Miliband Macho 138


Given that the absolute maximum share of the UK vote Labour might conceivably get is 36%, it is extraordinarily arrogant for Miliband to insist on the right to impose his full manifesto. Tactically, of course, he is trying to panic Scottish voters into supporting Labour lest they lose the chance to have him as PM. I can see no reason why this would suddenly become more successful than it has been so far.

Unionists have plainly twigged that next time we have a referendum, they will lose, even if it was next week. The near hysterical focus of unionists on not allowing another referendum, almost to the exclusion of all other argument, is very heartening. Independence is not only inevitable, it will be with us even sooner than the unionists fear.


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138 thoughts on “Miliband Macho

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  • John Goss

    “Given that the absolute maximum share of the UK vote Labour might conceivably get is 38%, it is extraordinarily arrogant for Miliband to insist on the right to impose his full manifesto. Tactically, of course, he is trying to panic Scottish voters into supporting Labour lest they lose the chance to have him as PM.”

    I can’t understand that as a tactic. If it is it is not a very good one. The Labour manifesto is same old, same old establishment pap. They get him as prime minister anyway in a coalition with SNP so the only advantage, for long-suffering Labour voters, especially those who have supported the abolition of Trident, is to vote SNP.

    South of the border, I’m voting Green, even though my Labour MP, has some good qualities, and a few faults too. Call it a wasted vote. But then the Greens have one policy which is more important than the rest – the environment.

  • gingerchimpsky

    Independence?

    It’s not going to be easy Craig. The lengths they are currently going to influence public opinion seems to indicate that the Better Together campaign is still running strong and the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Rupert Murdoch and other forces are doing all they can to sabotage the SNP and the Scots. I have no doubt they have been working together on this – everything points to a coordinated, timed assaults by supposedly opposing forces but which mysteriously compliment each other perfectly.

    When the Scottish Sun came out in support of the SNP I smelled a rat immediately. It think it was done to create a toxic association between the Tories and the SNP in people’s minds – the Tories are basically being waved like a shitty stick at SNP voters. Ed Miliband dumbly enforced Murdoch’s agenda further tonight.

    The problem is that a lot of people are genuinely worried about the Tories getting back in, we’re already dead broke and then comes Danny Alexander’s supposed “leak” about cutting child benefit, etc. already highly worried people now have even more to worry about.

    If the SNP win every seat in Scotland I have a hunch there will possibly be a grand coalition and they might drop the pretense of opposition. I Could be wrong.

    I think the whole thing is getting disgusting, the sheer amount of dishonesty and trickery involved sickens me, the fundamental welfare of our society is on the line.

    Oh, and paedophiles in the house of Lords who don’t even have to give up their day job.

    I pray for independence.

  • fwl

    Possibilities:

    Most likely: continuation of Tory Lib coalition
    2nd: a second election this year (with the electorate punishing the party portrayed as having causing the 2nd election)
    3rd: Clegg replaced and a Lab Lib coalition
    4th: Lab SNP deal

    or ……

  • Parky

    This has been one of the most long winded and drawn out campaigns ever, that effectively started in January and the public must be sick to the back teeth of it all. It would not surprise me if many electors neglect to vote wishing a curse on all their houses.

    No matter which turgid combinations eventually claim power, there is no promising future in store for the UK. At least the torture will soon be over.

  • John Goss

    Am I my brother’s keeper?

    David Miliband’s charity commission, for which he gets paid an estimated £300,000 per annum, and which is based in New York, if memory serves, sent aid workers to Eastern Ukraine who have just been expelled by the people’s republic. Bad timing for Ed if it makes our news.

    I first read this this morning. Here is a Russian link which does not mention Miliband. I’ll look for the one I read earlier.

    http://lifenews.ru/news/153230

  • John Goss

    And for the Miliband spy case it is the good old Daily Mail. Wonder which party that is putting out for?

    Has David deliberately done this out of brotherly spite right on the verge of an election? Pass me a bowl of pottage Isaac, or is it Esau.

  • technicolour

    Anything to argue about in this, by Billy Bragg (ad hominems not accepted)?

    “I can’t believe that Ed Miliband has said he’d rather let David Cameron be PM than do a deal with the SNP. What happened to our politicians accepting the will of the people? Both Labour and the SNP have refused to support a Tory government and now Miliband says that, rather than lead the anti-Tory bloc into government, should it get more seats that the coalition, he’d turn his back on both Labour and SNP voters and let the Tories in. Very disappointing.”

