The speech today by Ed Miliband to his Party Conference was his last decent opportunity to establish his credentials and his plan to lead the country. On the evidence of his speech today he seems only to have cemented the votes of those who would have voted for him anyway. This will go down as one of the great missed opportunities. In truth, Miliband was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
So soon after the No vote in Scotland, he had no choice but to praise the one man from whose legacy he has been striving so hard to extricate himself. It's true that Gordon Brown probably did more than most to save the Union when push came to shove. It's also true that Gordon Brown will forever be remembered as the man who espoused prudence as he drove our economy in to the dust. Politics is a cruel game and although Tony Blair no longer comes up smelling of roses in the way he once did, it is ironically his faithful lieutenant Brown to whom most of the mud has stuck.
Miliband's problem is that both he and his current Shadow Chancellor were willing foot soldiers during that ill fated regime. There are few leopards whose spots change that quickly and to a lesser extent, the pair of them will always be tarred with that particular brush.
There is not a great deal in the political career of Chris Patten which lingers long in the memory except one phrase he coined which has come to epitomise the natural instincts of Labour -"Dogs bark, cats miaow and Labour puts up taxes". The beauty of this simple assertions is that it holds for any Labour administration since the war and on the evidence of today's speech. there is a good deal more to follow.
Promising to spend another £2.5 billion on the NHS will always go down well with the party faithful but he was always going to get their votes anyway. A more progressive strategy might have emerged had he cast his eyes West to Wales. The current Welsh Assembly Health Minister has been calling for "Prudent Healthcare" since a key note speech made in January. In his speech he urges clinicians to think twice about what they are prescribing and to be mindful of their limitations. He also calls for people to take responsibility for their own health. It is the last bit which sets Wales apart from Miliband. Nobody would dispute that the NHS ought o be there to look after the needs of those who can't help themselves but they are not the target audience. The target audience is those who can take responsibility for their own health choices. This is why the pledge to spend £2.5 billion is, in many ways, missing the real point. This isn't all about money. It is far more to do with education and engagement. Frankly, Miliband's solution for the NHS is very disappointing. Granted, we need more focus on mental health and care of the elderly but it would be far more progressive to consider the entry to the pipeline rather than the exit. The exit we can do little about but the entry we can and should be addressing. Inposing yet more tax on tobacco manufacturers is all well and good but will do nothing to address the addiction which underpins their trade. That is where his focus should have been.
Seeking to pay for the poor health decisions of the masses with more taxation on those who have accumulated wealth in property once more reeks of a political ideology steeped in the bad old days of the 1970s. There were so many more equitable ways he could have addressed this. For one thing, he could have turned his gaze toward the supermarket behemoths Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrison's. The latter have been granted carte blanche to feed our addictions to booze and sugar over the last three decades and have expanded alarmingly while exerting enormous strain on the NHS. But because they now employ so many people in the UK, he refrained from addressing one of the biggest factors behind the existing strain on NHS resources. Had he done so, he would have reached beyond his core vote and made some progress. The result is that he is now far less likely to swing the Tory waverers and he would need to do this to be certain of a working majority.
But back to Gordon Brown. Whether it was intended or not, Brown dropped Miliband right in it this week. In the immediate aftermath of the No vote in Scotland, the canny Alex Salmond lost no time in accusing the Westminster elite of being quick to renege on their promises of a week earlier regarding further Scottish devolution. Quick as a flash, Gordon Brown responded still basking in his PR triumph up north. All commitments would be honoured and he would personally ensure it. Cameron then delivered the coup de grace by insisting that what was good for the goose was now good for the gander. In other words, he correctly claimed that the English would now want their own Parliament for English decisions - not exactly a hard sell! Miliband is now left between a rock and a hard place. Renege on his pre-referendum promises and Alex Salmond will have him for breakfast. Succumb to Cameron's wishes and Labour will forego any prospect of power in England for a generation. I'm glad I'm not in his shoes on that one.
And then there is housing. Labour seems obsessed with house building as though this is the only way to solve the status quo. Once again, it is a policy which fails to address the existing problems. No mention was made regarding immigration although he did manage to point a wagging finger in the direction of the banks. Quite whether that wag would translate in to actions was not made clear.
HS2 is still being hailed as the big fix which will provide tens of thousands of apprenticeships and building jobs. I honestly believe there would be more national support for us to remain in the EU than there would be for us to pursue the prohibitively expensive HS2 project. Granted our current public transport system could improve but so too could our education system although this was another glaring omission. With a better education, more people would be making better decisions in terms of their own health and aspiring to a better standard of living.
He also fell in to the weary trap of having a go at the PM - and he is the man who refrained from all the shouting at PM question time. It would have made his case more credible had he stuck to his own plan and his own ideas. All in all, Miliband had a golden opportunity to reach out beyond his party faithful and he blew it.
