I am starting to reach some conclusions about my vote(s) (as a Labour Party member and trade unionist) in the forthcoming Labour leadership election. For me there is no clear and obvious contender. Each candidate has strong and weak points, which at least suggests that they are human.
I have been fortunate over the last few years to have met, listened to and observed the four male candidates at work, I have only seen Diane Abbot on the TV but that is not her fault as she has been bypassed for high office.
Andy Burnham is probably the most human of the candidates (this could be my bias in favour of people who have a regional accent). I was at a small voluntary sector event where he spoke and I thought he pitched he presentation very well and responded intelligently to his audience. I also thought he performed very well in the debate on care and did try to create a consensus for change with the other parties. For me though he is the candidate of the right in this election and very much a, gut, blairite.
David Miliband is the front runner and currently tipped to win. Whereas Burnham is a gut blairite, David appears to be an intellectual one. As foreign secretary he has failed to move Britain’s policy from being anything other than a subsidiary of the USA.
Diane Abbott is very articulate and made the right calls on some important issues including the war on Iraq and detention without trial. I think she needs to have a more high profile role and I am not one of those who thinks that her TV work rules her out. The nagging doubt is about choice of private schooling for her children. I have read and heard her defence and it is not convincing. If you are part of the Government promoting universal services such as education and health I think you have to use those services.
Ed Balls. I have seen him speak and was not convinced. If Miliband is the modern Blair, Ed Balls appears to be the continuation of Brown. I was interested to see him positioning himself as the candidate of the left but began to wonder what he was doing in Government as he criticised its policies, as a figure at the heart of the Brown prime ministership. I am concerned about his comments on immigration. Immigration only pushes down wages if there aren’t enough legal protections for workers and it causes pressure on public services if they are not resourced to respond. For me one of the greatest domestic failures of the Labour Government was the lack of provision of new social housing to meet the rising population and being able to balance the needs of immigrant and indigenous populations.
I have seen Ed Miliband in events related to social enterprise and in his climate change role. He always seemed relaxed talking with people and speaking at events (except of course when he came onto the church roof on Whiteladies Road – his fear of heights is more severe than mine). He had the foresight to shift the targets in the climate change act following a lobby of environmental and international development groups, I think other characters may have stuck their heels in. All the accounts of his role at Copenhagen have been glowing. I know some see his position on Iraq is populist and a real test would be switching the position on Afghanistan.
I agree that he needs to learn to speak English rather than wonkish, but Ed Miliband is the candidate I will be supporting to win the election for Labour Leader.
I favoured Ed Milliband and it’s interesting to see Kinnock come out in support of him the next day and your own support is leaning in that direction.
I have great respect for Alistair Darling. His political and financial analysis the other day was very good. Balls response bothers me more. His dig at Darling muddies the waters and is putting internal politics and leadership ambitions before performance and turning the heat on the Tories. There’s a whiff about that I don’t like and, I hate to say, every time I see a picture of him he reminds me of Martin Bormann.
Diane Abbot is very good at getting attention and looking after Diane Abbot. She’s a little too “clever” and fond of herself. This is okay for niche entertainment but if we wanted entertainers to be Prime Minister we’d hire Bruce Forsyth. He does it better and knows when to keep his mouth shut.
I took an early lead on discussing branding, the language politicians use, party organisation and grassroots activity, and Ed Milliband has a lock on that. Maybe he’s a smart guy or somone’s been talking to him. No idea but the basic shape of what’s there is a good foundation for moving forward.
If you define the “left” in terms of ideological purity, backstabbing, and poor hairshirt policies and emotional campaign marching in the street at the drop of the hat you’re going to shoot yourself in the head again. Labour has too many diehard backward looking chiefs. You need to do something about that from the top down. Learn to calm down, compromise, and play the long game.
Watch this:
http://www.makingof.com/film/184/avatar
Key concepts like creating a vision, theme, and involvement are covered by one of the producers of the hit movie Avatar.
Hi Paul,
Like you, I am leaning towards Miliband the younger. Your reasons given against supporting the other 4 seem stronger than your reasons given for voting for Ed M. – a position I also share.
I am very much hoping that the differences become clearer in the coming weeks, and that I feel able to select my favoured candidate on positive rather than negative reasons.
“Immigration only pushes down wages if there aren’t enough legal protections for workers and it causes pressure on public services if they are not resourced to respond.”
Really?
First tell that to a friend of mine working in Bristol for minimum wage and with lousy conditions whose boss says that if she doesn’t like it he can always get plenty more workers from poorer countries to replace her, who will be happy to work for less money and even worse conditions!