    I could argue with “very disappointing” myself, even if it is an example of litotes.

  • Blegburnduddoo

    I think we should wait until the votes are counted but it is fun to speculate.

    Suppose the Tories are the largest party but don’t have a majority even with the LibDems. And suppose that Labour would have a majority with SNP support. Would Milliband support a Tory government and would he be able to carry Labour MPs with him in this? Would that split the Labour Party for the forseeable future?

  • BrianFujisan

    Unionists have plainly twigged that next time we have a referendum, they will lose

    Atz for certain.

    Fred… Come on. we had the Big lies, VOW ect, Do they all Lie..lets see… i was thinking earlier about Craig being an Msp..Dunno having met the guy over a living Festival… Too Mild Springs to mind, But also Yin Yang…

    Peace all.

  • Queen Fannycrabs

    Interesting take on the strategy of the state-approved parties. Their irrational posture simply reflects a delusional struggle against the plain fact that Britain is a powerless piss-ant state.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/30/illusions-in-the-british-election-campaign/

    If the British ruling class accepted their impotence, they might not be so desperate to hold onto more developed cultures like the Scottish nation. They could stop fellating American juntas who hold them in contempt, and remedy their ignorance about the international consensus for rights and rule of law.

    If they resist this imperative, a principled Scotland will very soon overshadow its old colonial power.

  • bevin

    The most likely outcome is clearly a New Labour-Tory coalition. That is what Miliband is telling you. It will give the government about 520 seats, a massive majority.

  • Resident Dissident

    Of course the SNP would never seek to govern Scotland as a minority government with a 31% share of the total vote would they?

  • Leslie

    Deluded tosh. The exquisite pain for the SNP is to be everywhere in power and to never achieve their goal. Their role is to break the dead hand of the old political dispensation in the UK and never to achieve independence. What is begun in Scotland will reverberate throughout the UK. Labour state centralism will fall. All the labour rotten borough councils will go. This is about the revitalisation of the UK – not its dismemberment. As soon as they come back with their ludicrous request to be ‘independent’ whilst sitting in the Bank of England enthusiasm will begin to wane. In the meantime, the bedazzlement and beguilement of the Westminster ‘turn’ will begin to trap the SNP into acting ‘in the best interests of the UK’ – Scottish pensioners will love it!

  • deepgreenpuddock

    interesting comment Leslie, which has that uncomfortable ring of truth about it. I think that we are searching for a new
    general arrangement of the constitutional and electoral system in this country but no-one has found it- and the only direction is the kind of sullen inadequate appeal to ancient social order, hair shirt austerity for the politically unfavoured, fiscal favours for those sections that carry some influence, and scapegoating of the poor .
    Clearly there are real pressures. The Labour party has not quite failed as an institution-indeed it has become fully institutionalised and is now fully self serving as a plank of the establishment and its radicalism is now entirely confined to a few thin strains of gender and sexual politics which has the occasional effect of making them seem different .In reality however the Labour party has been a plank of the establishment since the fifties. It has failed utterly to articulate and develop a way of taking the people of this country forward in any way, and offer only a slightly watered down version of what the Tories envisage, which is a much shrunken state and all services that exist defined entirely by narrow utility and by the raw and fallacious ideas of Social Darwinism, as defined by quite serious intellectual ideologue inadequates and (Tory luminaries) quasi-nazis drones, like IDS and Grant Schapps, to name just two.
    The idea is that such simplistics will answer the many philosophical conflicts and tensions that have arisen as we have developed greater capacity for communication and technical instrumentality and potential is an evasion of political purpose and responsibility. Complexity cannot be answered by simpletonians like Bojo and Cameron. (my neologism-a nice combination of etonian and simple, I think).

    The SNP are certainly something. The change in attitude that has led to the collapse of Labour is also certainly something. People like Milliband can essentially try to make it go away by saying they will not deal but I think they are doomed to such disgraces as ‘grand coalitions’ or cooperation with the Tories on a practical government level to suppress the clamour from outside Westminster but the effect is ultimately likely to be catastrophic for them.

  • Mary

    I missed the ‘debate’. Was it a ‘debate’ and were the questions as hostile as is being reported.

  • Abe Rene

    @Craig “Independence is not only inevitable, it will be with us even sooner than the unionists fear.”

