by Atul Hatwal
There he goes again. In Ed Miliband’s interview with the Telegraph on Saturday, the Labour leader was at it once more, opining on the right, and wrong, sort of wealth. Answering the question, is it good to be rich, his answer was “yes, if you make it the hard way.”
This instinctive response is revealing. Ed Miliband did not preface his response with some words celebrating ambition, or empathising with peoples’ aspiration to earn more, he cut straight to verdict.
His phraseology framed the conditions where the Labour leader found wealth to be tolerable. This does not suggest an intrinsic comfort with making money – something quite important to most voters.
Miliband sensed the dissonant note and moved to contextualise his statement in the interview: “It’s not for me to pass moral judgment. It’s the Jimmy Carr point; what are the rules?”
The clarification at least shifts the focus from moral judgement on the behaviour of wealthy individuals who have not broken any law. But the benefit of this refinement was then wasted when Miliband did not elaborate on which rules are to be changed.
Without defining the positive action that the party will take, Miliband’s, and so Labour’s position, is one of impotent moralising about the system.
We might as well just be blaming “the man.”
