Posts Tagged ‘Ed Miliband’

Focus

14/07/2010, 05:21:51 PM

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.

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Wednesday News Review

14/07/2010, 07:35:34 AM

Ed M woos the press

Ed Miliband impressed at press lunch

I have been listening to Labour leadership challenger Ed Miliband wooing a notoriously sceptical audience, members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. And I’m wondering: Is he Labour’s David Cameron? Having observed him giving several impressive party conference speeches in recent years, I’ve noted before that his style is similar: shirt sleeves, no jacket, strolling around the podium, speaking without notes. But now, as Ed Miliband enters the crucial summer period in the Labour leadership contest against his four rivals, he appears to be adopting another Cameron tactic, dumping large parts of party policy. – Sky

Ed Miliband has just emerged from a lunch talk in front of dozens of journalists in the — for a politician — not un-intimidating surroundings of the press gallery restaurant in the House of Commons. Miliband appeared to impress most present with a speech laced with jokes in the first half. One of the most notable of these was when he said that he didn’t need to brief journalists while he was working for Gordon Brown because he “shared an office with the forces of hell”, in a reference to Alistair Darling’s comments about hard-core Brownites who briefed against him in recent years. – The New Statesman

Speaking at a Press Gallery lunch, Mr Miliband said: “I do not begrudge him at all the chance to offer his reflections, because I think he served the party extremely loyally. “What is absolutely clear is that we need to move on as a political party from the culture, methods and ways of that New Labour establishment.” Saying that Lord Mandelson’s book should “close a chapter,” he added: “I believe I am the candidate who can move Labour on.” – The Telegraph

(more…)

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Crowdsourcing the leadership

13/07/2010, 01:25:39 PM

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.

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The week Uncut

10/07/2010, 06:21:52 PM

Another week in the race is over. As the contest rolled into July, five people said the same things they said last week, to some slightly different people, and one man got ready to say lots of things about two people, which a great many more people will read.

It was the week that Burnham didn’t quit, Balls didn’t smear and Michael Gove broke the hearts of millions of children, enraged thousands of teachers, disappointed hundreds of parents, and made one man very angry indeed. 

In case you missed them, here are half a dozen of Uncut’s better-read pieces of the last week:

“It was like looking at bambi. So I shot him.” Watson on the moment he lost it with Gove

Ed Miliband’s taste in music causes an argument in the Uncut office*

Bounder doesn’t think Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom is big or clever

James Ruddick thinks the Tories are storing up glory by trashing our past

Nick Palmer argues Ken Clarke isn’t wrong, he just doesn’t mean it

John Woodcock on Ed Miliband and why he is wrong about flexible labour markets

*By office we mean Starbucks

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John Woodcock says Ed Miliband is wrong about flexible labour markets

07/07/2010, 08:59:30 AM

As this Labour leadership contest goes on, candidates are jettisoning more and more baggage from 13 years in power in the hope that it will make their leadership balloon soar higher.

Much of this is understandable and necessary. We won three elections on the bounce, but we lost what is always the more important one – the last one. And we need to learn why we lost in order to ensure that we can win the most important election of all – the next one.

But the latest sandbag offered to the wind this week – the belief in a flexible labour market – is one that should stay firmly in its place. (more…)

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Ed Miliband’s desert island discs

05/07/2010, 03:41:17 PM

Ed Miliband has cool-blitzed his brother’s desert island discs. It may be that he is cooler. It may be that he took a lot longer to reflect; that he agonised and focus-grouped.

Whatever the explanation, David’s desert island discs were defiantly uncool. Ed’s is a clever selection of thirty something and socialist hat tips.

We speculated in advance on how the candidates would deal with the Billy Bragg dilemma: too obvious, or impossible to omit if you want to resonate with any Labour member under 50? (more…)

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The awesome ruthlessness of Ed Miliband

17/06/2010, 12:06:04 PM

There is an excellent piece by James Macintyre on the Miliband brothers in this week’s New Statesman.  We recommend it.

It is surprising that more hasn’t been written about the extraordinary circumstance of these two brothers contesting the Labour leadership.  There have been endless passing references, but little of depth.

To all but the most partisan observer, it seems almost certain to be one of these two who succeeds Gordon Brown.