    I believe you said such things during the Scottish referendum, with bells on – your company were going to dismantle Trident in the River Clyde and confiscate it, remember? But Scotland voted against independence, and Trident stays in the Clyde, no doubt to the discomfort of Russia, whose spy planes have been buzzing our borders. 🙂

  • craig Post author

    Leslie,

    I think the SNP will change and its enthusiasm for sterling, the Queen and NATO – an enthusiasm most members never shared – will vanish.

  • Abe Rene

    @Bevin “The most likely outcome is clearly a New Labour-Tory coalition” There hasn’t been much talk about this, but I think you could be right, if neither Tories nor Labour can form a majority without the SNP.

  • Mary

    Sandi Toksvig campaigns for equality with new political party
    30 April 2015

    Sandi Toksvig said the party would put up candidates at the 2020 general election

    Comedian Sandi Toksvig has revealed that she quit BBC Radio 4’s News Quiz to set up a new political party named the Women’s Equality Party.

    Toksvig announced earlier this week that she was leaving the topical comedy show after nine years.

    “I have made jokes over and over again about politics and, do you know, this election I’ve had enough,” she said.

    “And I have decided that instead of making jokes about it, I need to participate.”

    Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, she continued: “So I am involved in the founding of a new political party. “It’s called the Women’s Equality Party. It is a fantastic group of women – and indeed men – who have decided that enough is enough and we need to make some changes.”

    They are not fielding candidates in the 2015 general election but will do so in five years time, she said.

    [..]
    Author and former Time Magazine editor-at-large Catherine Mayer is among the party’s other founders.

    According to a Facebook post about a recent meeting, their aims and objectives are: Equal representation in politics and the boardroom; equal pay; equal parenting rights; equality of and through education; equal treatment by and in the media; and an end to violence against women.

    Asked why she had not joined an established political party, Toksvig replied: “Most of the mainstream parties seem to treat women’s issues as if we were a minority group rather than, in fact, what we are, which is the majority of the country.’

    /..
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32531750

  • Mary

    The trivial nature of this election is summed up by the fact that there were over 4,000 tweets per second about Miliband tripping as he left the stage. The stage seemed to resemble the letter ‘Q’ with the tail of the letter leaving the gap in which to trip.

    The Mail even wrote it up and provided a video.

    Ed stumbles through TV debate: Miliband TRIPS as he leaves stage after Question Time grilling
    Labour leader took part in one of three separate Question Time sessions
    Lost his footing while stepping off stage in Leeds as he turned to wave
    Gary Lineker says 45-year-old Mr Miliband ‘did well to stay on his feet’

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3063264/Ed-stumbles-TV-debate-Miliband-TRIPS-leaves-stage-Question-Time-grilling.html

    Pathetic stuff.

  • Phil

    Craig
    “I think the SNP will change and its enthusiasm for sterling, the Queen and NATO – an enthusiasm most members never shared – will vanish.”

    So whereas you used to be disappointed when a politician did not do as they say you now are driven to hope they will not do what they say. Too weird.

  • Phil

    Craig
    “its enthusiasm for sterling, the Queen and NATO”

    Murdoch doesn’t even make your list. That’s how bad things are.

    Isn’t the water feeling a little hot yet?

  • Anon1

    “The most likely outcome is clearly a New Labour-Tory coalition. That is what Miliband is telling you. It will give the government about 520 seats, a massive majority.”

    You can get 33/1 on that. Bet naaaaaaaa.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Murdoch’s a fucking detail. Actually, he tends to back winners, and that is probably the main reason he supports anyone. So that’s the SNP in Scotland – this time.

    Now, as to all Phil’s posts the parties being the same…

    remind me who’s going to get into power without using the current system as cynically and opportunistically as possible? Do they have any candidates? And if so, why are they using the rotten system they despise to get into power? All the same, these politicians…think I’ll just snipe at some bloggers.

  • Abe Rene

    @Craig “I think the SNP will change and its enthusiasm for sterling, the Queen and NATO – an enthusiasm most members never shared – will vanish.”
    That’s funny, judging from some of Sturgeon’s recent pronouncements, suggesting that the SNP’s aim is not independence but for Scotland to have more clout within the UK, I would have thought that the SNP, if it gained a large chunk of power, would change into Scotland’s New Labour and ACQUIRE an enthusiasm for sterling, the Queen and NATO. 🙂

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