While the economy is slashed and burned, while unemployment rises, recession, double-dip style on the way, public sector and welfare state being plundered by the private sector and workers being shafted…. we have an opposition (if you can call it that) in denial not really fiddling while society burns but more about looking at the latest colour charts. I don’t know why Labour doesn’t just merge with the ConDems because Balls, for example, wouldn’t really be doing anything different austerity cuts wise. Red(ish) is the new blue. Maybe the party should rename itself the United Colours of Labour. The visual background to Labour Party conference is pale blue joining up with the colours of the Union Jack. The future is flag, family and faith.
And leader Ed all smiling smug, sneering with contempt at the working class. Grinning and sermonising in that patronising Mister Ed manner, the classic divide and rule where “hard working families” are pitted against those on benefits, they who deserve social housing while the unemployed can sod off. People have been chucked onto the unemployed scrap heap due to this economic crisis yet nothing from Mister Ed about lack of jobs and lack of housing. Under the ConDems things will get worse but don’t expect Mister Ed and his front bench cronies from championing the very people who are Labour’s core voters. You can rely on Labour not to defend the class interests of the working class. Dissecting “determined” Mister Ed’s speech was one depressing experience. Too many NL-style words (“Ambition”…”Responsibilities”…”Values”)… and the weirdly …predators versus producers (I thought it was Alien versus Predators but am willing to be contradicted). All meaningless vacuous nonsense.
“A generation ago a Labour leader came to Conference to condemn the behaviour of a Labour Council in Liverpool”.
Why did Mister Ed bring that up? Remembering the bad old sad old days of the witch-hunting days of Kinnock/Hattersley?
Thatcherite
“Not just for a year or so but for decades. Now there are hard lessons here for my party which some won’t like. Some of what happened in the 1980s was right”…..”It was right to let people buy their council houses. …….And it was right to change the rules on the closed shop, on strikes before ballots. These changes were right, and we were wrong to oppose it at the time”.
“Where benefits are too easy to come by for those who don’t deserve them and too low for those who do”.
Does Mister Ed actually talk to real people? “Earth to Mister Ed, come in Mister Ed”… Does Mister Ed actually live on Planet Earth or it is Planet Ed? When questioned by Andrew Marr months ago he was clueless on the benefits system and again the above quote just shows how wrong, offensive and clueless he is. Shafting the poor at the expense of this tough on scroungers. No mention of how many benefits go unclaimed? Benefits underpayed and so on. Does Mister Ed really truly believe that benefits are easy to claim? The quote also exposes another nasty divide and rule tactic based on assumption and lies, a Daily Mail favourite. You sometimes hear about the mythical person down the mythical road who gets all the benefits going, it’s all hearsay, rumour and assumption but to your average right-wing populist journo and politician it’s the honest truth even though it’s unverifiable. And lies stick.
People experience humiliation, hurdles, bureaucracy and red tape when they apply for benefits to believe otherwise is utterly dishonest. And that’s what Mister Ed is doing creating lies. Instead of capitulating to the right-wing consensus and pro-establishment line Mister Ed should step back and think about benefits and the amount paid. It’s barely enough for people to exist let alone live and I bet Mister Ed wants to make it harder.
I remember arguing not so long back the importance of being in the Labour Party but can’t quite believe those words I wrote any more. Listening to Mister Ed, sneering with contempt at the working class in background of images of the red, white and blue, pale blue rose and the Party of business and capitalism worries me. Flag waving = jingoism and imperialism. All this flag, family and faith makes me think of Kinder, Küche, Kirche. I know arguments about staying in the LP is that we have to stick together to organise a fight back against the leadership, to push for alternatives and to establish a coherent Left within Labour. Yes, I am sure Mister Ed would be quite grateful if myself and partner stopped our Direct Debit to the LP. My partner, who works in welfare benefits, is angry at Mister Ed’s remarks as he sees the realities of desperate people trying to eke a living on meagre benefits. Lies, damn lies, Mister Ed.
