A Free Left Blog

Over the last few years of Ed Miliband’s leadership I have become used to being rather impressed with his annual conference speech and then finding myself gradually losing faith as the months have drifted by with little or no follow-up: indeed with little of interest emanating from Labour. His latest speech yesterday – the last at conference before the 2015 General Election – felt like that whole year’s cycle compressed into an hour. Early promise – with a few interesting and engaging ideas – was followed by a whole load of drift interspersed with a kind of paint-by-numbers approach to pleasing the activists, notably by mentioning the NHS every few minutes. Ed Miliband making his 2014 Conference speech As the speech drifted, so I drifted and started thinking about other stuff, like: What’s for dinner? Maybe my toenails need cutting? Is anyone on Twitter being more interesting about the speech than the speech itself? (Answer: ‘Yes’). It wasn’t surprising to find out l...

At first sight, Labour’s proposed National Infrastructure Commission seems like another example of politicians lacking in confidence, giving away their democratic powers to unelected ‘experts’ in unaccountable quangoes; taking the democracy out of politics; depoliticisation as authoritarianism . There is perhaps a little bit of truth in that, at least in presentational terms– through the cult of the ‘independent’, ‘impartial’, ‘expert’, taking an apparently neutral approach to political decision-making. But the handover of power proposed by Sir John Armitt in his Draft Infrastructure Bill for Labour – backed by Ed Miliband – isn’t so much out of the Whitehall jungle as straight into the arms of its big beast: the Treasury. The Commission would be answerable to the Treasury, appointed (mostly) by the Treasury, told what to focus on by the Treasury, and its plans presented by the Treasury in a form decided by the Treasury. Its headline role would be to carry out a big ...

Ed Miliband made quite a scene at Prime Minister’s Questions this week, goading David Cameron for the lack of women in his Shadow Cabinet and among Conservatives in the House of Commons Cutting abruptly from a few cursory questions about the dreadful flooding in south western England, Miliband gleefully laid into Cameron for his all-male Government front bench, which was lacking Theresa May and other female Cabinet members – in contrast to his own front bench, which had been filled up with women. He said: “I do have to say a picture tells a thousand words... look at the all male front bench laid before us. “You said you want to represent the whole country. I guess they didn't let women into the Bullingdon Club either, so there we go.... “Do you think it is your fault the Conservative Party has a problem with women?” As ‘Yah-Boo’ Westminster politics go, it was pretty effective. But it was also important for what it said about the Labour Party’s evolving po...

This article was republished on the same day on the blog Left Foot Forward . Ed Miliband’s Labour Conference speech was full of interesting and important ideas, so let’s get stuck in. As Daily Mirror hack Kevin Maguire said on Twitter during the speech, “Red Ed is back.” It’s a rather interesting Red Ed though –not the 1970s socialist stereotype that right-wingers have been lambasting. Certainly state intervention is back on the table in serious form. The energy companies will be subject to much greater control if Labour gets into government, land speculation will be curtailed in favour of development, and state schools will permanently extend opening hours to make life easier for working parents. Each of these policies are potentially problematic, and I have my fingers crossed they have been thought through properly and Labour has got its defences and counter-attacks planned well for the assault that began immediately even while Ed was talking. The headline-gra...