Former Cabinet Member and Brown advisor, Ed Miliband, has focused an awful lot of his campaign for the Labour Leadership by ranting about the Lib Dems recently.
He has written a Guardian column aimed at winning over Lib Dem voters. This follows the nonsensical silly-season rumours about Charles Kennedy defecting to Labour. Some of Miliband’s comments have tickled me. In particular, the bit where he writes that the Liberal Democrats are
…a party of proud traditions: of Keynes, Lloyd George and Beveridge. But it is increasingly clear that these traditions are being abandoned by Clegg as he goes along with damaging cuts in public spending undermining economic growth, tax rises hitting the poorest hardest, and a clear threat to the universal welfare state.
Oh get a grip, Ed! As a member of the most profligate Government of modern times he’ll be fully aware of the reality: public spending cuts are absolutely necessary given the appalling deficit left by the previous Government. The deficit is forecast to hit £163 bn this year, which could see the UK’s credit rating downgraded unless cuts are made. Perhaps he also forgot that he was part of the Labour Government whose last Budget also planned to make cuts of £50bn (without telling us where the cuts would be made, naturally). I’m sure that innocently slipped his mind.
The comments about hitting the poorest hardest are equally laughable. Clearly he doesn’t remember that the taxation policies of the last Labour Government disproportionately hindered the poorest (think of the 10p tax debacle) although Labour’s policies often benefited the richest taxpayers, for example by lowering Capital Gains Tax. Personally, I’m proud that the Lib Dems have ensured that the lowest earners in this country are being taken out of tax altogether – that’ll be almost a million of the poorest not paying tax.
He also amused me with this comment:
Our society is at risk of being reshaped in ways that will devastate the proud legacy of liberalism. We see a free market philosophy being applied to our schools, wasteful top-down reorganisation of our NHS, and the undermining of our green credentials with cuts to investment.
Free market philosophy applied to schools? Hmm, perhaps he has forgotten (again) that it was Labour who started the ball rolling here, for example by the introduction of academies. And as the Guardian itself has already highlighted, there is really very little that’s new and controversial in current Coalition education legislation.
Also, what is this nonsense argument about ‘wasteful top-down reorganisation’ of the NHS? Presumably none of the periodic reorganizations of the NHS that occurred under Labour were top-down at all. Oh no. Not at all. And ‘undermining our green credentials’ with cuts to investment? I think Ed’s getting a bit carried away here. Yes, DECC is having to make some cuts, but as a former Energy Secretary he’ll be the first person to realise that the Coalition’s plans for reducing carbon emissions and greening our economy are far more ambitious than anything Labour ever set out. Furthermore, for the first time we now have Annual Energy Statements which will set strategy and guide investment for energy – the kind of strategic thinking that was so woefully lacking under Ed’s command at DECC.
To top it off, Miliband writes that he wants to make the Labour party ‘liberal in our respect for individual rights.’ Sure. After ID cards, the DNA database, child detention and the proliferation of inappropriate CCTV (to name just a few examples) I’m sure Lib Dem members will now trust Labour to protect civil liberties. That’ll definitely happen. Absolutely. No doubt about it.
What I find most laughable of all though is that these attacks on the Lib Dems come at the same time as Ed Miliband’s beleaguered leadership rival, Andy Burnham, set out his vision for Labour yesterday. Obviously, it was mostly nonsense (at one point he talks about the need to help the ’50% of young people who don’t want to go to university’…where the hell did that figure come from?) but at least this was an attempt at a serious, strategic policy-focused direction for his party. By contrast Ed Miliband’s Lib Dem-bashing, whilst entertaining for some of us, simply demonstrates that his campaign has remarkably little to say.
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