A well-known member of Ed Miliband’s shadow front bench, a politician whose blushes I must, very reluctantly, spare because he texted a colleague and not me, implored the Daily Mirror to expose how right-wing this Conservative-dominated coalition Government really is.
Although tempted, the colleague ignored my suggestion to reply acidly that the Mirror – like Tribune and a small band of publications which refused to be blinded by the Cameroon green-wash in the run-up to May 2010 and the subsequent coalition honeymoon – warned before that general election the Tory leader was a child of Margaret Thatcher on a bicycle who would launch a fatwa on working people and public services
The shadow minister (oh, how I wish I was free to identify the him) had spent far too much time reading The Guardian, a terrific newspaper with an excellent history of investigative journalism, the hacking exposure deserving to pick up every gong except sports photography in the 2011 British Press Awards, yet also a paper which had its tummy tickled by the public relations man who is David Cameron.
The paper bought the husky and hoodie hugging spin hook, line and sinker because it wanted to. Writing off Labour after its tempted putsch by ultra-Blairites failed to topple Gordon Brown, The Guardian didn’t want Labour to win again. Instead it backed the Liberal Democrats who jumped into bed with the Conservatives, in Fleet Street terms forming a Guardian-Daily Mail Government.
Guardian readers, I recall, swung to Labour and ignored the advice of the newspaper they buy. The anger of Guardian readers, who have a commendable attachment to the paper, in many cases defining themselves by the paper they read, could’ve been worse.
I’m told from inside King’s Plaza that so wooed by Cameron were some of those who run (although not read) the paper that they toyed with recommending a vote for the Conservatives. The fallout would’ve been worth buying a ticket to watch.
But back to the irritating frontbencher, who has the initials… No, sorry, I can’t reveal who he is. However tempted I am. He, like The Guardian, was paralysed by Cameron, charmed into inaction. The Labour spokesman lost his political edge too. The unnamed MP is, I’m happy to relay, showing signs of recovery but the shadow minister is a shadow of what Labour needs to stand a good chance of winning, making this a one-term Conservative coalition.
During the past couple of months, I made a conscious effort to get out of the Westminster bubble, to take the temperature of Britain in general and the Labour Party in particular, up and down England ( I’ll visit Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in 2012). From the north-east via the West Midlands to the south-east, I saw some good MPs at work, fighting local and national battles. I also found the Labour faithful in good heart, furious at the fundamental unfairness of the austerity unleashed by Cameron, driven by a belief that the basic Labour message of
social justice is worth fighting for, as in Harold Wilson’s observation that Labour is a crusade or it is nothing.
Yet I also found widespread disappointment in the performance of the party leadership. And I don’t mean just Ed Miliband, although the consensus is he must raise his game. Many party members feel that too many leading lights in the Shadow Cabinet haven’t adapted to opposition and behave as if they still think the party is in power, taking managerial positions when politics will win – or lose – the next election. In part ,it was always like this for Labour in opposition. Tony Blair received a fair bit of stick before 1997 (and much more than that over Iraq in 2003 onwards). On the plus side, Labour has averted the civil war of the 1980s. Yet there is an uneasy feeling on the ground that the party should be doing better. And with that I agree. It’s not about one man. But nor can he escape his share of responsibility.
Labour has largely escaped in-fighting, but there’ll be trouble ahead in 2012 if the party doesn’t discover a fighting spirit. And should that shadow frontbencher ever accuse
yours truly of failing to highlight the turbo-Thatcherism of Cameron and his Buller gang, I’ll name him. It’d be the least I could do.
Important questions to be addressed. How the reckless greed of the City of London tax haven collapsed the British economy. Why low and middle earners and public services are paying the price for the disastrous mistakes of the so-called masters of high finance. The summer’s riots which cost the economy, so we are told, an estimated £500 million. The failure to build sufficient numbers of homes so everyone has a roof over their head. Soaring youth unemployment, which is crushing the dreams of a lost generation. Or the great tax-dodging scandal of filthy rich individuals and giant multinational corporations which costs the Exchequer an astronomical sum. I’m aware that to complain about the size and scope of the police, judicial and parliamentary inquiries into the media is to risk accusations of special pleading. But why are a raft of issues which impact hugely on our lives and therefore deserve forensic scrutiny effectively swept under the carpet by officialdom?
