Actually, the title of my blog post is supposed to be a pale irony about trumpeting something which is really completely insignificant. For example, Jon Cruddas is now backing Gordon Brown – stop press, he is now backing David Miliband. So courageously, in his latest e-mail to Labour Party members, Jon Cruddas writes
“There is general agreement amongst everyone that Labour has to reconnect with its voters, but what does this mean and how will we achieve it?”
And whose fault is that then? Earlier this year, Jon Cruddas was offering constructive criticism to Gordon Brown in a pleasant way worthy of a badly treated stomach ulcer. So I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the news that Jon Cruddas declared he would not run against the Miliband brothers for the party leadership. Cruddas is seen as seen as influential as a Dagenham MP, a person who has strong union backing, and who finished third in Labour’s 2007 deputy leadership contest previously on Labour’s own “Opportunity Knocks”. People were hoping that this announcement would give David Miliband a clear run at the leadership.
I strongly believe, in fact, that this is profoundly wrong. Jon Cruddas recently described David Miliband’s Keir Hardie Memorial Lecture as “the most important speech by a Labour politician for many years”. The irony is that David Miliband is sure to reward him with a cabinet seat, even though many people did not vote for him in a popular way. Sound familiar?
Actually, the ‘left wing candidate’ with whom I am most familiar, Diane Abbott, is most unlikely to get a look in once Miliband transplants Cruddas into the cabinet. I think that this is grossly unfair to Diane Abbott supporters, but obviously David Miliband cannot make a statement about this in advance of such an event happening.
And of what this lecture? David Miliband said recently of Gordon Brown, “I supported and voted for him. I agreed that we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity-drenched culture. I agreed with him when he said that we needed greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality. I agreed with him on the importance of party reform and a meaningful internationalism … I agreed that we needed a civic morality to champion civility when confronting a widespread indifference to others. But it didn’t happen. It was not just more of the same. Far from correcting them, failings – tactics, spin, high-handedness – intensified; and we lost many of our strengths – optimism born of clear strategy, bold plans for change and reform, a compelling articulation of aspiration and hope. We did not succeed in renewing ourselves in office; and the roots of that failure were deep, not recent, about procedure and openness, or lack of it, as much as policy.”
No. With friends like that, who needs enemies? I am certainly not voting for the Miliband-Cruddas dream ticket for the reasons explained. Incidentally, I shall be voting for any one but the Milibands instead.