As to the second, well, as a self-professed environmentalist yourself, you are surely aware that resources are not infinite.
Our environment and quality of life can only deteriorate further with the ever greater overcrowding, especially for poorer areas.
UK should also not be luring desperately needed doctors, nurses, engineers and other skilled staff from poor countries who are suffering and dying without their help. It is wrong that there are more Sri Lankan mental health professionals working in London than there are in Sri Lanka itself where, as a recent war-zone, people are suffering terribly from PTS and other mental health issues.
British bosses should stop evading their responsibilities and train up more people who are currently languishing on the dole or the sick.
exactly there are not enough protections for workers at present and the minimum wage is too low.
On resources there are plenty of resources they are just poorly distributed
You are right about us deskilling developing countries
There’s actually quite a lot of protection for workers in this country already. What there isn’t is cheap and easy access to the law to do anything about this country’s vile self-interested boss class.
What we should do is import a couple of hundred thousand lawyers from overseas and bring the cost of accessing the law right down so we can all afford it.
Now, I wonder why that won’t happen?
Now TBB – I can’t agree with that ;). Actually, with “no win no fee” there is no problem for low paid or migrant workers bringing injury claims. Its the employment claims that are a problem where you need union membership to get free representation.
And whats with all this support for Ed Miliband. If you really want to see how awful and out of touch he is with real people, watch http://watch.usnowfilm.com/ where in 30 seconds he shows the true horror of being a career politician.
The other course of action would, of course, be to raise the compensation available to workers in employment claims.
If the minimum was in the low hundreds of thousands rather than the very low tens of thousands, this would not only focus employers far more on the needs of employees, it would also mean lawyers would be queuing up to do no-win, no-fee work in Employment Tribunals.
I’m personally more concerned about how my housing association’s incompetence allowed chav neighbours from hell to destroy my life. Their response can be summed up in their own words: “We don’t have to do anything” and “You can’t tell people what to do”. While a police investigation I called for resulted in a whitewash and libel, another police authority handed out £10,000 and a grovelling apology to pair of chancers over some slight.
I’m afraid key case law is corrupt and the winner is often determined by how deep their pockets are. Two examples would be the discrimination I saw with my own eyes between the way work was carried out on the Bristol water works pipeline and rich and poor areas, and how a judge found against people bringing a right of way case against the council over the Festival of the Sea when the physical evidence proved the council were lying.
Bristol is corrupt. The people running the show don’t know what they’re doing. I’d cite “Doctor” Jon Rogers and Steve “man of the people” Williams as guilty. NGO’s are just milking the gravy train. The council is arrogant and lazy. Business development is flat. People have a shit attitude. The city certainly has potential but I don’t see anything coming from the usual suspects that will realise that.
I believe there’s a strong enough case for a public enquiry. So far Paul will spend £2 million of other peoples money on language education for minorities who have the advantage of living here and being embedded in the culture in a way that British language students studying abroad can only dream of. But no word from him on that. Not a peep online or offline. Yes, he’s got an eye for the narrative and engages with people but is he really, really up to the job?
There’s no power in being a councillor or MP. Things move too slow and the law isn’t there to make things happen. Sure, the right ambitious and devious bastard could make it work but that quality of executive is very, very rare. If the fact I don’t have a job, don’t know enough of the right people, and have barely enough money to keep the show on the road I’d run for City Major if there was a vacancy. Realistically there’s no way that’s going to happen short of a miracle and miracles never come along when you want one.
“So far Paul will spend £2 million of other peoples money on language education for minorities who have the advantage of living here and being embedded in the culture in a way that British language students studying abroad can only dream of. But no word from him on that. Not a peep online or offline.”
It is clearly sensible and good for the economy if people living in this country can speak English. To my mind the cost/benefit is substantial. In terms of learning a foreign language for business or pleasure I am not convinced that the state should fund this beyond the standard education system – school/college/university. I really should learn Italian as it is the language of my forebears and would expect to pay to do so. If I wanted to work abroad and speak that language I feel that either me or my employer/potential employer should bear the cost not the state.
I’m comparing the relatively small cost of an inquiry into governance of Bristol to the splurge on non-native English speakers who have the mother of all leg-ups on learning a language. What’s the multi-million pound cost of mistakes in terms of wasted resources and human misery? Much more than the luxury of providing that a student learning foreign language would give their eye teeth for.
There were articles in the media during the camapign season which highlighted the arrogance of management and their attitudes towards the Bristol babies heart scandal whistleblower, and an analysis of poor policies, execution, and attitude towards taxpayers money. If I dug through my records I could post the links if I could be bothered. The fact that Labour don’t quite get this is why you lost.
