Thoughts on Red Ed's relaunch

I'm waiting for the wikileaks verdict on Brown. Shouldn't be long now.

lifeinlimbo: I would never be able to agree that abandoning balanced budgets and running a deficit budget during boom years (as Labour chose to do from 2000 onwards) is impressive. Unless, of course, you mean impressively awful.

Lifeinlimbo - for most of Labour's tenure we were in significant economic growth - when welfare payments should have been easy to control.

Also, several of Labour's spending priorities were outside welfare spend: education and health for example.

It was bad economic management not to fund this increase in spend by raising tax revenue. If you can't fund state spend from tax income at the top of an economic cycle - you'll never manage it at the bottom. But then Mr Brown convinced himself that he had conquered the economic cycle and banished recessions. And that was his biggest economic management mistake.

Catinthehat2: sorry - my bad. Don't know how I managed that one!

Well said.

I hope that Ed sticks to his values and principles and does not try to be all things to all people. I did not like the way he was talking to people in tescos as if they are going to be writing their policies. I would rather experts in the particular fields wrote them !
I am a bit disappointed in him so far i want him to be more passionate and inspiring. I hope he becomes more so as time goes on. Labour should be able to win with a leader who sticks to his socialist principles when there will be so many disaffected Lib dem voters.

LFN, I suppose it depends how you see Labour's role - I don't really see it primarily as about spending ore rather than differently.

If some of the money devoted to saving the arses of George Osborne's banking friends, say, or of kindly letting Vodafone off their 6 billion quid tax bill was spent on helping those on low/middle incomes or on improving services, then we'd be spending no more, just differently.

The cuts have been blatantly ideologically inspired - that's what bugs me, rather than cuts per se. I mind that pittances are saved in some areas whilst huge amounts are spent in others, to make some rather annoying ideological point.

eg it was interesting that on todays Any Questions, the audience were clearly livid with the cuts to school sports, saving all of 160m - pointless tinkering.

Labour haven't got a clue, they don't seem to have a policy on anything. They oppose every cut that the coalition makes without making any suggestions on how they would cut the deficit.

Onimolap - that was meeeeeeeeee with the manifesto point!!!!

oni, labour managed the economy impressively until the recession.

Even on welfare spending, they arguably managed costs better than the tories.

Facts here

claig: yes, he was an important player re the manifesto. Another reason why the way he's described Labour's mistakes of recent years is such an error.

Bland. Was considering his shirt and the odd camera angle, no idea what was said apart from general regrets. Have no doubt if it was David I might have taken more notice.

"Which is why Ed Miliband has enabled Labour to overtake the Tories in the polls recently."

are these the same polls that boosted Clegg up, and pretended that the LibDems were going to take untold numbers of seats?

Also - correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Ed write the latest manifesto in the first place?

If so, why is it to be discarded so quickly - did he not believe it then? or doesn't he believe in it now?

Good point onimolap. He may in fact be a Michael Foot character (possibly why they are calling hin Red Ed, when he isn't really red at all), guaranteed to lose the next election. That way the coalition will get more time to make the cuts that are thought necessary.

"Which is why Ed Miliband has enabled Labour to overtake the Tories in the polls recently."

I think this happened when he was on leave, so not really an Ed controlled thing.

I was wondering if he would be an IDS; or might it be more of a Michael Foot?

I think Ed Miliband will only be the interim leader, a bit like Iain Duncan Smith was. The media, including the left wing media, will eventually turn on him, and they will bring back the chosen one, David Miliband.

The biggest thing Miliband needs to do is to carry on with New Labour and tell the union bosses such as Crow/McCluskey where to go. If Labour lurch to the left then they will be hammered at the next election.

all of the media. The Guardian recommended that its readers vote for Clegg. They were all playing the same tune. The agenda was to build Clegg up, so that the winner of the election would have to be a coalition, rather than just the Tories. This would give them a large base of support to push through the cuts that they are making.

The unions are a joke. Quite a few of their leaders seem to use their £100,000 salaries to top up their suntans, rather than help their members.

I think its somewhat out of Milibands hands, the next election will come down to how the economy performs in the next few years. If it goes well that I think Labour can expect to be in opposition for quite a long time but if it doesn't then I think they'll be back in 5 years time with a fairly large majority.

Which media, and why?

With what agenda?

Thank goodness for the unions, is all I can say.

'In fact, it's odd - I know I read that Labour members preferred David M - but literally everyone I know, all my contemporaries, prefer Ed.'

It was the usual media spin, it didn't reflect the truth. It was the same spiel that the media used in the general election, where they convinced much of the public that Clegg was Batman's sidekick, the Boy Wonder.

'The main thing I think he needs to do is sit down with Alan Johnson and discuss their economic policies'

That won't be a long discussion, as neither of them have any.