Unions21 debate: Where’s the labour in Labour? How should the party approach trade unions and workforce policy?
The panel includes: Phil Woolas MP, Michael J. Leahy OBE (General Secretary, Community) Prof Cathy Warwick (General Secretary, Royal College of Midwives) Nita Clarke (Director, IPA).
Sunday September 26, 12:45pm, in the Lancashire/Cumberland Room, IoD Hub, Peter House, Oxford Street
The conservative right in Labour has moved swiftly and in a co-ordinated way to deligitimise Ed Miliband’s election as its party leader. David lost because he did not garner as many votes among MPs as his supporters were banking on, not because of the “unions”. The fact that Ed won more support among working people than the discredited (unjustly but still current) MPs should not be held against the result – one which all those who falsely say they will support the leadership are already picking apart in Manchester’s hotels and bars. Big supporter of David says he should now bow out. Why if he is such an asset to the party and country, I ask? Because he has just lost out to little brother is the answer. Typical of the infantile politics of new labour. There is a mission and they are not on it – the biggest danger to the power they want to resecure. As always, regressive. No understanding of the change that has already taken place among the electorate or the real task ahead. Tribal in an I’m-all-right-Jack-way. David has a place in the future on this country, but not as (shadow) Chancellor. If the deal done between Ed and Ed in the vote does not translate into Balls having the job then the whole point in having Ed is pointless.
It’s a turning point and no time for civil war, but the Right just can’t wait to start, and play straight inro the arms of the press they fear and the Tories they envy.
Chris McLaughlin, Editor, TRIBUNE
ps: please don’t anybody tell me again that the good thing about Blair was that he could win elections – one, Smith would have won in 1997, the vote has been declining until the Tories took a long time to choose an electable leader and three – whatever the achievements – is that really what you wanted a Labour government to do? Do you dismiss the deaths of innocenrt Iraqis and hate the working class and trade unionists so much?
It was always going to be a different path between David and Ed Miliband. Now we are about to see how different.
Cartoon by Andy Bunday. More at www.tribunecartoons.com
Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam by Mark Curtis
Serpent’s Tail, £12.99
You can’t keep a good man down and that also goes for Lord Mandelson.
He is to give the Progress rally the benefit of his wisdom at next week’s Labour Party conference. Progress is the magazine started by his old mucker Derek Draper, once renowned as the Sancho Panza to Peter Mandelson’s Don Quixote, but now best loved as the recipient of some entertaining emails from Damien McBride.
The venue for the Progress shindig? The Comedy Store. Perfect
David Miliband does have a nice line in ironic understatement.
Asked if he thought Philip Green, the mercurial businessman who owns much of Britain’s High Street, was the right man to help David Cameron’s Conservatives cut the budget deficit, he said: “Well, I think Monaco is an odd place from which to scrutinise the British public sector.”
Three crucial contests and one vital outcome