Tagged with Ed Miliband

Of #Milifandom – Who’da thought it?

Milibae the magic kawaii politicianIt’s my party and I’ll be late if I want to. News of the unexpected #Milifandom around comrade number one, Ed “Milibae” are chip wrappers humming in the nation’s bins alongside tea bags and gravy-speckled LibDem leaflets, but a conspiracy hatched by campaigning and a dud internet connection has blocked yours truly from commenting. Until now.

How short political comment’s memory is. The rise of Miliband fandom, and its entirely confected and useless Tory countershove, the “Cameronettes”, are not without precedent. Continue reading →

Tory attacks on Ed are detestable but the practical case against Trident must be made

Bairns not Bombs CND TridentThe constant personal attacks on Ed Miliband by the Tories have rightly been deplored. Last week ,Tory defence spokesman Michael Fallon chose to claim that Ed “had stabbed his own brother in the back to lead Labour and was now willing to stab the UK in the back by doing a deal on Trident with the SNP to become PM.” His remarks were correctly seen as a new low. But just as depressing as the attack on Ed was the fact that nowhere in the resultant political hullabaloo was there any serious discussion of the practical  case against Trident.

This is not true of Scotland of course. Two week-ends ago five thousand people gathered in Glasgow to protest against Trident and carrying banners saying “Bairns not Bombs” and “Scrap Trident“. But, back in the Westminster bubble, the Labour party’s response to Fallon’s unpleasant remarks didn’t even contain the hint of a willingness to look at the costs of Trident, or of whether Trident was even any use against the threats we currently face including international terrorism. Continue reading →

PMQs – the spectacle and farce – is rotten and out of touch and needs radical reform

David Cameron & Ed Miliband at PMQsIt’s been a long, tedious road; but here we are. In regular slots since the 13 October 2010 Dave and Ed have faced off in gladiatorial combat over the dispatch box. How did it go? It was pretty poor, from Labour’s perspective. Especially when, for those who score such things, Ed Miliband had come out on top.

As you might expect, Ed started with the question mark over the Tories’ VAT plans. Referencing Dave’s retirement plan and his desire to give “straight answers to Dave questions“, he was asked whether he would rule out a VAT rise? As Osborne had previously said he had “no plans“, it was hardly shocking that – for once – he gave an affirmative answer to the VAT rise. Continue reading →

The return of Falkirk – more skulduggery, same victim, same perpetrators

Ed Miliband & Len McCluskeyThe last few days has seen the sorry Falkirk affair return with a vengeance. Readers may remember that there were two people who had been seeking Labour’s parliamentary nomination for Falkirk who were accused of wrong doing in the recruitment of new members to that constituency party. One was left-wing Scottish Unite activist, Karie Murphy, former nurse and later office manager to Tom Watson MP. The other was Progress-supporter Greg Poynton, then a director of new media campaigning consultancy, Blue State Media, who happened to be married to Gemma Doyle MP, deputy to Labour’s then defence spokesperson and leading Blairite, Jim Murphy. Continue reading →

Is Ed Miliband the next Margaret Thatcher?

Miliband Hope imageWhen you’re involved in politics you grow accustomed to hearing some very silly things. This is doubly so in the rarefied world of political comment. I don’t get paid for my pearls (some people spot trains in their free time, I do this), yet the pressure to have something unique and interesting to say is inescapable. If all this blog did was regurgitate The Graun and FT, there would be few takers (cf. Socialist Worker and The Socialist). This becomes a compulsion if you have to grind a living from your keyboard, as a small but privileged number of writers do. If you’ve scaled the heights of a Polly Toynbee, Andrew Rawnsley, or even a Peter Oborne, access to the indiscreet chatterboxes of Westminster give your articles an edge those not so positioned fail to match. They instead have to stump up analyses no one has done, or tackle politics from an oblique and seldom-considered angle. Continue reading →