Like a lot of Labour Party members and activists, I’m angry and confused at the moment. I’m angry that with the Tory Party in disarray, losing MPs to UKIP and humiliated in Europe once again as a direct result of its fear of UKIP, the media focus appears to be all about Labour’s leadership “crisis”. […]
Tag Archives: Ed Miliband
In the run-up to the Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband has announced that a Labour government will raise the national minimum wage to £8 per hour. It’s an important announcement, and one that builds on Labour’s commitment to ensure that people in work are able to earn a decent sufficiency. It will be attacked by […]
Following the rejection of Scottish independence in yesterday’s referendum, David Cameron immediately announced his decision to set up a review to ensure that Scottish MPs could not vote on English affairs – presenting this as a constitutional change that would result in a “fair and balanced” settlement – and expressed a hope that this would […]
So Scotland voted to stay with the Union – the silent “no” vote giving a bigger “no” majority than once seemed likely, on the back of a huge turnout. Immediately, David Cameron appears before the cameras to start talking about English devolution, calling for a cross-party consensus. For the British political establishment, this has been […]
The concept of work is at the heart of contemporary political and economic rhetoric. Slogans about work – about hard-working families, about backing the people who work hard, about being the party of work – pepper political discourse across the political spectrum. But work is in crisis in a way that you would find hard […]
Ed Miliband has made a major announcement about how local government will be reformed under a Labour administration. It’s a complete game-changer; a big vision and, for those of us who aspire to be Labour councillors, a hugely challenging one. Building on the Adonis review, which calls for massive devolution of economic power to the […]
Imagine a political party. Its public face is a single, easily identifiable figure who receives considerable media exposure and is regarded as having a genius for self-promotion, while somehow avoiding the scrutiny that more mainstream politicians face. Despite the fact that our public face is a seasoned and accomplished professional politician, the party seeks to […]
It was too good to last. One of the things that led me back into the Labour Party last autumn was hearing Ed Miliband’s speech at the Labour Party Conference (or, to be more accurate, following it through a very dodgy Guardian live feed) and realising how far Labour’s rhetoric had changed – how more […]
In an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, Ed Miliband makes an unashamed appeal to what is often called the “squeezed middle” – people who are working, apparently reasonably-off, but who have been hit hard by austerity. It’s an approach that has caused some consternation on the traditional Left, wary of the legacy of New Labour […]
In an article in the Independent, Ed Miliband has set out proposals for ensuring that the use of illegal immigrant labour, often paid far below minimum wage, is not allowed to bid down pay and employment prospects for all. He writes: Instead, we will reform an economy hard-wired into a cycle of low wages, low […]
Notes from a Broken Society 