It may seem strange to most people,that as soon as a political leader is elected by his party there is a movement to undermine his authority. Ok, so the media can add journalistic spice to the election of Ed Miliband by the fact that he defeated an elder brother, encouraging banal conjecture that Ed's victory delayed revenge for smashing the younger brother's train set. It also helps if respective partners are portrayed as nascent Lady Macbeths or if, like rivals in a history drama, each have supporters who see there own advancement dependent on the fortunes of their respective political baron. While younger foot soldiers are busying themselves skirmishing in order to gain favour, older retainers who have a self interest in justifying fading careers will use their positions to hint, and nudge wink wink that the Party has put it's democratic faith in the wrong baron. even claiming that the process has been undemocratic. Of course this was never brought up until the "wrong" result was announced.
So there has been a coincidence of arrows fired by those with no name this past week. Leaks of Ed Balls 6 year old emails that are hoped to implicate EdM in a dastardly plot to overthrow Gordon Brown and waste the country's cash. Publication of drafts of undelivered speeches, articles in newspapers, Emily Maitis on BBC's Newsnight attempting unsuccessfully to conduct a hatchet job, all focusing on the supposed inadequacies of EdM and by inference the magic touch of his elder brother. Strange that DavidM chose this as the appropriate time to deliver his first speech since the election. Hmm. Coincidence, of course. Hmm.
Now its never been clear as to what the special qualities of DavidM are. As a Foreign Secretary he wasn't particularly distinguished although it is said that Hilary Clinton took a shine to him. His speeches tend to dullness and its easy to lose their drift in over use of sub-clauses. Its only when his identity as a follower of the Blair tendency that the role of brother leader in waiting makes any sense. But ask yourself. Do we want or need a son of Blair. We already have one as Prime Minister and a fat lot of good that's doing us. And you can see why EdM is trying to consign New Labour.to history.
Here's an article by Mattew Norman in the Independent 15 June. It's worth a read.
Matthew Norman: Shame on David Miliband for dragging his party down
The defeated Labour leadership candidate's refusal to serve in this Saddo Cabinet looks less like justified wound-licking than nauseatingly petty self-indulgence
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
With each month of ostentatious indolence that goes by, with every week of ego-ravaged silence that slides past, with every day of acidic resentment that seeps away, David Miliband offers a compelling lesson as to why Labour was absolutely right to reject him.
He is fast becoming a disgrace: a disgrace to the party he claims to adore, but which a thwarted sense of entitlement stops him serving now; a disgrace to his constituents in South Shields, who did not return him to Westminster to help David Cameron to a thumping majority; and a disgrace most of all, sir, to himself.
Why he has avoided such a pungent appreciation for so long I'm not sure, though naturally the circumstances of his defeat in September earned him sympathy. To sit beside a snickering Ed Balls and hear his brother speak from the podium about his undying love for him – knowing that the imaginary speech bubble read "Right, you patronising ponce, that's for defacing my Fabian Christmas Annual in 1973" – can't have been fun.
All right, then, this was a monstrous psychological blow, even though he had it coming. Long before this gifted Tory impersonator took on the part of Ted Heath in full sulkage, he gave us his Michael Portillo – flirting with a coup against a weak prime minister for whom he couldn't disguise his contempt; but chickening out from cowardice he will have rationalised to himself as a shrewd preference for the long game over the quick and lethal strike.
Shrewd it was not. In the combat sport of power politics, second chances may come but are very seldom taken. Having scurried back under his rock after openly flashing his scorpion tail at Gordon Brown in the summer of 2008, David's second chance came in the winter of 2009. Once again he blazed over from four yards with the one-eyed keeper prostrate, by failing to resign with James Purnell. With that profligacy, he condemned Labour to a catastrophic defeat.
When the third chance came, he blew it again. All victory required was a less smug and aloof, cuddlier David Miliband doing a little light schmoozing in the tea rooms. A few more MPs and the prize would have been his. This small sacrifice his arrogance prevented him making, and he lost because the electorate narrowly favoured his brother. No hanging chads, no black people effectively disenfranchised, no partisan Supreme Court ruling. Just fewer votes.
