You have to feel for Ed. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to annoy a right-wing population, because they are potential voters (so sounding like a Tory helps), yet at the same time he doesn’t want to be seen as a class traitor and upset the unions. Whatever side he comes down on, he’ll lose.



However, Ed seems incapable of biting the bullet (or, actually ANY kind of bullet), so he shimmies around on the fence, hoping to please everyone. In doing so, he comes over as indecisive.

Labour got the wrong MIliband when they chose their leader. Labour needs a bit of a hell-raising leader - one who is not scared to differentiate his party from the LibConLab mush that they have all become.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15934518

I don't think he's bothered about 'the unions'. I think he may be bothered about the millions of voters who are in those unions, who are probably more likely to be labour voters than vote for the alternatives. And actually more likely to vote than the average I'd suggest, given membership of a union suggests some level of socio-political awareness at least.

It's a very nice piece of right wing propaganda it is, this idea of 'the unions', this one enormous malevolent conglomerated mass that pushes poor little Labour around to do its bidding, regardless of the common good or what is right. It's also utter cobblers. It may have been true back in the 70's. It certainly isn't now. The last government didn't do everything 'the unions' wanted them to and spent far much more of it's time snuggling up to the city than it did the TUC.

Nurses? They're 'the unions'. Teachers? They're 'the unions'. OK, London Underground train drivers are 'the unions' as well and they're a bunch of [LIFTED], to be fair. But remember that anything anyone tells you is somewhat subjective. Even this.

Jon

The only reason Ed is the Labour leader is because of the Union block-vote that got him elected.

I bet Cameron & Co couldn't believe their luck when Ed was made leader and not David.

None of the party leaders are actually elected in what you'd describe as a democratic manner. Clegg was probably closest to that but Cameron was elected by, what, about 200 people?

Update: whoops, apologies to Cameron, I got that wrong. He was selected by the 1922 committee, but the elections as held among all conservative party members. He won by getting a 2/3 majority (roughly) of just under 200,000 votes.

Jon

LMFTFY

Err I think he is more concerned with the £millions that the unions give him every year to help fund the party

You might think that. However the point remains - if nobody wants to vote for him, it doesn't matter how much money his party does/does not have. The people who are most likely to vote labour are the people who are most likely to be out on strike. Therefore it is in his political interest to support the strike action. That explanation and the explanation involving funding are equally valid and it is almost impossible to produce any evidence that shows the one has more influence than the other. You'd require a situation where the union hierarchy were pushing Milliband to vote for something their membership and the mass of labour party supporters didn't want. That's pretty unlikely to happen. Until it does it's impossible to untangle the two influences.

In any case, it's not as if the rest are any better. The corruptive nature of the funding system is rife throughout politics but nobody has the stomach for any of the alternatives.

Jon

They were talking about the alternatives the other day. It seems that the favourite is to limit party funding to £10,000 per donor, and make up the rest from the public purse. We’d be funding the political system through our taxes.

Now, I’m not too happy about the Tories getting my tax money to fund their Machiavelian deeds, but at the same time, I am less comfortable with the idea that all parties can take donations from organisations with pretty extreme agendas and then feel obliged to act on them. I think the days of “buy a politician” have to end.

My only concern with this is if it does happen, there is no reason for Labour, say, to retain links with its historic roots, and the whole band of idiots will become so closely aligned that me may as well not vote and just put the sorry fools on a rota.

We do that anyway, we pay MP's wages. How many MPs do you think we'd have if it was a voluntary unpaid occupation?


Simple solution; make giving a political party - either to the party itself or it's MPs in total - over £10,000 in any single parliamentary cycle a criminal offence. Nobody gives an MP or party a suitcase full of money without expecting to get something back for it. So make out officially what it is, which is bribery.


You say that like it hasn't already happened.

Loving the thread title, Paul.

Mark

Thankyou.

Why won't he take sides openly?

He doesn't want to piss of public sector workers who often vote Labour, but at the same time he can't publicly support them as he knows their pension system is currently a financial black hole that can't go on, and doing so would cause him all kinds of grief.

That’s his problem. It’s a no-win situation for him. I’d have more respect for him if he came down on one side with conviction and stuck to his guns over it. However, he won’t because taking such a stage is no doubt seen as a vote loser by his strategists.

He clearly doesn’t like the “Red Ed” moniker he was given by the tabloids. No one seems to have told him that being “Red” is not a label to be ashamed of. The problem is that you have a lot of tabloids who see “left wing” equating to Stalinist Russia - and those tabloids influence voters.

Because he's a pussy. Get his brother in.

Who is a lizard, as far as I can tell