Thursday, February 2, 2012

Red Ed's Class War but not on RMT bonus

Speaking at Prime Minister's Question Time, Labour leader Ed Miliband said:

I think we've now heard it all. Because he says that the class war against the bankers is going to be led by him and his cabinet of millionaires. I don't think it's going to wash.

'Class War' doesn't that have a real retro ring to it?  

So, the taste of blood from the dis-honourable hounding of Stephen Hester and the de-knighting (or is it mistering?) of Fred Goodwin has emboldened Red Ed to show his true Marxist colours.

While this would have pleased his deceased Marxist father, this will surely be a cause for great concern to all but the most extreme left wing of his party.  Many die-hard Labourites might talk of 'class war' and want to re-instate Clause 4 but the realists within, know that the UK electorate and particularly that of England have no stomach or affinity for 'red in tooth and claw Socialism'.

These die-hard  Labourites would include Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union.  This union, which represents workers on the London Underground railway, has rejected an additional bonus award of £500, for drivers, which is on top of an earlier bonus award of £1,200 for working during the Summer Olympics, because those on leave or off work wouldn't get it. 

Yes, that's right!   They get a bonus of £1,200 for doing their job.  Not extra, just their job.  Then the Tube drivers are offered an additional £500 for doing their job.  However, the union rejects this because those that aren't doing their job because they are off work or sick, won't be getting a 'just doing your job' bonus! 

That's the unreal world to which 13 years of Labour maladministration has brought us!

Say what you like about those greedy bankers, they don't get a bonus for just turning up at work, they have to actually meet some targets as well!

I posited earlier that this declaration of 'class war' will cause concern for Labour politicians but dear reader, have no expectation that they will actually stand-up and denounce Red Ed.  This, after all, is the party that still can't apologise for turning a blessed economic inheritance in 1997 into the economic disaster that we saw in 2010 and with which the Coalition government are now grappling and through which we are all suffering.  They will prattle on about the global economic crisis, which I seem to recall that Gordon ' I abolished boom and bust' Brown claimed to have single-handedly defeated, but the roots of Labour's economic mismanagement were fed by their addiction to ever higher State spending.  The UK economy was in trouble and overspending long before the economic house of cards started to collapse.

How do you think that Red Ed's declaration of Class War will sit with brother David?

Writing in the leftist New Statesman magazine David opines:
The weaknesses of the “big society” should not blind us to the policy and political dead end of the “Big State”. The public won’t vote for the prescription that central government is the cure for all ills for the good reason that it isn’t.
 The more charitable observers suggest that this is David helpfully suggesting that Labour should get its head out of a particular orifice and the past, and re-think its obsession with 'Nannyism'. 

Ed though, has other thoughts.  His direction is back to those heady days of Spend, Spend, Spend and Tax, Tax, Tax, to the time when policies could be launched off the cuff at a nice tete a tete lunch with a journalist ally and then consultants engaged to flesh out the details etc. and never mind about the cost!  To those days when The Guardian would make a Sunday supplement thump on the doormat, in the middle of the week, when it contained all of those pages of public sector job ads.

Ed needs to be careful though.  In my view, the electorate have come to see through the policy of spending money that we haven't got.  Not all the way, but they are looking at it and saying - it doesn't add up.  Also, there are only so many bankers on which he can feast, who after that, will satisfy his bloodlust?

Have a nice day and try not to worry, I don't think Ed will last 'til 2015 and the next election!
 

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