Appeared on the Labour Left website 9 October 2014
We’re 7 months away from the General Election and it’s time to get serious. We are way beyond the Silly Season and fast approaching Make Your Mind Up Time.
And it comes down to this simple choice:
What government do you want to be living under this time next year?
Do you want a Tory government (possibly propped up by Nigel Farage’s UKIP) and led by David Cameron; or do you want a Labour government led by Ed Miliband?
The mainstream media have spent the last few months following the agenda set by Cameron’s new campaign advisor Lynton Crosby: attack Miliband and smear him at all costs. The aim of this exercise? To make sure that you don’t take a Miliband-led Labour Party seriously.
This campaign of smear and misinformation has reached new heights following Labour’s conference.
It says volumes that this campaign is so lame in its focus. The best they’ve come up with so far is Ed ‘forgetting’ a section of his conference speech (given, remember, without notes), and a series of pathetic schoolboy attacks on his looks (yeah, right) and his inability to eat a bacon sandwich with decorum (who in practice can?).
Why is the focus on pitiful things like this? Because that’s all they can come up with when attempting to smear a clever, decent, thoughtful man like Ed.
It’s not difficult to see why members of the press are so keen to attack him. They are employed by the very people whose cosy lives would be upset by a genuinely radical Labour government. We are talking here of the Murdochs, the Dacres and the Beaverbrooks of this media world.
But the attacks on Ed are also meant to do something much more straightforward. They are meant to divert attention from anyone examining too closely the failings of David Cameron, the man who couldn’t win an election first time, and is hoping to do it second time round.
Let’s buck the trend and look at Cameron’s failings, for he seems to have got away from Tory Party meltdown with a conference speech well-received by the press. (Surprisingly little attention was given to his Freudian slip about ‘resenting the poor’; but hey! Who cares! Anyone can make a slip while giving a speech. Oh.)
If only Cameron’s failings were as insignificant as how he looks or howhe eats a bacon butty.
What we have in David Cameron is a man without a sense of judgement.
The most glaring example of this was undoubtedly when his Director of Communications Andy Coulson was sent to prison this summer.
What we expect from our politicians, what we demand of our political leaders, should be that they have at the very least a good sense of judgement.
Whatever way you cut it, Cameron’s failure to address Coulson’s past life in relation to the phone hacking scandal shows a startling lack of that quality.
If only this lack of judgement was in relation to one individual’s appointment.
Cameron’s lack of judgement was also on display over the presidency of the European Union. The marginalisation of the UK that he has pursued since the start of his premiership means we have no voice in shaping the future of the EU.
And closer to home we have the disastrous top-down reorganisation of the NHS that has wasted £2bn and that has left the NHS with a massive financial blackhole.
Let’s not forget that the National Statistics Authority has called him out – again - on quoting dodgy stats in relation to the deficit! This is the serious stuff. This is the stuff that ‘misleading the electorate’ is made of! But hey! Let’s not bother too much about that. Bacon butties are far more important!
Do you really want another five years of the same lack of judgement and mismanagement?
What could you have instead?
It’s time to look beyond the desperate attempts to deflect attention from a failing Prime Minister and his government, to the man who is waiting in the wings.
Carefully, patiently, Ed Miliband has put in place the pieces for a radical Labour government.
Diagnosing the problem of a society defined by growing inequality, his Labour party is putting forward policies that will address the gap between rich and poor and the struggles of the majority – not just the city men in sharp grey suits – to live well. We already know something of what this offering will look like: a living wage, repealing the NHS Act that put the Health Service up for sale, votes at 16, a commitment to real jobs and training for 18-21 year olds, reducing student fees, a national care service, a mansion tax, 1 million new homes over the next five years, more powers for local authorities. A more equal society.
And Ed has shown that he has the character necessary to make this happen.
He has shown himself prepared to take on the energy companies, the banks, Murdoch, and the right-wing press. He also has the humility to admit when he has made a mistake: he did this with his immediate and full apology after posing with the Sun’s World Cup edition.
When it comes down to it, in 2015 the choice will be stark. More of Cameron and Crew or a chance for a different, a better, a more equal Britain.
Put like that, the choice is really quite simple, isn’t it?
#EM4PM in
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