Last Tuesday (27th Sept 2011) Ed Miliband delivered his speech as Leader to the Labour Party Conference. You can read the full text here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15081234
I have excerpted 4 passages which are the context of what I am going to say.
Ed on Business:
1. You've been told all growth is the same, all ways of doing business are the same. But it's not. You've been told that the choice in politics is whether parties are pro-business or anti-business. But all parties must be pro-business today. If it ever was, that's not the real choice any more. Let me tell you what the 21st century choice is:
Are you on the side of the wealth creators or the asset strippers?
The producers or the predators?
Producers train, invest, invent, sell. Things Britain does brilliantly. Predators are just interested in the fast buck, taking what they can out of the business. This isn't about one industry that's good and another that isn't. Or one firm always destined to be a predator and another to be a producer. It's about different ways of doing business, ways that the rules of our economy can favour or discourage.
Ed on Benefit Claimants:
2. The something for nothing of celebrity culture. The take what you can of the gangs. And in parts of some of our communities, a life on benefits. You know what your values are. But they are not the values being rewarded in our benefits system. We must never excuse people who cheat the welfare system. The reason I talk about this is not because I don't believe in a welfare state but because I do. We can never protect and renew it if people believe it's just not fair. If it's too easy not to work. And there are people taking something for nothing. And if at the same time people who have paid into the system all their lives find the safety net full of holes. No wonder people are angry.
3. So we need a new bargain at the top of society, and in our benefits system too. So it rewards the right people with the right values. But it isn't delivering that. And we've got to fix it. If you think putting it right means just stripping away welfare then you are better off with Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron. But at the same time we have to face the truth. Even after reforms of recent years, we still have a system where reward for work is not high enough. Where benefits are too easy to come by for those who don't deserve them and too low for those who do. So if what you want is a welfare system that works for working people then I'm prepared to take the tough decisions to make that a reality.
4. I believe in a benefits system with values. And I believe in the value of work.
Both people in business & Benefit Claimants felt demeaned & caricatured by Ed Miliband in his speech. Ed's message on both of these sections of our society was reinforced by interviews given by Sadiq Khan (Shadow Justice Secretary, who ran Ed's campaign for the leadership) & Andy Burnham (Shadow Education Secretary) subsequent to the speech. The idea they are touting is of replacing what they call the something for nothing culture with a something for something culture.
The difference between people in business & Benefit Claimants is in their ability to respond to these attacks. Successful businessmen & leaders of business organisations were all over the News rebutting Ed's swipe at them; they are perfectly well able to defend themselves.
Not so Benefit Claimants. None of them were asked for their view on Ed's claims that it's too easy not to work, how much reality that depiction contains. As a description of the Benefits System, Ed's is about 10 years out of date. Ed either knows this, in which case he is consciously lying, or he doesn't, & therefore doesn't know what he's on about. Either is bad, the first possibly worse.
This is what makes Ed's attack on Benefit Claimants all the more disgusting. He is kicking a group who can't kick back, & who don't form a large enough bloc of voters for it to matter what they think. Ed is playing to the prejudices of the crucial swing-voters whose votes he seeks. It's cost-free for him, but not for the actual Benefit Claimants he is merrily joining in stigmatising.
If pressed, Ed would say that he only means some Benefit Claimants.
Imagine if he got up & said, "Some Black people are alright, but as for those dirty Niggers ..."
(It's worth comparing what Ed M had to say about Welfare reform with what Iain Duncan Smith said subsequently at the Tory Conference: http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2010/10/Iain_Duncan_Smith_Our_contract_with_the_country_for_21st_Century_Welfare.aspx
As far as I'm concerned, they are interchangeable. IDS just says it at greater length.)
ADDENDUM: I predict that Ed Miliband will not make it as Leader of the Labour Party to the 2015 election. He will be unseated because his personal ratings & those of the Party in the opinion polls will remain too low. Ed Balls will also not be Shadow Chancellor by 2015.
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