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| Ed Miliband: More reformist than red |
| London, 25.09.2010 |
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| "Red Ed? Come off it." With that short phrase, the leader defined himself succinctly as a man of the reformist centre-left
Editorial The Guardian, Wednesday 29 September 2010 Article history
The main goal of the Labour leader's conference speech, a shadow cabinet minister had suggested in advance, would be to say to the British electorate: "Hello. My name is Ed Miliband. And this is who I am." Do not underestimate that point just because it is modest. Mr Miliband needed to introduce himself yesterday to a non-Labour-party audience which, through the Gordon Brown years, had lost the habit of paying attention to what Labour was saying. He made a well-judged start, in particular by telling the story of his Jewish immigrant roots, which will start to fix him in the public mind more solidly than he has yet had the chance to do. But this is a long march and yesterday was only the first step.
It was, though, a very important definitional moment all the same. Nobody should seriously have expected Mr Miliband to put forward a detailed menu of election promises for 2015 – especially only three days into his leadership. He will also make more confidently delivered and poetic speeches than this one in future. But he nevertheless needed to frame his leadership very clearly in his own terms, and to do so decisively, denying Labour's opponents the freedom to make the running. That was why his most important short-term achievement was probably the well-crafted soundbite: "Red Ed? Come off it." With that short phrase, Mr Miliband defined himself succinctly as a man of the reformist centre-left.
The wider speech, though, was a well-judged balance in exactly the same vein. It had radical things to say, like the criticism of Labour for becoming a new establishment, for keeping bad company and for becoming remote from voters. He was critical of Labour failures in City deregulation, critical of the failure to engage about migration, and angry at the claim made by his old boss that Labour had brought an end to boom and bust. When he said Labour had been right to embrace markets in the 1990s but had become naive about them, many will have nodded in agreement. When he criticised the invasion of Iraq, promised to reclaim Labour's civil libertarian credentials, pledged to campaign for a yes vote in the AV referendum, embraced shorter prison sentencing, and asserted that climate change cannot be ducked, many supporters will have cheered. Lots of less engaged voters will simply have grasped that here is a Labour leader who sounds like he gets it.
Yet Mr Miliband was careful not to feed the beast that wants to cast him as a Labour leader lurching to the left after the Blair and Brown years. There was ample recognition in the speech of the achievements of the New Labour years, and no obituary of its sensible big-tent instincts either. Mr Miliband was generous to both of his predecessors. He praised the liberal tradition of Beveridge and Keynes, and focused his anti-coalition fire on David Cameron rather than Nick Clegg. Labour would have had to make painful cuts too, he underlined, and he was serious about the deficit. Trade unions were essential bodies, he said, but there would be no free pass for irresponsible strikes. It added up to a skilful and persuasive balance between the need for Labour to rediscover its radicalism and the equal need, repeatedly and explicitly stated, not to abandon the centre ground.
Mr Miliband will have disappointed those who wanted a sharper break from the New Labour years, while bringing some relief to those who fear he prefers soft options to tough truths. In other words, Mr Miliband got the balance just about right. In time, there will have to be more precise pledges to go with yesterday's extremely general framing of the issues. The price tag, on which he said nothing, will matter too. But this was a good start in a long game. It will have reassured the party that it made a good choice. This was a speech that Labour needed, a pointed break with the worst of the recent past but a strong reaffirmation of its best.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is the Leader of the Labour Party and the Leader of the Opposition of the United Kingdom. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005 and served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Gordon Brown.
Born in London, Miliband graduated from Oxford University and the London School of Economics, becoming first a Labour Party researcher, and rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown's confidants, being appointed Chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers. Miliband was elected the Member of Parliament for the South Yorkshire constituency of Doncaster North in the 2005 general election.
As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown appointed Miliband as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office in his first Cabinet on 28 June 2007. Miliband was subsequently promoted to the post of Secretary of State at the newly-created Department of Energy and Climate Change, a position he held from 3 October 2008 to 11 May 2010. On 25 September 2010 he was elected Leader of the Labour Party with the support of 50.654% of the electoral college.
He is the son of Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband and the younger brother of David Miliband, a leading Labour politician who also contested and was narrowly defeated in the 2010 Labour Leadership contest by his brother. Together the two were the first siblings to simultaneously sit in the British Cabinet since Edward, Lord Stanley and his brother Oliver in 1938.
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