Speaking as, probably, the only guy posting here who’s “unemployable” stuck with the impact of awful governance, and who is more educated and aware than so called “leaders” I’d like less statist nannying, kicking the victim, and turning a blind eye from the whole goddamn lot of you. And I’m not alone in saying that as other media and people’s comments I’ve been reading in the past few days shows. Priorities matter.
So no public enquiry to flush out the gross failure of governance in Bristol?
‘Figures…
We do need to review the Governance of city and country. We need a written constitution which sets out rights and responsibilities.
Never gonna happen. Labour has no balls and too many chiefs.
In spite of Brown’s rhetoric of “I will not let you down” he did by not grasping this nettle. When the people were clamouring for it he screwed the pooch a second time and that “I’ll never let you down” pitch he wheeled out again had that “fuck off and die you useless bastard” quality about it. That’s why the dumb and pampered Cameron and the inexperienced sociopath Osborne took you to the cleaners, propped up by the big talk spine of jelly Clegg.
A public enquiry would check a few of the useless egos running this town and anti-social special interests, and create the mother of all legal liabilities. It would also create a shit storm that would crimp the local Liberals and by contrast expose the bad governance of the Tories. It would also pave the way to creating a real executive major and returning Bristol’s previous constitutional quasi-independence that, in my mind, was illegally removed without a local referendum.
The future is high value industry and integrated environment. That means ambition and attitudes that Bristol lacks without a kick up the ass. It needs to stand tall as a city state on the international stage and be a desirable place to be. That’s never going to happen when meddling people pleasers are running the joint.
A public enquiry would kickstart the process today and is something Labour have the power to press for. But if you want to look feeble and have the Tories roll all over you for another five years as they’ve done for the past five years be my guest.
Post budget comment:
If Harman hadn’t been indulging her feminism she could’ve nailed Cameron’s ass, pushed a narrative ahead of the budget, and landed a sucker punch on Osborne. There’s no headline or buzz.
I clocked an interview with Richard Desmond the other day. I’ve never liked the guy or his papers much but the interview showed another side to him. It would be a major coup if Labour could get him on board and there’s scope for that.
Given my history of economic and political comment, I suspect, you’ll be reviewing my scheme for Bristol. It’s either the craziest thing you’ve heard or a work of genius. Either way, you need me more than I need you. You might want to think about that.
Clock’s ticking…
Hi Paul apologies meant to add an update to your choice for Labour leader item but got delayed!
Firstly though you should be asking the Z question of all these potential Labour leaders, if it is not blatently obvious! I.E. what is their position on Palestine and wether they are Zionists, like ‘Levyiet’ Blair was, and also Milliband (*) Senior, presumably something he shares with younger brother Ed?! * Fancy proposing Blair for EU president, I also propose he goes to Europe, the International Criminal Court in the Hague!
Zionists come in a lot of ‘colours’ but basically they support at least some of, or a quietly collude on the further collinisation of Palestine and other aspects of Israel’s foreign and domestic policy and it’s extension into wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and of course the next war Iran. There are many zionists in the Tory and Liberal parties, but let’s find out who it is our potential Labour leaders owe allegiance to, before we propose them – especially after such a disastrous immoral leader as Tony WMD Blair who was more vocal than Bush on promoting the Iraq war!
We are on the verge of a very dangerous Zionist war on Iran – US and Israeli navy ships are on their way to blockade Iran over false UN sanctions – a joke when Israel has over 200 undeclared nukes, it would only take an Israeli false flag act that they are reknowned for, such as a handy torpedoeing of a US vessel, like South Korea’s (a test run perhaps, this torpedo will no doubt have Iranian scribbled on it!?), to start a conflagration against Iran!
Not only has there been such a terrible loss of innocent life in these wars, including our own service men who we immoraly throw into this breach, but there is also great financial and political costs to ourselves – this is the biggest issue currently in British, American and world politics, it should not be ignored and should definately not be called hanging onto the US coat tails, when there are direct connections to Israeli Zionist coat tails!
The link from Gilad Atzmon’s website is to an article that is disired reading before selecting leaders of any party!
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/connecting-the-zionist-dots-by-gilad-atzmon.html#entry8072121
The Ultimate false flag deception uncovered by investigative journalist’s free book, Christopher Bollyn, identified links to promote the Zionist PNAC agenda!
http://www.bollyn.com/solving-9-11-the-book
Regards
Mike
Ed and David Miliband. Among British diplomats, David is referred to as “The evil of two lessers”.
From Craig Murray’s website – he’s got David Milliband’s number! seems Ed’s not highly thought of either!
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/miliband_vote_l.html