If he needed a holiday to get over that, fair enough. The immediate aftermath of any election, even one as chaotic as last year's, is a period of sublime irrelevance for any Opposition, and he had every right to slink back to Primrose Hill and recover in peace.
But that was then. Nine months on, his refusal to serve in this Saddo Cabinet – and even with the recruitment of Madge Allsop, Dame Edna's bridesmaid, could it look more comically glum? – looks less like justified wound-licking than nauseatingly petty self-indulgence.
If last week's leaking of the victory speech he would have given may have been spitefully timed to torment Ed at a moment of weakness, all the text establishes is that politically next to nothing divides them. David may have been keener on owning up to Labour's ostrich approach to the deficit, but in ideological terms this is hardly a Tony Benn vs Denis Healey rematch. These Milibandroids, two Jewish boys divided as so often by a common gene pool, agree about everything other than minor nuance and dry detail. By declining to work for his brother, all David does is remind us that with Brown and Blair the schisms were opened not by policy but by personality.
This echo of what is hardly "ancient history" – I've been right through Thucydides and Pliny the Elder, and not a dickie bird – is the most effective way of perpetuating the rift. The only way Labour can begin to close it is for these two to work together. The longer David sulks, the more terminally entrenched becomes the perception of Labour as a queeny rabble who don't merely deserve a decade in the wilderness, but need it to put such childish things as internecine feuding and unadulterated personal ambition behind them.
It seems that David himself is finally waking up to this, with Andrew Grice reporting in this paper yesterday that he is gingerly pondering a return to the front line. It is in the best interests of everyone other than the Coalition and the Balls-Cooper wedlock that he does so without delay.
Obviously, it wouldn't be easy. They would both be mad, for one thing, to sustain the intelligence-insulting pretence that all has been spiffing between them. They would have to cough to the bitterness that led David to eschew Ed's wedding reception for a literary event scheduled for the following day. They would need to be honest, within reason, about the anguish they've caused Marion, their poor old mum.
It would be agonising for David to swallow his pride. But if he went on the telly and said, "Look, it was hideous for me, and for the family. Everyone knows that. But I've had time to get it over it, and accept that there is no primogeniture rule in politics. I haven't spent my working life banging on about loving this party to sit idly by when I might be of some use in getting it back to power. At such a pivotal moment, facing so many colossal challenges, it would be a very small man who let himself be driven by personal feeling, and I hope I am not one of those..." If he could somehow force himself to do that, which of us wouldn't warm to him, and wonder whether Labour may have made a mistake in rejecting him after all?
"I have moved on from the leadership election" is all he has thus far said on the matter, "and so should everyone else." Very droll. Perhaps they will when he has. These are big times, and they are for big people. Until he knuckles down to work, as party chairman with overall responsibility for social policy, or some such free-ranging elder statesman role, David Miliband will not only continue to undermine his brother and diminish his party. He will confirm himself as a peevish pygmy to whom, for all his altruistic declarations, power was never more than an end in itself.
He is fast becoming a disgrace: a disgrace to the party he claims to adore, but which a thwarted sense of entitlement stops him serving now; a disgrace to his constituents in South Shields, who did not return him to Westminster to help David Cameron to a thumping majority; and a disgrace most of all, sir, to himself.
Why he has avoided such a pungent appreciation for so long I'm not sure, though naturally the circumstances of his defeat in September earned him sympathy. To sit beside a snickering Ed Balls and hear his brother speak from the podium about his undying love for him – knowing that the imaginary speech bubble read "Right, you patronising ponce, that's for defacing my Fabian Christmas Annual in 1973" – can't have been fun.
