Labour's election of the more left-wing of the two Miliband brothers, Ed, as leader means that the Conservatives do not need to worry too much about Labour winning the next elections. Internal dissent within the coalition with the LibDems will remain the greater issue.
Ed Miliband looks likely to pull Labour away from its Blairite centrist position which was sufficiently attractive to win the party three consecutive election victories. By retrenching in traditional left-wing strongholds, the danger for Labour is that it will alienate the middle-income floating voter. Who knows - maybe in five years time the threat to the Tories will come from somewhere other than from Labour.
Just as Margaret Thatcher removed hundreds of thousands of traditional Labour supporters from that party by giving them the right to buy council houses, so David Cameron's realignment of public spending will result in fewer clients of the state with a vested interest in voting Labour. Assuming a stable coalition, Labour could be kept out of power for another 18 years as they were between 1979 and 1997.
The British public is braced for deep cuts planned to restore the budget deficit to just over 1% of GDP by 2016. With ministries preparing cuts of up to 40%, public sector jobs will be lost in vast numbers. The resulting resentment may give a short-term boost to a more left-leaning Labour party. However, by the time of the next general election (assuming of course the coalition can stay together), much of the pain should have eased. This is predicated on the private sector being able to mop up the blood.
George Osborne's budget had given plenty of incentives for Britain's small businesses to flourish. This is where real new employment will come from - and judicious tinkering with benefits at tax rates for the low-paid should ease millions off long-term dependence on the state.
It is illuminating to browse this list of reactions on the BBC website to Ed Miliband's win. Note in particular, Tory chairman, Baroness Warsi: "[he] wasn't the choice of his MPs, wasn't the choice of Labour Party members but was put in to power by union votes. I'm afraid this looks like a great leap backwards for the Labour Party. And of deputy LibDem leader, Simon Hughes: "it will be vital that he wakes up to the challenge that Britain faces. As leader he must recognise that his party can no longer remain head-in-the-sand deficit-deniers."
And that particular tune will be played loudly by the unions with populist appeals not to 'assassinate public services'. [Full list of quotes here.]
Coming back to the victorious Ed Miliband, Polish readers should note that he had a full set of Polish-born Jewish grandparents. The paternal grandfather, Samuel Miliband, fought on the Bolshevik side in the 1920 war with Poland, fleeing to Belgium after the defeat of the Red Army. There his son Adolphe Miliband was born, who changed his name to Ralph after fleeing to Britain after the Nazis invaded Belgium. Ralph went on to be a roaring leftie, a Marxist well beyond the pale of the Labour party. Ed Miliband's mother, Marion Kozak, was born in Częstochowa, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish entrepreneur Dawid Kozak, who owned a steel factory in the town.
Marion's escape from the Holocaust is covered in this article from the Daily Telegraph.
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3 comments:
Really you are far too optimistic. How will small businesses create a couple of million new jobs in a country that hardly makes anything these days? What exactly does Britain export to where? Where is our balance of trade? All that we seem to do nowadays is generate commission on the circulation of money by a banking industry whose greed broughtb the nation to its knees. The only way that service industry can create jobs is by paying rock bottom salaries (and aren't those the jobs that Polish guest workers take?) that keep people off the housing ladder and trapped in poverty. Meanwhile I've seen analaysis suggesting that, as cuts in state expenditure will affect private sector contracts, there will be massive job losses in both sectors. Isn't it just wishful thinking by the privileged that things might get better for the mass of ill educated people who seem to exist just to consume. I'd say that, behind the honeyed words of men like Cameron and Osborne (men who have never added a drop of wealth to Britain by actually manufacturing anything) there is a plain agenda to condemn the lowest strata of the British population to lives of poverty for the simple reason that there isn't enough money to let 'them' live comfortably if 'we' are to enjoy wealth. In their hearts many people sense this and are quite happy for the 'lazy', 'feckless' and 'ignorant' to suffer such economic collateral damage. They are happy to live in a broken US-style divided nation because personally now in the short term they benefit. What a wonderful nation we are building.
This is a moment when the morality of Britain should be rebuilt. When proper values should be promoted - hard work, honesty, respect. But we have a government that cuts and tinkers with budgets and thinks that is enough. There is no real courage - such as forcing the unemployed into earning their benefits through doing socially useful work. There is little intellect - does Osborne really have a clue about economics? No, we just have privileged people lecturing at us.
I used to board my horses on the opposite side of the road to the estate of Cameron's inlaws the Astor family. Mine were in the same stable block as the Astor's horses. The stable girl who cared for those horses was so badly paid that in winter she had to choose between food and heating. Eventually she suffered a physical breakdown. Welcome to Conservative morality.
Did Samuel Miliband really fight for the Red Army? Ralph Miliband's biographer, Professor Michael Newman thinks it certain that it was one of his brothers. The "Samuel Miliband fought for the Red Army" story is just one of those myths repeated so much people don't question whether it is true.
@ WHP:
"How will small businesses create a couple of million new jobs in a country that hardly makes anything these days?"
Wow. Four years on - yes, they did. How does Labour answer that one, then? :-)
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