by Joe Anderson
Two years ago, I was summoned to see Ed Miliband. He wanted to talk about my continuous public challenge for the Labour party to unequivocally promise to scrap the hated bedroom tax.
His answer left me speechless. He told me, “Joe, It is what we do in government that matters”.
I told him straight how wrong he was: “That it was “hope” people needed, if nothing else, a belief that Labour was the party that would speak out for all. Only by being bold would we ever get to be in government again.”
I also gave him some unsolicited advice: ”Get out of the Westminster village, stop spending days preparing for PMQs , get out and see real people in real communities, visit the food banks, and visit the cities being hardest hit by the cuts.” And I again left him with a challenge: “Make the news, don’t respond to it.”
The plea fell on deaf ears.
Soon after that meeting the same people who had led us to defeat in 2010 developed their 35% strategy. Those same advisers and spin masters were making the same mistakes again based on the false assumption the Tories would win the election for us, all we had to do was sit back and wait.
The people who didn’t want to talk about the bedroom tax or cuts to local services were the same ones who decided to give us the EdStone.
I had a similar meeting with Ed Balls months before the general election. His attitude and approach was worse and I hold him responsible for much of the problem we faced. His “dead hand” hung over all our policy in relation to public sector spending. His approach of, “say nothing, offer little and wait to win” showed how arrogant and out of touch the leadership had become.
