In a speech today at Newham Dockside, Ed Miliband will tackle head on the attempts to brand Labour the party of welfare, and will say that controlling social security spending and putting decent values at the heart of the system are “not conflicting priorities”.
Labour can make a compelling argument that the economic crisis in the UK was not principally its fault but the result of an international banking crisis with its roots in the US.
According to the dictum attributed to Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Yet evil will triumph even more easily if good men help the evil-doers. In the Syrian civil war, with more than 80,000 dead and no end in sight, that is what the European Union has been doing, by upholding an arms embargo on the supply of weapons to all sides.
Recreating Old Labourism is not only the last thing Miliband has in mind, but would now be impossible, even if that were what he sought to achieve.
Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, has warned Ed Miliband of the need to keep Labour firmly on the left, in order to avoid defeat at the next general election. Specifically, Miliband has been advised by McCluskey to purge the shadow cabinet of its remaining Blairites, in the form of Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander, and Liam Byrne.
Ed Miliband will today launch a highly personal attack on Alex Salmond by accusing the Scottish First Minister of practicing the kind of divisive politics pursued by Margaret Thatcher.
Francois Hollande’s popularity recently hit a record low for a French head of state, with a whopping 67 per cent of the French population disapproving of the President. The lesson from France should perhaps be that the most sensible thing to do in the current climate is to keep expectations low, or at any rate ensure they never approach anything like that generated in the run up to the election of Francois Hollande.
David Miliband has stepped down as MP for South Shields to work for an international aid charity, ending a twenty year career in politics.
In an event organised last night by the Board of Deputies, Labour leader Ed Miliband was asked by a member of the audience whether he is a Zionist. He replied, “Yes, I consider myself a supporter of Israel.” Ed Miliband wants to make the progressive case for Israel in the spirit of the late David Cairns. The Left should welcome that.
Left Foot Forward’s James Bloodworth takes on John O’Connell of the TaxPayer’s Alliance over the mansions tax.
