Will Ed Miliband give many Conservative and most Lib Dem backbenchers (there are not many Lib Dem backbenchers) the chance to rid this country of control orders?
The Blairite ultras are going around demanding that Labour stick to its pre-Election position, phenomenal success that that turned out to be, as the party of this and all manner of other abominations: identity cards, CCTV on every street corner, ASBOs, banging people up for six weeks without even so much as charging them with anything, and everything else that didn't work and was in any case repugnant. That old CPGB enforcer, John Reid, is suddenly all over the airwaves again.
This is Miliband's opportunity to face down these people. Perhaps they will even secede, and all lose their seats in 2012? They should in any case be expelled as a party within the party.
There are other such opportunities, as Blairism is becoming increasingly detached from Blair himself. Like John Reid, for that matter, he never really liked Scottish and Welsh devolution very much, and he never really liked the EU very much, either. But his flame-keepers seem to be quite different, and increasingly so. Miliband (there is now only one Miliband worth mentioning) should therefore do as probably he, and certainly many or most of his MPs, want, by Leading the Opposition to such of the Calman proposals as might make it to the floor of the House while an economic crisis and a war are still going on, to the popularly unwanted referendum on further Welsh devolution, to David Cameron's repeated expressions of indifference as to the constitutional status of Wales, to the increase in British contributions to the EU budget, to further cessions of power to the EU, and to the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies.
As on civil liberties, the Tory and Liberal votes are there to be had. So have them.
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This is the Ed Miliband who has been going around saying he is relaxed about policy divergance between Scotland and England.
ReplyDeleteThis is the Ed Miliband who endorses Iain Gray who is going around talking about needing the third phase for devolution.
What you suggest would start a civil war in the Scottish Labour Party. And voters do not like divided parties.
Salmond will be quoting Wendy: "Bring it on!"
(the SNP by the way has cut Labour's lead in half over the past month).
More rages from Lindsay towers coming this way!
"This is the Ed Miliband who has been going around saying he is relaxed about policy divergance between Scotland and England."
ReplyDeleteWhich could mean anything, or nothing.
"This is the Ed Miliband who endorses Iain Gray"
A person of whom he has barely heard, and about whose opinion he certainly doesn't care. Who does?
"the third phase for devolution"
Which could mean anything, or nothing.
"What you suggest would start a civil war in the Scottish Labour Party"
No change there. And the internal affairs of the Scottish Labour Party are of about as much concern to Miliband as they are to most Scottish Labour MPs living in London most of the time but sitting on unassailable majorities in their constituencies, and, like all Labour MPs (this has been very little noticed), back in the old pre-Bennite situation of being practically impossible to deselect.