So soon after the No vote in Scotland, he had no choice but to praise the one man from whose legacy he has been striving so hard to extricate himself. It's true that Gordon Brown probably did more than most to save the Union when push came to shove. It's also true that Gordon Brown will forever be remembered as the man who espoused prudence as he drove our economy in to the dust. Politics is a cruel game and although Tony Blair no longer comes up smelling of roses in the way he once did, it is ironically his faithful lieutenant Brown to whom most of the mud has stuck.
Miliband's problem is that both he and his current Shadow Chancellor were willing foot soldiers during that ill fated regime. There are few leopards whose spots change that quickly and to a lesser extent, the pair of them will always be tarred with that particular brush.
There is not a great deal in the political career of Chris Patten which lingers long in the memory except one phrase he coined which has come to epitomise the natural instincts of Labour -"Dogs bark, cats miaow and Labour puts up taxes". The beauty of this simple assertions is that it holds for any Labour administration since the war and on the evidence of today's speech. there is a good deal more to follow.
Promising to spend another £2.5 billion on the NHS will always go down well with the party faithful but he was always going to get their votes anyway. A more progressive strategy might have emerged had he cast his eyes West to Wales. The current Welsh Assembly Health Minister has been calling for "Prudent Healthcare" since a key note speech made in January. In his speech he urges clinicians to think twice about what they are prescribing and to be mindful of their limitations. He also calls for people to take responsibility for their own health. It is the last bit which sets Wales apart from Miliband. Nobody would dispute that the NHS ought o be there to look after the needs of those who can't help themselves but they are not the target audience. The target audience is those who can take responsibility for their own health choices. This is why the pledge to spend £2.5 billion is, in many ways, missing the real point. This isn't all about money. It is far more to do with education and engagement. Frankly, Miliband's solution for the NHS is very disappointing. Granted, we need more focus on mental health and care of the elderly but it would be far more progressive to consider the entry to the pipeline rather than the exit. The exit we can do little about but the entry we can and should be addressing. Inposing yet more tax on tobacco manufacturers is all well and good but will do nothing to address the addiction which underpins their trade. That is where his focus should have been.
Seeking to pay for the poor health decisions of the masses with more taxation on those who have accumulated wealth in property once more reeks of a political ideology steeped in the bad old days of the 1970s. There were so many more equitable ways he could have addressed this. For one thing, he could have turned his gaze toward the supermarket behemoths Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrison's. The latter have been granted carte blanche to feed our addictions to booze and sugar over the last three decades and have expanded alarmingly while exerting enormous strain on the NHS. But because they now employ so many people in the UK, he refrained from addressing one of the biggest factors behind the existing strain on NHS resources. Had he done so, he would have reached beyond his core vote and made some progress. The result is that he is now far less likely to swing the Tory waverers and he would need to do this to be certain of a working majority.
But back to Gordon Brown. Whether it was intended or not, Brown dropped Miliband right in it this week. In the immediate aftermath of the No vote in Scotland, the canny Alex Salmond lost no time in accusing the Westminster elite of being quick to renege on their promises of a week earlier regarding further Scottish devolution. Quick as a flash, Gordon Brown responded still basking in his PR triumph up north. All commitments would be honoured and he would personally ensure it. Cameron then delivered the coup de grace by insisting that what was good for the goose was now good for the gander. In other words, he correctly claimed that the English would now want their own Parliament for English decisions - not exactly a hard sell! Miliband is now left between a rock and a hard place. Renege on his pre-referendum promises and Alex Salmond will have him for breakfast. Succumb to Cameron's wishes and Labour will forego any prospect of power in England for a generation. I'm glad I'm not in his shoes on that one.
And then there is housing. Labour seems obsessed with house building as though this is the only way to solve the status quo. Once again, it is a policy which fails to address the existing problems. No mention was made regarding immigration although he did manage to point a wagging finger in the direction of the banks. Quite whether that wag would translate in to actions was not made clear.
HS2 is still being hailed as the big fix which will provide tens of thousands of apprenticeships and building jobs. I honestly believe there would be more national support for us to remain in the EU than there would be for us to pursue the prohibitively expensive HS2 project. Granted our current public transport system could improve but so too could our education system although this was another glaring omission. With a better education, more people would be making better decisions in terms of their own health and aspiring to a better standard of living.
He also fell in to the weary trap of having a go at the PM - and he is the man who refrained from all the shouting at PM question time. It would have made his case more credible had he stuck to his own plan and his own ideas. All in all, Miliband had a golden opportunity to reach out beyond his party faithful and he blew it.
Cameron said more in five words than milliband did in a whole hour:
ReplyDelete'She purred down the line'