So, I know the arguments, hell I have even written similar ones. But there’s a time when enough is enough. I am still mulling this over but to witness a sneery contemptible anti-trade union leader like Ed Miliband is just too much. Yes, it does look appealing stay and fight by proclaiming not in my name echoing the same words once thrown at a “great man” (in Mister Ed’s terms) during a barbaric, imperialist and unjust war. Sometimes you just have to say enough’s enough and cut up your membership card as you can’t symbolically rip it up like you could in the old days (and in them days you had the red flag and Clause IV). The economy is sinking and we have an opposition more interested in punishing the already punished along with saying they don’t like austerity cuts but they wouldn’t do much different. No alternatives. No solid opposition. No support for workers’ fighting back. Instead Labour is based on colour schemes and out doing the Tories on how blue they are. The future is blue…the future is Glasman.
See as well LabourList and desperate soft lefts eager to see some good in Ed’s speech. Wake up and smell the sell-out! And what’s this from Seumas Milne… I mean WTF! Mister Ed hasn’t broken with any consensus line.
And just what is Len McCluskey on about: “We will have to see a lot more detail, but we have seen a man on a mission. There is definitely a phoenix rising from the ashes, into a people’s party.”
Er, Len, maybe it passed you by but Mister Ed doesn’t particularly like workers’ fighting back … by striking…!! He also endorsed Thatcherite anti-trade union laws. He’s know friend of rank and file trade unionists, he won’t support strike action and he won’t be on a picket line so what’s this nonsense from Len M. about Mister Ed’s “people’s party”… Maybe I do live on an alternate universe who heard a totally different speech but the leader of the opposition (I have to stop laughing when I write that) spoke about being “pro-business” no explicit support for workers…some vague rubbish about workers and their labour but with Mister Ed…he just can’t break with the right-wing consensus and pro-establishment line.
Brilliant piece of writing and spot on. Great piece.
Yes off down the bank tomorrow got a standing order to cancel
Cheers Eddie
Think we should also write a letter to LP and the front bench cronies and to our MP, mister Dowd and say you aint getting our money any longer!!
that speech was pretty depressing (and I didn’t have high expectations). It makes me wonder, what would these ‘blue labour’ ideas mean in practice, knowing how these types of court philosophy, p.r. ‘ideologies’ mutate when their sponsor gets into power.
From that speech it looks like Germany (post HartzIV labour laws) is their ideal, but they must know that they can’t get even a 5th of the way to achieving anything like that.
So in practice what? more installing of rentiers in the welfare state and more ‘low road’ ‘social democratic’ neo-liberialism generally (I thought that the financial crisis had killed all that off).
Was funny when Milliband was all like ‘im not Tony Blair’ and people cheered yay! cough..#lowexpectations
Indeed low expectations. I think this whole new Blue package is heading towards a Glasman sunrise. Labour won’t do much different than the Tories on cuts and also the party that came from the trade unions shafting trade unionists….
Fab piece as usual Harpy.
I was pretty sure in my head that I would be voting for Labour at the next election, partly to punish the Lib-Dems, mainly to just get the Tories out, but Ed has made me think again. It’s a horrible feeling not having a true socialist defender to be able to support. The I’m all right Jacks are spoilt for choice. The sad thing is that if a Depression hits, it is only then that these I’m all right Jacks will understand the wisdom of Rory Weal’s words – when it’s too late.
Cheers Tim
Well, Ed’s speech didn’t go down brilliantly with the party faithful and Ladbrokes still seem to think he will go before the next election… and that speech may have hastened his exit because it said nothing, meaningless language, NL spin and blaming the poor. Comparing Fred the Shreds of this world to benefit claimants is obscene.
I agree about the benefits stuff and the the failure to oppose Thatcherism, but I think maybe you’re worrying unduly about the union jack imagery.
As Jaurès said “If, then, we invoke the nation, we do so in order to insure the rights of the individual in the fullest and most universal sense.”