This morning we published the latest in our series of crowdsourced interviews with the Labour leadership candidates. This time it was Ed Miliband’s turn to face your questions.
You can read the Ed Miliband interview here, and in case you missed them, here are our earlier interviews with Diane Abbott, Ed Balls and David Miliband.
Andy Burnham is still to face the Uncut crowdsourcing hotseat, and we will be asking for your questions soon.
Time for a chair?
John Cruddas wants to be chair of the Labour Party
Jon Cruddas, who has announced he would like to run as chairman of the Labour Party, admitted he found the politicians’ attempt to distance themselves from the Gordon Brown’s administration “unedifying”. He told Sky News’ Adam Boulton he was concerned by the “velocity by which people are running from their own involvement in some of the decisions” saying he would respect them more for standing by the choices they had made. – Sky News
Left-wing Labour MP Jon Cruddas has called for the party to have an elected chairman in future. Mr Cruddas told Sky News that he and stand-in leader Harriet Harman both backed the change, and that he would be interested in running for the job. It was time for the party to hold a thorough debate on policy following its “second-worst defeat since 1931” at the recent general election, he said. – The BBC
Union backing declared
The GMB Union has backed Ed Milliband for the Labour leadership
Several unions moved to give their backing to candidates for the Labour leadership yesterday as the campaign enters a potentially critical phase.The GMB became the first of the three big Labour-affiliated unions to nominate its choice, urging its 700,000 members to back Ed Miliband, the former climate change secretary. It will ballot all members on the candidates. – The Guardian
Mr Miliband also received support from construction union Ucatt yesterday. The Communication Workers Union swung behind Ed Balls and train drivers’ union Aslef backed Diane Abbott.Voting is split three ways: MPs and MEPs, trade unions and other affiliated organisations and thirdly grassroots activists. The two biggest unions – Unite and Unison – have yet to declare. – The Mirror
As the contest drags on heats up, the candidates are spending more and more time together. The hustings roll on, with many more to come, before the coronation at party conference. The teams behind the candidates are busy at work. Some teams are bigger than others. Some teams are busier than others.
Uncut has learned that in team Big Miliband headquarters there is a motivational collage to keep the worker bees on task.
Mounted on one wall of the campaign office there are pictures of all Labour’s leaders in chronological order – from Hardie to Attlee to Blair and Gordon Brown. After big Gordy, the final picture in the sequence is – not Big Miliband.
No, the final picture is on weekly rotation: Abbott, Balls, Burnham and Ed Miliband take it in turns to be the anti-employee of the month. The awful consequence of the slavish devotees failing to tweet faster, knock harder and stuff longer than any of the other candidates’ teams.
Underneath the D Milibandistas apocolyptic vision of the future sits the word that will save them from it: “FOCUS”.
We have been told that the office is at its most productive on the weeks when the image of little Miliband finishes the sequence, but this has not been confirmed.
This morning we published the latest in our series of crowdsourced interviews with the Labour leadership candidates. This time it was David Miliband’s turn to be interviewed.
You can read the David Miliband interview here, and in case you missed them here are our earlier interviews with Diane Abbott and Ed Balls. Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham are still to face the Uncut crowdsourcing hotseat.
David Miliband: no zombie
Step up David Miliband, the third leadership contender to join us in the Labour Uncut crowdsourcing hotseat. He was bouncy and inquisitive, he had a firm handshake and a busy office. He even let us take his picture, unlike Diane Abbott who only uses ‘approved photography’.
He’s for votes at 16, feels a personal loss at the ‘vandalism’ of BSF, but he’s definitely not a zombie. In fact, he’s very anti-zombie.
Q. (from Luke Spencer) How do you think we can get back the supporters we lost in the election so we can succeed in wining the election in 2015?
A. Well I think we lost because we didn’t relefct people’s aspirations and hopes and second because we didn’t have a clear plan for the future. The way to get it back is to be on people’s side and get a clear plan for the future. We won three elections because people thought we’d make them better off and make their communities safer, improve their schools and hospitals, or their health and education services. And that must be the recipe for the next election if it’s in 2015, or even sooner. I think that involves changing the way we do politics, because that’s an important part of reaching out, but also because it will help us develop the ideas that actually speak to people’s lives as they are today or tomorrow as opposed to what they were ten or fifteen years ago.
Q. (from Joseph Casey) Ken Clarke said last week that in the past politicians have talked tough on crime without taking the tough decisions. Although dominating the headlines and stimulating much debate, I heard no comment on the issue from any of the Labour leadership contenders. What approach do you think is the most effective route to offender rehabilitation, which ultimately creates fewer victims and less crime?
A. We’ve been asked about this quite a lot at the hustings that we’re having. Remember, crime was reduced by 35-40% under Labour. We’re the first government since 1945 to leave office with crime lower than when we arrived. And on reoffending we cut reoffending rates by 20% overall, 24% for young people…but we’ve got to do more, and better, next time. I think that Ken Clarke is having to come into this with his hands tied because he’s got no investment to make rehabilitation work. I would support as he called it the ‘rehabilitation revolution’. The more you can rehabilitate people, the better. And we’ve got to make prison work better. It’s not a case of does prison work or doesn’t prison work. It’s a question of what’s the best way of keeping crime down, because the best test of a penal system is the amount of crime not the number of people in prison. And I think that we can do that in a number of ways. I think that restorative justice is important, where people pay back to their victims. I think we’ve got to make community punishment mean something, because too many people think it’s a soft option. And we started to do that, but we’d have to go further.
Gove faces grilling
Michael Gove faces the Commons for education questions today
Ed Balls piled fresh pressure on Michael Gove, the beleaguered education secretary, by calling on him on Sunday night to answer questions over the withdrawal of funding from the schools construction programme. Mr Balls, shadow education secretary, wrote to Mr Gove demanding to know what advice he had from officials over the need to consult on last week’s decision and whether it had left the government open to legal claims. – The FT
The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes, today distanced his party from education secretary Michael Gove over the contentious decision to cancel 700 school rebuilding projects. Hughes said he was not entirely comfortable with the handling of the announcement, adding it would be “a nonsense” to build the new free schools proposed by Gove using cash that could have improved existing buildings. Gove has agreed to meet Lib Dem councillors concerned by his announcement, and the issue is likely to be raised at a Liberal Democrat meeting of its MPs organised by Nick Clegg, the party’s leader and the coalition deputy prime minister. – The Guardian
Labour Uncut is interviewing David Miliband about his leadership bid.
What should we ask him? What would your vote depend on? Here’s a chance to have your say.
Add your questions to this thread as a comment, by 12 noon on Sunday 11 July.
We now face the very distressing reality: not a consensual coalition, but a typically right-wing, out-of-touch Tory government. The totally superfluous “emergency budget” provides a taste of the bitterness to expect in coming years.
This next stage will be very difficult for our communities. Our many newly elected councillors – of which I am one – can expect a baptism of fire: in the seven weeks since the General Election, Sheffield alone has lost over £120m investment, including the Forgemasters loan. (more…)
We asked each of the leadership candidates to choose 8 favourite tracks, a book and a luxury which they might take to a desert island.
We will be publishing them one candidate at a time.
David Miliband is first because he sent his back first. (more…)
