Deborah Orr is more right than wrong:
Poor Ed Miliband. He is neither
the problem nor the solution.
Instead, he's the inevitable product of a Labour party that doesn't know what it is or what it wants. That's the problem.
The Labour party doesn't know what it's for any more, and it has ended up with a leader who doesn't know, either.
It's not a socialist party any longer. It is not dedicated, as it once was, to achieving workers' ownership of the means of production.
Yet the reinvention Blair provided, in 1997, has been rejected, by voters and members. Miliband doesn't have an alternative, and when he stood as party leader, he didn't offer one.
What is the Labour party now dedicated to, or what should it be dedicated to?
Such a question tends to elicit responses such as "social justice" or "equality of opportunity". These may be pleasing concepts. But they are goals, rather than definitions.
For me, it's quite simple. The Labour party can reinvent socialism pretty easily.
It should stand for the idea – the fact – that workers are the means of production, and should therefore be treated with respect.
That's true to the party's traditions, and also happens to strike at the heart of many of this country's difficulties.
This is not to say that "wealth creators" should not be treated with respect. They are and should be.
A Labour party that pits the workers against the bosses is divisive, as is a Tory party that pits the bosses against the workers.
But, for all their talk of "One nation" or "We're all in this together", neither party really seems able to understand that a symbiotic relationship is what's required, in order to create a healthy and fully functioning society – one that has plenty of affluent, tax-paying consumers and fewer state-dependent people trapped in benefits.
Much of the trouble is that business philosophy seems only too happy to affirm all the most negative stereotypes that the left maintains about "the boss class".
Employers have for too long been encouraged to believe that their role is to afford their workers the least respect they can get away with – the lowest possible pay, the least demanding (to them) conditions, the minimum of job security.
The law has been remodelled in recent decades, so that it is on their side.
Yet, there are plenty of good employers out there, reaping the benefits of good, respectful staff relations, employers who understand that their loyalty is not to themselves and the market, but to their fellow humans – society.
But the temper of the ideological times is against them.
Their example should be inspiring all citizens – bosses and workers – to believe that the right solution is the most socially beneficial solution. Instead, ruthlessness and willingness to exploit is viewed as an admirable business trait.
During my childhood, it was workers and their strikes that caused power cuts.
Today, the boss of a private energy company warns that if his industry is investigated by the competition watchdog, there will be blackouts. Miliband's threat of a freeze on energy prices provoked a similar threat.
The big six energy companies last year made a billion in profit between them, quite clearly the result of their never-ending price increases.
Privatisation and deunionisation, far from ridding consumers of high-cost poor service, have simply replaced one concentration of delinquent power with another.
What was the point of "breaking" the unions, only to replace them with international cartels every bit as happy to shout "strike" if their own much more extravagant demands are not met?
The solution is not to diminish one group's power in order to hand it to another. It's to reject this sort of militant behaviour, whatever quarter it comes from.
If what's currently happening with the energy companies is not enough to destroy the idea that public is bad and private is good, then one need look no further than the housing market.
Placing supply in private hands, in the 1980s, has not let to a property-owning democracy, but a series of speculative bubbles, yet another of which is being inflated now, even though the human cost of such larks is plain to see.
Humans have a propensity for behaving selfishly, when given the opportunity.
Market economics are essentially an attempt to argue that selfishness can be harnessed for the good of society (as long as it's not the workers who are being selfish).
But what Labour, or any political party that wants to change our culture for the better, must communicate is that only individual responsibility can promote collective responsibility and vice versa.
Our dominant economic system is not based on the idea that the people of Britain are the 63 million musketeers: "All for one and one for all."
Instead, it's based on the idea that if someone is dependent on you, then you press home your advantage as hard as you can, and congratulate yourself for doing so.
This idea, above all, Labour must stand against.
The idea of interdependence, mutual advantage, has been resisted on both sides of the political divide. Our adversarial system decrees that this must be so.
Yet the result of that mindset is great disaffection and disengagement. People are not respected for being willing to do simple things and do them well.
On the contrary, they are despised for it, and then bosses complain about how they can't get the staff these days.
No one wants to turn up for a day's work, knowing that the person they work for is contemptuous of them. Yet the wages and conditions offered to people in Britain reek of contempt.
For a long time now, Labour has focused on treating the symptoms of an antisocial, anti-human, market-based economy.
The last Labour government let it run riot, while expanding the state to try to cope with the human casualties of the system.
The current government seeks to reverse that expansion, leaving the casualties to fend for themselves.
Under Miliband, the opposition talks about the cost-of-living crisis, which is just another symptom of a market system that is not delivering the widespread prosperity its proponents promise.
How can it, when it runs on the idea that prosperity – profits – should be maximized, not shared?
Of course, market systems exacerbate inequality. All of their mechanisms are geared to doing so.
Those who complain most bitterly about the Big State are those most likely to believe that redistribution of wealth or the amelioration of social troubles are none of their business.
The paradox of left-right politics is that only a socially responsible private sector can render an ever-expanding public sector unnecessary.
The party that wants the public sector to be smaller is the party least likely to tackle social irresponsibility in the private sector.
The party that sees itself as the champion of a large public sector, removes from the private sector much incentive to feel responsible for those it employs.
Each party has an inbuilt inability to deliver on its goals, and the electorate no alternative but to see-saw between the two of them.
When one party breaks away from this wretched game, both will have to.
