Thoughts on Southport

June 7, 2010 — simonashall

Catching flies - Miliband won't be the threat Tories fear

Labour held its leadership hustings today in Southport and according to the BBC, which seems to be intent on pretending that Labour is still in power, this internal Labour Party process was an event that merited live TV coverage. In fact, the reason that the hustings were held at all seemed to me to be all about David Miliband in particular getting some welcome exposure.

Yesterday, the BBC news lead with the bare-faced revelation that Miliband was accusing the PM of “hypocrisy” on spending cuts and “broken promises”. The sheer brass neck needed to occasion such a piece of naked and mendacious opportunism is difficult to quantify with words alone – suffice it to say that the corporation seems to have decided that Miliband is the next Labour leader and they are determined to make him PM in 2015. Personally, I can’t see the British people going for it but there we go.

Today however and in front of the GMB, comrade Miliband was talking about “our people” and building Labour up “workplace by workplace“. And he’s supposed to be the Blairite – can we assume that the likes of Ed Balls, brother Ed and Diane Abbott would wish to be seen as even more substantially left? No doubt the coalition has pulled the Conservative Party to the left and the Liberal Democrats to the right to end up somewhere in the genuine centre rather than the centre-right with which many Conservatives would be more comfortable.

Is the only place for Labour to go back to the left? From 1994 onwards, Labour had a go at being capitalists but forgot that supporting and spending the proceeds of economic growth also entails a measure of responsibility and after 15 years of profligacy the money has run out. They can’t go to the right, they no longer look credible in the centre ground and so with Miliband heading back to the comrades for support, they can only move to that left ground vacated by NC. Fine by me.

Until today, I think most Conservatives were hoping that Ed Balls might get the leadership in an attempt to saddle Labour with a leader even more unelectable than Gordon Brown. However John McConnell seems to be intent on taking on that mantle after some very ill-judged comments about Lady Thatcher. I admire her in many ways; but not in others as I’ve said before. But the idea of assassinating political leaders is either puerile posturing or dangerous nonsense from a man who wants to become Prime Minister (presumably). Leaving aside the poor taste, if the best answer Labour has got to Britain’s problems is time travel back to the 80s and taking out the then PM – who for a greater part was simply sorting out the last mess Labour left – then their ideas barrel clearly has sprung a leak.

If Labour is sensible it will elect David Miliband as leader – but I’m not sure Conservatives should be too worried by that prospect.

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Faint praise

January 6, 2010 — admin

Faint praise from the future powerbrokers

A decent performance at PMQs doesn’t mean much when your own party starts tearing into you a few minutes later. The PM is in real trouble at the moment, not because people love DC or because of the polls but because a large section of his own party have no confidence in him as their leader.

Worse, some of them are so convinced that the election is lost that they are prepared to challenge him – why would you do that if you thought there was a cat’s chance that you could win? The news channels have been doing this to death all afternoon and evening, although they have been successfully spun by the government into the “Ministers back Brown” line.

Actually, they’ve been doing no such thing. While Ed Balls and Alan Johnson did give clear messages of support, it is to note that others have not. The Chancellor satisfied himself with:

“As far as I’m concerned we should be concentrating on the business of government and getting through the recession. The PM and I met this afternoon and we discussed how we take forward economic policies to secure the recovery. I won’t be deflected from that.”

Not a ringing endorsement, then. Harriet Harman, ambitious deputy leader said she the Cabinet were “getting on with our jobs as ministers in a government that Gordon leads”. She might as well have added “for now” on the end of that statement. So too David Miliband who, despite not responding at all for ages, eventually chipped in with an account of his day, saying he “was working closely with the prime minister on foreign policy issues” and “supported the re-election campaign for a Labour government that he is leading”.

For now. And is that he Gordon Brown or he David Miliband?

Balls and Johnston aside, if I were Gordon Brown, I would be really worried. Clearly most of his cabinet are sticking with him for the sake of the election rather than the fact that they believe his leadership is right for Britain. How many of them seriously believe that he would make a better leader of the country than DC? Are they prepared to guarantee that they would support his continued leadership after the election? Or even if they won it?

Lobby journalists have been busy assuring us that most backbenchers support the PM – of course they do. Lobby rumours spread quickly and no-one wants to stick their necks out to leaky journos. I’d keep an eye on this one – it’s possible that at this very late stage the Labour party can’t be bothered to get rid of the PM. But if there were two years to run, he’d be gone. And it might happen yet.

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Blair Wish Project

October 26, 2009 — admin
Putin in reverse - former PM wants to be your President

Putin in reverse - former PM wants to be your President

Things really are hotting up in Europe. Firstly, we’ve got the “will he, won’t he?” saga about the European constitution with the Czech president Vaclav Klaus – rapidly becoming a hero of Eurosceptics – trying to hold out on the Lisbon Treaty as long as possible. I can’t find it now but I read this morning in one of the papers that he was trying to get a ruling in a Czech court that the treaty had to go to a referendum in the Czech republic – this is probably the only tactic that would be able to hold up the process until May next year.

I’m not holding my breath that the legal system of any of the member states would give a judgement against the EU. I think it is likely that the treaty will have to be signed by the end of the year; certainly that is the line being spun by Klaus’s inner circle to the press. Such a line clearly relieves the political pressure on him. But at the same time, some signals from Conservative bigwigs suggest everything is not as it seems. We shall see.

David Miliband is not among the doubters, as he made his pitch for the EU Foreign Secretary post today. But the most worrying thing about this whole business is the idea of Tony Blair as the President of Europe. As far as I’m concerned, the whole concept of a European President is a totally obnoxious and febrile one for the very reason that someone like Blair was always going to end up holding it.

The centre-right have a majority in the European parliament, yet the European Commission is stuffed full of socialists and the only real contenders for President are left of centre as well. That’s the EU for you - made by socialists, for socialists regardless of what the voters of Europe think. We elect 650-odd troughers to go and sit in a bi-local theatre of buffoonery also known as the European Parliament while the people who make the decisions remain from the same political class and persuasion that dreamed up the silly European sophistry to start with.

The idea of Blair sitting on top of them all as a “reward” for his achievements is poetic. Remind me again about his achievements – the failure to reform welfare, the failure to reform the NHS, badly botched constitutional tinkering, opening our borders to immigration without provision of proper infrastructure, cash for honours, a PR disaster in Kosovo and two illegal wars in the Middle East. More importantly, he failed to persuade Britain to go into the Euro and by the end of his tenure – where politics was changed for the worse – event the British people had had enough of him.

Like PM, all you need is a few years on the lecture circuit and all is forgiven in British politics. Sometimes, like in the case of Sir John Major, who was badly let down by his greedy and complacent parliamentary party, that it a good thing. But Blair’s failures were all his own and the result of a hubris that badly let down large sections of this country.

For goodness’ sake, let’s not give him the opportunity to do the same to the whole of Europe.

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