It is clearer this morning than it has ever been. Lord Ashworth’s polls leave us in no doubt that the threat to Labour from the SNP that has been forecast by other polls is very real. If Labour loses this election, it will have lost it primarily in Scotland. Douglas Alexander and Margaret Curran stand to lose their seats, and whilst this may be some justice for their failure to recognise the danger of cooperating with the Tories in Better Together, and to alert Ed Miliband to it, the Scottish people do not deserve the consequence which would be a Tory-led government. Continue reading
Tagged with Ed Miliband
Deciding on a coalition: should Labour follow Attlee or MacDonald?
Labour has had two experiences of formal coalition.
In the first, its leader chose not to consult the party which was very divided about his austerity programme, and chose to go into coalition with the Tories and Liberals. This split the party which didn’t form a majority government for 14 years.
In the second, the leader put it to a vote at Labour’s executive (carried 17-1) and two days later moved an emergency motion to the same effect at Labour’s conference in Bournemouth (carried 2,413,000 to 170,000). He went into coalition with the Tories and Liberals but kept the party remarkably united, and won the next election with a massive majority on a bold programme which had very broad consent in the party.
So what shall we do next time? Continue reading
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What #WebackEd means
Tens of thousands of people pouring out onto that there Twitter showing support for Ed Miliband? What has the world come to? Stranger things have happened, just not that often.
And so it came to pass that for the best part of 24 hours, #webackEd trended on Twitter. It still is at the time of writing. Starting before last night’s round of hyped-up difficulties by @CharlieWoof81 and @jon_swindon, as hashtags go it can be described as an unqualified success. It even managed to resist blandishments and hijackings by trolls and the like. Continue reading
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Plots and rumours of plots
Even the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday is sometimes forced to print the truth. But this morning’s front page was not one of those occasions. Apparently, Tristram Hunt “plunges in the dagger” and has joined the much-trailed revolt of Labour MPs. Except he hasn’t. If you read behind the headline he “revealed his doubts in private conversations with senior Labour colleagues“. This is tantamount to writing “we’ve made this up” or, rather, taking the comments made by Simon Danczuk and transposing them on to someone else.
Much the same can be said of of the reputed 20 shadow ministers working behind the scenes to give Ed Miliband the heave ho. Evidence of a plot? If The Observer‘s claims want to be taken seriously they have to be a bit more substantial than that. It sounds to me that Danczuk and co are inflating their importance. What in reality has happened is every single whispered whinge, every rolled eyes in Strangers, every grumble in the Members dining room has been puffed up into something it’s not. Are there shadow ministers who moan about Ed Miliband. Of course there is – who doesn’t moan about their boss. Does that mean a putsch is in the offing? No, absolutely not. Continue reading
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Labour needs a bold alternative to austerity. Not Alan Johnson. Not any new leader
Labour MPs are their own worst enemies. Many of them are panicked about losing their seats, and are sufficiently stupid and disloyal to blame Ed Miliband and brief the press accordingly. Deputy chief whip, Alan Campbell, rather than feeding reports of discontent to his leader, is whipping it up.
And yet, if Labour MPs keep their cool, there will be no Labour melt down in England or Wales in 2015. UKIP may take a seat or two from us, and prevent us winning a few marginals. But we shall still win others from the Tories and Lib Dems, whose problems are worse than ours. And no short-coming of Ed Miliband is responsible for the rise of UKIP.
Scotland is a different story. Labour could face meltdown there in 2015 and 2016. And it will be worse if Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale win the current leadership contests. But that too has nothing to do with Ed Miliband, though a second leadership contest in the UK party would make matters even worse. Continue reading
