown on expenses and Cameron’s Gay Times interview. Mehdi Hasan of the New Statesman called it unbelieveably awful, wooden, repetitive and weird. LabourList regular Emma Burnell (who volunteered for Ed in the leadership contest) argued that it looked like a hostage video. It was dire. As Shane Greer has noted, the tactic if repeating the same answer over and over – in the assumption that you agreed “line” will be used – would have worked two years ago. Now, the whole video will be released online, and the desperate line-ness of your message will be revealed. To coin a phrase, it was an analogue answer in a digital age.
I still remain largely unconcerned that Ed Miliband is not supporting the strikes. Let us be frank, most trade union members trust their union much more than they trust the Labour Party, and won’t really care one way or another whether Ed Miliband supports the strike. I am old enough to remember Harold Wilson being Prime Minister, and I don’t ever recall a leader of the Labour Party supporting a strike, so I am hardly shocked by Ed’s position.
More important than his attitude to the strikes is his failure to explain the folly of the government’s policy on pensions, and that is where he has signally underperformed. In particular, he needed to take command of the situation by demonstrating a confident command of the substantive pension issue. Instead of convincingly looking like a future Prime Minister interested in sound governence, he came across as a bad salesman who didn’t believe in his own product. Ed should learn from Ken Livingstone’s approach
It is important to understand that Ed Miliband doesn’t necessarily need to fully endorse the unions’ position, he just needed to move the focus away from whether the strike was right or wrong and towards the complexity of any pension reform, and the lack of a compelling argument in favour of the government’s proposals.
This is how he could have explained his own position, if he was well briefed and confident.
I fully understand the concern of public sector workers about the reckless pension reforms being proposed by this government. However, the majority of public sector unions have not decided to strike, because they believe that there is still a prospect of an acceptable outcome coming from negotiations. Pensions are an extremely complex topic where the trade unions have specialist expertise, and have pointed out very serious flaws in the government’s proposals. Trade unions do have a right to strike if their members decide to do so, but I do think it is a mistake for a minority of unions to be striking before negotiations are complete.
When asked why he wasn’t giving more leadership over the pensions issue he could have said.
I am entitled to have a tactical disagreement with the unions who are striking about the wisdom of today’s strikes, after all the majority of public sector trade unionists are not striking today. But the real leadership we need is in finding a resolution to the serious problems raised by the government’s proposed reforms on pensions, that are ill-considered, reckless and not in the public interest.
Whether or not I agree with today’ strikes, the unions do have substantive concerns. The government’s own long term planning process has concluded that the public sector pensions are stable and sustainable, so while I am sure that improvements could be made, the case for the government’s proposals is not convincing.
When asked the very perceptive question about whether Francis Maude is more conciliatory in public than in private, he could have answered:
I hope that he is involved in substantive negotiations, because the trade unions have made a number of very valid points, and that is why I think it is important that the negotiations are not derailed by unnecessary strike action. I am not confident that the government appreciate that reducing the pensions payable will increase poverty and inequality among the elderly, and while that is heartless in its own right, it will also create more ill-health and therefore greater demands upon the NHS and home care services, which is a greater burden on the taxpayer. Raising the retirement age may also be inappropriate in many professions, and for unemployed older people later retirement merely elongates the time they spend on working age benefits. I am not sure that the government understands these problems.
I also think that the government must accept responsibility for making some of the unions feel that the negotiations are not serious. And I am convinced that the government is playing a game of divide and rule by offering more concessions to the unions representing people in the Local Government Pension Scheme, and less to workers in other government pension schemes. But pensions aren’t a game, they are the foundation of providing dignity and security in old age, and I just don’t think that this government of millionaires really gets that.
When asked whether he had spoken privately to union leaders, he could have said.
Yes I have, but what I have said privately is the same as what I am saying publicly. But look, it is not my job as leader of the Labour Party to lecture trade unionists about what they should or should not be doing. My job is to try to facilitate the achievement of sustainable and fair pensions, not just for public sector workers but for everyone, so that elderly people can retire in dignity.
I am also worried that the Local Government Pension Scheme, that the government is seeking to destabilise, invests some £120 bn in the UK economy, and is vital for our economy.
The unions are actually experts on the pensions issue, and the government need to recognise that expertise, and work with the unions to find a solution.
When asked whether he had been affected, and how parents generally had been affected, he could have replied:
The strike has undoubtedly caused disruption, and I have already said that I disagree with it. But we must remember that 12 million people are directly affected by reform of the public sector pensions, and many of them are deeply worried about the reckless and provocative stance of the government.
I am sure it has been inconvenient for many parents, and will have caused loss of productivity in the economy. But even more disruptive would be for reckless pension reform to jeopardise the livelihoods of millions of elderly people.
We all need to work to avoid further strikes, and that is best achieved by the government accepting that they have got it seriously wrong on pension reform.
Teachers pensions are in effect deferred payment for years of service in a tough job. Teachers pay is low for the expertise, qualifications and dedication required to be good at the job but they withstand a career of being underpaid for the prospect of a half decent pension. There is already a massive retention crisis in our schools, where 50% of qualified teachers stay in the profession for less than 5 years, and pension reform will not encourage more to stay in the job, quite the opposite. There is a seveer shortage of applicants for headships and deputy headships. The shift from final salary to career average pensions will further worsen this problem. Reform of the TPS will not only force retiring teachers onto the poverty line and make them require state handouts to survive (which will ultimately cost the tax payers more than the contributory pension scheme), it will also lead to a crisis in the number of decent teachers available to our children. The proposed changes to TPS will also discourage those remaining in the job from belonging to the scheme as many teachers simply cannot afford another £100 a month from their frozen salaries and this will eventually make the entire system untennable and force ever more people onto welfare benefits.
On making teachers work until they are 68 there are a number of concerns. Teaching is a physical and stressful job with high rates of depression and anxiety and stress related illnesses amongst the staff. Working to this age will see an increase in the number of incidents in the class room with major health and safety implications and even more deaths in service. New inituiatives forced on teachers by the government create additional pressures and there is no way most 68 year olds could reasonably be expected to keep pace with them. Other than the obvious language barriers there are the technological ones: the increasing use of IT etc in schools will prove a hurdle too far for many of these teachers who will become demotivated and unhappy, and this does not make for a good education for our children. My 67 year old father gets exhausted from watching my 4 year old for a couple of hours. There is no way he could be expected to keep charge, let alone educate a class of 30 children!
Also on the subject of delayed retirement, we have a growing problem of rising youth unemployment. If the teachers today are expected to work an additional 8 years the number of young unemployed will rise substantively. If there is little or no prospect of a decent job after the expense of university, not to mention the £9k a year fees plus living costs, books etc, we wioll lose the brightest and best new possible teachers. But then that will not be a problem as there is increasingly little to recommend this job.
These are the matters the leader of the Labour Party may have raised, rather than repeating the same empty rhetoric to satisfy our right wing media.
Maybe the wording of the video is correct in that Ed has been taken hostage by the right of the party