Labour’s new leader has been in office barely two months, yet this hasn’t stopped a motley collection of ex Ministers, frustrated David Miliband supporters and it would seem some party officials, from moaning in the ear of one Dan Hodges, who last week launched into print in the New Statesman, giving vent to their – and I suspect – his, litany of woes. Hodges article was titled ‘Fear and loathing in the Labour Party’, but here is the curious thing, since Ed Miliband was elected Labour leader the quotient of ‘fear and loathing’ seems to have abated – except amongst those John Prescott refers to as the ‘Bitterites’. Continue reading
Tagged with Alan Johnson
On Alan Johnson and the unions who put him in parliament
Alan Johnson is a former General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union. Without their suppoprt and that of other unions, he would not be in parliament. Now he wants to cut or even eliminate union influence in the Labour Party. He wants to take away the votes of two-thirds of the people who voted in the Leadership election — his fellow trades unionists — who pay the political levy out of their wages, unless they area prepared also to join as individual members. The current system, he argues, allows people who are members of unions as well as the party to cast more than one vote. And yet this is a man who cast a “block vote” for David Miliband equivalent to the votes of about 479 individual members (in addition, one assumes to his own votes as a party and CWU member). Continue reading
Share:
Ed Miliband needs to get a grip
“If a week is a long time in politics”, as Harold Wilson once said, two weeks away from politics on paternity leave is clearly an age. Ed Miliband returns this week to Parliament after a fortnight helping to change nappies, only to find that some on his own front bench have been busy doing some very public dirty washing of their own. While Ed has been away, the other Ed, Ed Balls was quoted in the New Statesman saying that he wouldn’t “follow crap” from his leader. Elsewhere it was reported that unapologetic Blairites, Hazel Blears, Pat McFadden and Ben Bradshaw had refused to serve in Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet. If Ed Miliband has been having some sleepless nights of late, it probably won’t be because this unlovely triumvirate spurned his olive branch. Continue reading
Share:
Alan Johnson: could do better?
The most repellent aspect of watching the Chancellor yesterday was the schoolboy cheering as he finished. A new era of austerity ushered in by the Bullingdon bovver boys. Alan Johnson did respond:
Members opposite are cheering the deepest cuts in public expenditure that have taken place in living memory. For many of them, this is what they came into politics for.”
He did so to make the vital case that the cuts proposed are not necessary but ideological. Unfortunately, he failed to make that case effectively, and he failed too to convey the extent of human misery that these cuts will cause. Continue reading
Share:
Welcome to Austerity Britain
This today is the scene from battle-ground Britain, as the Government announces the biggest austerity and cuts programme in living memory.
The Markets reacted well, but then they would. The rest of the country is simply reeling. The Chancellor, George Osborne, said: “today is the day Britain steps back from the brink‘”. Many think he has taken Britain to the edge of the precipice. The Chancellor confirmed that the bloodiest cuts since the Second World War amounting to an incredible £81billion over four years will lead to 500,000 public sector job losses. Continue reading