As the Old Right lines up squarely behind the only party of Burkean Britain, Peter Oborne writes:
Ed
Miliband made a formidable speech today. He entrenched his position as
leader of the Labour Party and made a series of careful policy announcements
which are laying the groundwork for a Labour manifesto.
Technically this was a
virtuoso performance, but what I liked most was the language: Mr Miliband has
turned his back on the empty and shallow political discourse of the Blair era,
and started to talk in the way that ordinary people do, with long, coherent
sentences, and only a handful of soundbites.
More and more he reminds me of Clem Attlee and
the civilised approach to politics which he represented. This is being
criticised in some quarters as a socialist speech, and it's all the better for
that.
Mr Miliband is not the leader of some virtual political party,
constructed by focus group experts to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
He represents a great political movement, and it is his job to speak on behalf
of the underprivileged and the disenfranchised.
There was a real humanity about what he had to
say today, and I think that members of the metropolitan media elite who love to
sneer at Mr Miliband may be missing the point.
Now, gibes will probably go down
well in Notting Hill and Islington, but I dare say that in Wigan, Blackburn,
and even in Swindon, they'll be getting the point – that Mr Miliband is a
politician who is on their side.
Peter Oborne is the only journalist fooled by him-and, to be fair, he's an ex Cameron fan. Which tells us all we need to know about his judgment.
ReplyDeleteUKIP is, of course, the only remaining party of Burkean Britain.
Which part of the conference was Burkean?
Yvette Cooper-who as good as promised mass immigration will carry on- praising globalisation and the benefits of immigrants?
Milibands praise for single mothers as the bedrock of society? Or his votes-for-toddlers policy?
Saddiq Khans hilarious speech on criminal justice which proposed giving victims the right to know just how pathetically short a sentence their attacker has served by telling them when he's out?
Keith Vaz's "diversity" shindig?
If you think there's anything Burkean about this rabble, you are even more thick than you sound.
Like Peter Hitchens, he is far too polite even to mention UKIP after last week.
ReplyDeleteSimon Heffer is the only Fleet Street columnist ever to have endorsed it, and I can't see him doing that again.