So far, unfortunately, there's no sign that either will.
Instead, he's the inevitable product of a Labour party that doesn't know what it is or what it wants. That's the problem.
The Labour party doesn't know what it's for any more, and it has ended up with a leader who doesn't know, either.
It's not a socialist party any longer. It is not dedicated, as it once was, to achieving workers' ownership of the means of production.
Yet the reinvention Blair provided, in 1997, has been rejected, by voters and members. Miliband doesn't have an alternative, and when he stood as party leader, he didn't offer one.
What is the Labour party now dedicated to, or what should it be dedicated to?
Such a question tends to elicit responses such as "social justice" or "equality of opportunity". These may be pleasing concepts. But they are goals, rather than definitions.
For me, it's quite simple. The Labour party can reinvent socialism pretty easily.
It should stand for the idea – the fact – that workers are the means of production, and should therefore be treated with respect.
That's true to the party's traditions, and also happens to strike at the heart of many of this country's difficulties.
This is not to say that "wealth creators" should not be treated with respect. They are and should be.
A Labour party that pits the workers against the bosses is divisive, as is a Tory party that pits the bosses against the workers.
But, for all their talk of "One nation" or "We're all in this together", neither party really seems able to understand that a symbiotic relationship is what's required, in order to create a healthy and fully functioning society – one that has plenty of affluent, tax-paying consumers and fewer state-dependent people trapped in benefits.
Much of the trouble is that business philosophy seems only too happy to affirm all the most negative stereotypes that the left maintains about "the boss class".
Employers have for too long been encouraged to believe that their role is to afford their workers the least respect they can get away with – the lowest possible pay, the least demanding (to them) conditions, the minimum of job security.
The law has been remodelled in recent decades, so that it is on their side.
Yet, there are plenty of good employers out there, reaping the benefits of good, respectful staff relations, employers who understand that their loyalty is not to themselves and the market, but to their fellow humans – society.
But the temper of the ideological times is against them.
Their example should be inspiring all citizens – bosses and workers – to believe that the right solution is the most socially beneficial solution. Instead, ruthlessness and willingness to exploit is viewed as an admirable business trait.
During my childhood, it was workers and their strikes that caused power cuts.
Today, the boss of a private energy company warns that if his industry is investigated by the competition watchdog, there will be blackouts. Miliband's threat of a freeze on energy prices provoked a similar threat.
The big six energy companies last year made a billion in profit between them, quite clearly the result of their never-ending price increases.
Privatisation and deunionisation, far from ridding consumers of high-cost poor service, have simply replaced one concentration of delinquent power with another.
What was the point of "breaking" the unions, only to replace them with international cartels every bit as happy to shout "strike" if their own much more extravagant demands are not met?
The solution is not to diminish one group's power in order to hand it to another. It's to reject this sort of militant behaviour, whatever quarter it comes from.
If what's currently happening with the energy companies is not enough to destroy the idea that public is bad and private is good, then one need look no further than the housing market.
Placing supply in private hands, in the 1980s, has not let to a property-owning democracy, but a series of speculative bubbles, yet another of which is being inflated now, even though the human cost of such larks is plain to see.
Humans have a propensity for behaving selfishly, when given the opportunity.
Market economics are essentially an attempt to argue that selfishness can be harnessed for the good of society (as long as it's not the workers who are being selfish).
But what Labour, or any political party that wants to change our culture for the better, must communicate is that only individual responsibility can promote collective responsibility and vice versa.
Our dominant economic system is not based on the idea that the people of Britain are the 63 million musketeers: "All for one and one for all."
Instead, it's based on the idea that if someone is dependent on you, then you press home your advantage as hard as you can, and congratulate yourself for doing so.
This idea, above all, Labour must stand against.
The idea of interdependence, mutual advantage, has been resisted on both sides of the political divide. Our adversarial system decrees that this must be so.
Yet the result of that mindset is great disaffection and disengagement. People are not respected for being willing to do simple things and do them well.
On the contrary, they are despised for it, and then bosses complain about how they can't get the staff these days.
No one wants to turn up for a day's work, knowing that the person they work for is contemptuous of them. Yet the wages and conditions offered to people in Britain reek of contempt.
For a long time now, Labour has focused on treating the symptoms of an antisocial, anti-human, market-based economy.
The last Labour government let it run riot, while expanding the state to try to cope with the human casualties of the system.
The current government seeks to reverse that expansion, leaving the casualties to fend for themselves.
Under Miliband, the opposition talks about the cost-of-living crisis, which is just another symptom of a market system that is not delivering the widespread prosperity its proponents promise.
How can it, when it runs on the idea that prosperity – profits – should be maximized, not shared?
Of course, market systems exacerbate inequality. All of their mechanisms are geared to doing so.
Those who complain most bitterly about the Big State are those most likely to believe that redistribution of wealth or the amelioration of social troubles are none of their business.
The paradox of left-right politics is that only a socially responsible private sector can render an ever-expanding public sector unnecessary.
The party that wants the public sector to be smaller is the party least likely to tackle social irresponsibility in the private sector.
The party that sees itself as the champion of a large public sector, removes from the private sector much incentive to feel responsible for those it employs.
Each party has an inbuilt inability to deliver on its goals, and the electorate no alternative but to see-saw between the two of them.
When one party breaks away from this wretched game, both will have to.
So far, unfortunately, there's no sign that either will.
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