All right, then, this was a monstrous psychological blow, even though he had it coming. Long before this gifted Tory impersonator took on the part of Ted Heath in full sulkage, he gave us his Michael Portillo – flirting with a coup against a weak prime minister for whom he couldn't disguise his contempt; but chickening out from cowardice he will have rationalised to himself as a shrewd preference for the long game over the quick and lethal strike.
Shrewd it was not. In the combat sport of power politics, second chances may come but are very seldom taken. Having scurried back under his rock after openly flashing his scorpion tail at Gordon Brown in the summer of 2008, David's second chance came in the winter of 2009. Once again he blazed over from four yards with the one-eyed keeper prostrate, by failing to resign with James Purnell. With that profligacy, he condemned Labour to a catastrophic defeat.
When the third chance came, he blew it again. All victory required was a less smug and aloof, cuddlier David Miliband doing a little light schmoozing in the tea rooms. A few more MPs and the prize would have been his. This small sacrifice his arrogance prevented him making, and he lost because the electorate narrowly favoured his brother. No hanging chads, no black people effectively disenfranchised, no partisan Supreme Court ruling. Just fewer votes.
If he needed a holiday to get over that, fair enough. The immediate aftermath of any election, even one as chaotic as last year's, is a period of sublime irrelevance for any Opposition, and he had every right to slink back to Primrose Hill and recover in peace.
But that was then. Nine months on, his refusal to serve in this Saddo Cabinet – and even with the recruitment of Madge Allsop, Dame Edna's bridesmaid, could it look more comically glum? – looks less like justified wound-licking than nauseatingly petty self-indulgence.
If last week's leaking of the victory speech he would have given may have been spitefully timed to torment Ed at a moment of weakness, all the text establishes is that politically next to nothing divides them. David may have been keener on owning up to Labour's ostrich approach to the deficit, but in ideological terms this is hardly a Tony Benn vs Denis Healey rematch. These Milibandroids, two Jewish boys divided as so often by a common gene pool, agree about everything other than minor nuance and dry detail. By declining to work for his brother, all David does is remind us that with Brown and Blair the schisms were opened not by policy but by personality.
This echo of what is hardly "ancient history" – I've been right through Thucydides and Pliny the Elder, and not a dickie bird – is the most effective way of perpetuating the rift. The only way Labour can begin to close it is for these two to work together. The longer David sulks, the more terminally entrenched becomes the perception of Labour as a queeny rabble who don't merely deserve a decade in the wilderness, but need it to put such childish things as internecine feuding and unadulterated personal ambition behind them.
It seems that David himself is finally waking up to this, with Andrew Grice reporting in this paper yesterday that he is gingerly pondering a return to the front line. It is in the best interests of everyone other than the Coalition and the Balls-Cooper wedlock that he does so without delay.
Obviously, it wouldn't be easy. They would both be mad, for one thing, to sustain the intelligence-insulting pretence that all has been spiffing between them. They would have to cough to the bitterness that led David to eschew Ed's wedding reception for a literary event scheduled for the following day. They would need to be honest, within reason, about the anguish they've caused Marion, their poor old mum.
It would be agonising for David to swallow his pride. But if he went on the telly and said, "Look, it was hideous for me, and for the family. Everyone knows that. But I've had time to get it over it, and accept that there is no primogeniture rule in politics. I haven't spent my working life banging on about loving this party to sit idly by when I might be of some use in getting it back to power. At such a pivotal moment, facing so many colossal challenges, it would be a very small man who let himself be driven by personal feeling, and I hope I am not one of those..." If he could somehow force himself to do that, which of us wouldn't warm to him, and wonder whether Labour may have made a mistake in rejecting him after all?
"I have moved on from the leadership election" is all he has thus far said on the matter, "and so should everyone else." Very droll. Perhaps they will when he has. These are big times, and they are for big people. Until he knuckles down to work, as party chairman with overall responsibility for social policy, or some such free-ranging elder statesman role, David Miliband will not only continue to undermine his brother and diminish his party. He will confirm himself as a peevish pygmy to whom, for all his altruistic declarations, power was never more than an end in itself.
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