The long Labour leadership contest could harm David Miliband
Labour’s NEC has agreed a long contest, with the leader being crowned at the party’s conference in September. It’s widely thought this harms the front-runner, David Miliband, and that’s exactly what some on the NEC want it to do.
There will be a £150,000 cap on leadership campaign spending (Gordon Brown managed to spend £220,000 when there was no competition). There will be hustings, TV debates, street parties (I made up the last bit).
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Responsible journalists should be careful not to spin the news, IMO. Either Gary Gibbon should substantiate his remark that some on the NEC want to “harm” [the prospects of] David Miliband – is that what they said their intention is? – or he should restrict himself to the equally plausible claim that a longer leadership campaign will give more exposure to other, maybe less well-known, candidates, which is not only fairer but is also in the best interests of the party (and the country).
Damn, and I was really looking forward to the street parties
It’s interesting how quickly they are all trying to distance themselves from Blair-Brown. I think this will also work against DM because he is most closely associated with the top table. He also had those couple of wobbles when it seemed (possibly unfairly) that he lacked the bottle to go for the top job.
What I saw of his launch speech in his constituency seemed to be delivered in a very strange style, not at all inspirational.
I will be interested to see how the contest develops. The decision labour makes is arguably one of the most important ever – get it wrong and they could disappear off the map.
Saltaire i agree totally .Get it wrong and they could disappear off the map.That is an aspiration i hope they achieve , particularly if Yvette doesnt stand
£150,000 for a leadership election!!! That’s a Three bed semi in the North West! Talk about altered priorities!
It’s another sign that the political class is completely out of touch with ordinary people. They think they are hard done by on £60k a year plus expenses. They talk in billions and trillions but don’t have a clue how hard it is for some people to put together a few hundred.
Spending £150k on a leadership election is the equivalent of five nurses for a year. Why don’t they leave it all to the conference, have one debate when each candidate puts his/her views and then vote. Instead they will waste money and the conference will turn into another celebration of a new leader with little substance.
I agree Saltaire
And to illustrate the ‘altered’ – or rather ‘distorted’ – priorities further, Patrick: £150k wouldn’t buy a one-bed flat in most parts of London, including my own. Obscene prices in the country’s capital are distorting the economy as well as keeping people out of their own homes by, eg, encouraging lanlordism, diverting money from productive acitivities into unproductive bricks and mortar, encouraging the elite to buy second – and third – homes in the country to cite just a few consequences of the fallacious capitalist ‘property-owning democracy’ idea.
A tax on land values would help bring property prices down and that’s principally why I believe it deserves support. I trust the coalition’s David Laws, no. 2 at the Treasury, will show by his action on LVT that he intends to honour his word to ‘live up to the aspirations of Lloyd George’, as he stated in an interview on BBC2 Newsnight last night: it was Lloyd George who proposed LVT in his first, 1909 ‘people’s budget’. Supported in the Commons, it was defeated bythe unelected landowners in the Lords.
If Cameron-Clegg want stability, they need to act now to end the UK’s destabilising property-price bubbles.
There you go again, Adrian. Trying to ruin my day by agreeing with me. Now I’ll have to get on with some work!
Talking of out of touch politicians, did you see that Ruth Kelly who resigned to spend more time with her four children, has found time to take a £200k a year job with HSBC.
On top of which the former education secretary has bought a £1.5m house to ensure her children qualify for the best Catholic schools in the country. Shows how much she trusts the job she did.
Actually, I malign her – she claims she bought the house because ‘there are no good family homes in Wapping’. Wonder what the people of Wapping think?
This is what Kelly, a New Labour MP for the whole 13 years – until she chose not to stand again at the recent election – had to say about the current economic situation: ‘We are going to have to rely on the banking industry to haul the world economy out of recession so I am very excited about joinging such a respected global institution [as HSBC]‘ – Guardian 18 May.
At times Labour appears to be beyond comment. So far we hear basically the candidates’ views of what should be the issues. The Labour Party needs to debate the issues and then instruct its new leader on the policies to be followed. A party diktat prohibiting aggressive wars and invasions would certainly brighten the party’s image, and it should never again be left to a leader to decided on such neoconservative policies.