Nick Tregoning posts on Facebook: "Well, if Ed Miliband gets sick of being New Labour leader, he could try doing comic monologues. Why on earth would I want to join Labour? Tuition fees? Illegal wars? 75p pension increase? CCTV surveillence? ID Cards? Fingerprinting children? Not controlling the banks? Less social mobility? Widening the gap between rich and poor? Yeah, Ed...really amusing." One could add mismanaging the economy. There was a sign that Brown had belatedly recognised his errors in that he appointed Alistair Darling as Chancellor and in the last days as PM stopped trying to dictate to him, but Miliband E has replaced Darling as economics spokesman with Alan Johnson.
One wonders how happy the ordinary Labour member is with the way Miliband has turned out. Not only in the Fabian society speech, but also in the way he intends to slash and burn party policy, he seems to be ignoring roots opinion. Clearly, a party of government has to establish at least a "Chinese wall" between ministers and the party conference, but Labour is back in opposition now and should surely be looking to a democratically elected committee or committees to review its policy - and its attitude to other parties. Even post-Mandelson, Labour conference was jealous - often noisily so - of its role in formulating policy. September in Liverpool should be interesting.
2 comments:
Apologies - I should have pointed out that the link to the Bradford Star was made by me and not by Nick.
Further thought: if Labour really wanted closer cooperation with the Liberal Democrats, they should have stiffened Gordon Brown's resolve to go to the country in 2007, when the outcome would not have been so good for the Conservatives.
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