Danny

11 Ways Tony Blair was more Socialist than Ed Miliband Especially potent today after Miliband and Balls have yet again confirmed they're mirroring the spending stance of one of the most right-wing governments in history.

Absolutely - but in such a business where employees are treated properly, it's unlikely there would be enough money left for the top executives to give themselves multi-million salaries.

You're right, he does do it intermittently, but it's broken up by long stretches of him spouting guff about "applauding" people getting filthy rich or otherwise sucking up to the exploitative fat cats. The end result being virtually NOONE thinks of Ed Miliband as some kind of sincere crusader against the super-rich -- most people are either not aware of these attacks on the fat cats in the first place, or think he just says these things as gimmicks to win votes rather than being some consistent, thought-through principle which he'd follow through on in government. My own personal opinion, cynical though it may be, is even if he does manage to scrape into government, he won't have the nerve to follow through on any of it, given the lack of courage he's shown whenever he's attacked by the rich/Tory press. Also, I'm a bit bemused by you thinking that you HAVE to be a socialist or some far-left loony to think that no individual deserves a multi-milllion salary. Even Thatcher once said she was "concerned" about the kind of salaries City bankers were getting! (Though admittedly she qualified that by saying she thought it was a necessary evil to compete internationally)

Because, frankly, it's close to impossible for someone to earn millions a year without screwing over their employees or their customers unethically in the process. There are very few people in the world who have that level of "God-given" talent or work ethic to make that level of money solely on their own. I'm not saying there should be some kind of legal cap on salaries, because that would be impractical as anything, but any vaguely progressive politician (let alone a socialist) should atleast be trying to make it socially unacceptable to claim squillions a year in salary with scant regard paid to their employees or the wider society that have put those people in position to make that kind of money in the first place.

ED Miliband will today say he applauds wealthy business people and entrepreneurs, as he seeks to cast off his “Red Ed” tag and appeal to the Blairite wing of the Labour party. Miliband will pay homage to Lord Mandelson, who famously said New Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. “I’m not only relaxed about them getting rich,” Miliband is expected to say. “I applaud it”. http://www.cityam.com/article/ed-miliband-...ich-and-wealthy

The irony is that Sturgeon and the SNP only regard themselves as mildly left-of-centre or social democrats, whereas Ed Miliband still seriously seems to think of himself as a "socialist" even while he's proposing massive spending cuts when public services are already down to the bone, being "tough" on welfare claimants and immigrants, and saying he applauds people getting filthy rich :rofl:

True, but I just find it hard to understand how so many Scottish Labour people could still truly believe that the SNP are more right-wing than Labour given their respective stances on austerity.

Nicola Sturgeon saying on Newsnight now that the SNP would not vote for any minority Labour government budget that proposed more cuts.

Cable should probably be saved by the fact he's pretty much the only Lib Dem still in any way well-regarded (well, nationally, don't know if he is in his constituency).

Esther McVey and her fake Scouse accent has a decent chance of being booted out.

It's a good long-term strategy for them. The North of England is in severe danger of becoming the "new Scotland" for Labour if they don't get their act together.

Time to copy the Lib Dems themselves and whip out some bar-chart leaflets...

The polls at this point before 2010 underestimated the Lib Dems a bit, but otherwise were fairly accurate.

Chuka would probably be popular for about 4 weeks as people swooned at how handsome he is, before wearing off extremely quickly. He doesn't seem to possess a single original or interesting thought (this isn't purely a political thing because I think Liz Kendall for example atleast sometimes says interesting albeit horrifying things), he just mindlessly parrots the usual politicians' platitudes and meaningless sentences. Not to mention he'd probably have even less rapport with "traditional" Labour voters than Miliband does. Being charismatic might be necessary for a politician, but it ain't sufficient on its own if your policies are terrible.

A lot of people in Labour get really irate about the Tories' education policies (personally even as certified loony leftie I don't mind those too much) and think Tristram Hunt has been too supportive of them. Plus he's posh.

No chance. People in the party are furious at him for how much of a sore loser he was.

Andy Burnham was the runaway winner the last time Labour members were asked to rank the top Labour ministers. http://labourlist.org/2014/11/burnham-rema...binet-rankings/ His only real competition imo is Yvette Cooper, because there's a belief in some sections of the party that they need to elect a woman, just for the sake of electing a woman (even if that woman is a female version of Ed Miliband in the charisma stakes).

No, I'm saying they're going to make yet more cuts on top of the cuts that have already been in place -- nobody would ever have thought they would give in to the Right so much that they'd do that.

I thought you hated Andy Burnham? :P

Was this aimed at me? :lol: I actually agree with what you said in that paragraph, but I'd argue there's been obvious narratives staring them in the face all along ("it's time for rich people and big businesses to be brought into line") but they were too scared to go for it. Though admittedly Miliband would never have been very convincing at selling that message evn if he had the guts to try. ** Who will you be voting for in the leadership contest after the election?

Oh, it certainly wasn't perfect even then, but atleast they were defending the basic concept of government spending. I remember when it was some big thing at the 2012 conference just when they said they wouldn't be reversing all the cuts that had already taken place; nobody seriously thought back then that they would give into the Right-wing narrative so much that they would go into the election actually promising to add on further cuts of their own and make things even worse, or be running on the critique that the government hadn't cut the deficit/spending quickly enough.

I only "avoided" the point because it was going to lead to yet another circular discussion (even I have my limits!). Doesn't change that the "choice" between the parties is essentially equivalent to whether someone would prefer to die in two years, or to die in two years and one month. And the polls show how well it's working, compared to the consistent leads Labour had when they were daring to do the "un-credible" thing of defending the concept of public spending against the idea of the deficit being the top priority.

The Conservatives now seem to have moved into a decisive lead. 4% up in two polls today.

Have you been following any of his interviews? Any single thing he's asked about where the Tories are indicating cuts, and asked if Labour would do something differently, he says he can't guarantee it with his usual "difficult decisions" mantra. This £50bn figure has been plucked out of thin air.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31790067 Ed Balls apparently STILL hasn't learnt that it makes no sense whatsoever for him to complain about Tory spending cuts, if in the inevitable follow-up questions he's not going to guarantee that Labour won't make the same cuts.