Very good speech by Miliband. He has addressed the elephant in the room, the elephant that the left have often downplayed and sometimes disrespected in their fear of creating division. He knows that patriotism and identity will become more important issues as Scotland discusses devolution, and instead of doing the usual ostrich-like leftwing behaviour of brushing over the obvious reality and sticking heads in sand, he has set out a position.
Here is the typical leftwing type thinking from Owen Jones in the Independent, telling us that Marx and Engels were right
'But Marx and Engels were right: it is our conflicting interests that make national identity so problematic. A supermarket checkout worker in Manchester has more in common with a call centre worker in Aberdeen ? or Paris or Athens, for that matter ? than, say, a hedge-fund manager or globe-trotting billionaire based in London.'
I think Miliband realises that this is left wing nonsense. The London banker, if brought up in England, shares the same language, the same culture and the same music as the checkout worker in Manchester. They watch the same TV programmes, studied the same GCSEs, support the same football teams, and watch the same pageant on their TV screens.
Marx, Engels and Owen Jones are wrong - the checkout worker shares more in common with the London banker than with a checkout worker in Paris or Athens - for culture is more than Marxist materialism, it is the soul of a nation.
It looks like Miliband understands that and realises that he may have to upset the leftwing litterati and chatterati by telling them the truth. He knows he has to be with the people and not the progressives, if he is to stand any chance of power.
www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-the-incoherence-of-englishness-and-why-ed-milibands-england-is-a-lost-country-7827757.html