The magnitude of Ed’s decision to stand against his older brother has also been under-scrutinised.  This is no fault of his.  He has consistently said that it was the most difficult decision he has ever made.

He says so in an attempt to neutralise adverse reaction from those who see it as an unnatural act.  There are shades of Sophocles and Aeschylus in this younger brother’s eleventh hour assault on his beloved elder. (more…)

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Fabian Hustings: laughometer

15/06/2010, 08:23:14 AM

This is the laughometer from last night’s Fabian society leadership hustings.

Tiny chuckles weren’t recorded.

We maintained our rule that to score you had to get a proper laugh from a significant portion of the room.

David Miliband 5
Ed Miliband 7
Ed Balls 9
Diane Abbott 7
Andy Burnham 6

These numbers are significantly higher across the board than for previous hustings. Last night was a first outing for the Uncut reporter operating the laughometer on this occasion.  We have not yet been able to establish whether the leap in laughs was due to operator error, or to the candidates loosening up and getting funny.

Views from those present at last night’s Fabian as well as more than one other hustings would be welcome.

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Friday News Review

11/06/2010, 08:09:38 AM

Ed Miliband leans left

“Ed Miliband has delivered the most personal speech of the Labour leadership election, coming clean about his early life and political inspirations. The speech also marks out clear territory on the left of the party where he will base his campaign, with demands for a limit on the gap between rich and poor and rules on pay differentials in the private sector.” – Politics.co.uk

“FAT cat bosses in the private sector should have their salaries pegged back to tackle inequalities in British society, Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband has argued.

A Government plan to ban public sector bosses from getting paid more than 20 times the salary of their lowest paid employee should be extended to the private sector, he said in an interview with the Yorkshire Post.” – The Yorkshire Post

“The government must do more to reduce the pay gap between rich and poor, Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband has said. He called for the coalition’s public sector High Pay Commission to widen its scope to look at the private sector, saying wage differences were “high”.” – The BBC

“I came away from my meeting with Ed feeling inspired and excited. He has the personality, passion and drive that is needed to make an excellent Labour leader and Prime Minister. It is common for politicians to talk about “listening to the voters”, but I’m not sure we always hear what they are trying to tell us. I am confident that Ed is someone who doesn’t just listen, but really hears voters concerns. And acts on those concerns.” – Rachel Reeves MP, Yorkshire Post

(more…)

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Straight Outta Corpus

10/06/2010, 04:16:39 PM

We’re a little concerned that Andy Burnham doesn’t seem to have got the hang of the whole entourage thing.   Last night he was hanging round the House of Commons on his own.  This afternoon he was waiting for a bus outside Victoria Embankment gardens – on his own.

Come on Andy.  Get a grip.  As even the most middling hip hop gangsta could have told you, you are nobody if not surrounded by people whose presence in your presence serves no purpose.

Once the special-branch-protected holder of a great office of state, David “Fiddy” Miliband is the modern master of this art.  From the black clad men with submachine guns outside his house in Primrose Hill to the PPSes and campaign flunkeys who shepherd him from terrace to tea room introducing him to people he should know, he is never alone.

His brother, Ed “Snoop” Miliband, more unassuming till recently, has learned fast.  His appearance at last night’s New Statesman hustings brought squeals from gaggles of ecstatic young Fabianistas. But he can now not be reached through the armour of his entourage.

The Snoop Miliband posse, as you would expect, is lighter-hearted and more charming than Fiddy Miliband’s, which is cool and serious, but underlain with a slight air of menace.  Snoop’s boyz will crack a joke and make you feel at ease.  Before they kill you.

In truth, there is some way to go before either will be ready for the mean streatz of Compton or Queens.  The pimp-stick-wielding bad boyz in Snoop “Ed” Miliband’s krew include London barrister, Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, the Oxford don, Dr Stewart Wood and “Big Sista” Polly Billington, formerly of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Fiddy “David” Miliband’s top homeboyz are people like former ITV corporate affairs director Jim “Smackup” Godfrey and former FCO special adviser Madlin “Mizzlsizzl” Sadler.

It is a long way from Watts to Westminster.  And the sad truth is that the Miliband boyz are not so much Straight Outta Compton as relatively recently graduated from Corpus Christi.  Not so much Tupac and Biggie as, well, David and Edward.

Let’s hope Andy’s not still waiting for the bus.

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