Can Labour afford to back the Ed Milibandwagon?

A special welcome to those of you who've come via the first ever link here from the Left Foot Forward blog. I hope you won't be too disappointed to discover that the words 'dangerous' and 'trot' are nowhere to be found in what follows. And, if this is your first visit, I very much hope that you'll browse around some of the other posts, to which a complete list of links can be found under 'COMPLETE BLOGPOST INDEX' on the left. If you do, you'll see that the blog seeks to be 'non-aligned' and you don't have to go far to find positive and negative comments about members of all the main political parties. The main focus is on analysing and commenting on speech-making, presentation and communication, often using short video clips to illustrate the points being made.

Listening to Ed Miliband denouncing New Labour in an interview on today's World at One (BBC Radio 4) reminded of something I wrote six years ago, when the said Miliband was one of the Brownites who was busily briefing against Tony Blair.

Under the title Can Labour Afford to Back Brown? the first few paragraphs went as follows:

1979 Revisited?
"On the day after the 1979 general election, I remember being flabbergasted by a letter to 'The Guardian' that seemed completely out of touch with reality. Signed by Tony Benn and a group of like-minded colleagues, it attributed Labour’s defeat entirely to the fact that it had failed to pursue policies that were left-wing enough. The authors conveniently ignored the fact that the Callaghan government had only managed to stay in power because of a pact with the Liberals. And they were undaunted by the complete lack of evidence of any widespread support for left-wing policies from an electorate that had just voted Margaret Thatcher into office.

"With the price of ignoring the preferences of the electorate as high as eighteen years in opposition, the party ought surely to have learnt its lesson. But calls from Labour malcontents to replace Blair with Brown are beginning to sound like the first drum beats of a renewed retreat from political reality. It’s not just that the anti-Blair agitators have apparently forgotten that bickering and division are a sure-fire recipe for damaging a party’s fortunes. They also seem to be assuming that the electorate would be happier, or at least just as happy, with Brown at the helm as they are with Blair.

"What harks back so resonantly to 1979 is the fact that the change being pressed for by the siren voices within the party once again seem to have more to do with internal party feuds than any rational assessment of Labour’s wider electoral appeal" ... (continued HERE).

1979 Revisited again?
Now that Ed Miliband has won the backing of the big unions, whose support Ed Balls had been hoping for, the question is: can Labour afford to back Ed Miliband on his journey back to 1979 and the wonderful world of old Labour?

And, in case you think I'm being a bit alarmist, try this sample from one of the video clips posted yesterday:

Although I know nothing at all about his mother's values, I do know that his father, the late Ralph Miliband, was a militant Marxist and a highly influential member of a generation of sociological theorists who (in my opinion) contributed towards undermining the credibility of a once respectable discipline and, more indirectly, towards the Labour Party's disastrous lurch to the left in the early 1980s.

I also know that, if I were Labour Party member hoping for better things to come, I wouldn't be putting my money on a leader so willing to associate himself with the Marxist values of his father.

Nor would I take too much heart from the following clips from a video posted on the candidate's own website.

Down with New Labour and down with markets!

Time to turn the page (backwards?)

The discontinuity candidate?

Too young to remember?
The problem is that Ed Miliband is too young to remember what happened to the Labour Party during the 18 years of decline and recovery between 1979 and 1997. He was only 9 when Margaret Thatcher came to power and 13 when Foot led Labour to the disastrous defeat of 1983.

So let me remind him and his supporters of a few rather important facts:

In 1980, Labour turned its back on the moderate Denis Healey and elected left-winger Michael Foot as party leader.
In 1981, left-winger Tony Benn came within 0.8% of ousting Denis Healey as deputy leader.
In 1981, four senior former Labour cabinet ministers broke away from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party.
Labour's 1983 election manifesto, described by Gerald Kaufman as 'the longest suicide note in history', included withdrawal from the Common Market and unilateral nuclear disarmament.
At the 1983 general election, Labour's popular vote was only 2% ahead of the combined vote for the SDP and the Liberal Party.
Had the SDP not attracted so many 'moderate' Labour voters in 1983 and 1987, subsequent Labour leaders would not have been forced to move their party towards the centre.
In 1995, Labour removed Clause IV from its party constitution (the commitment to 'the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange') - the official birth of New Labour.
Blair and Brown worked very hard in opposition to win the confidence of business, the City and middle class voters before Labour's general election victory in 1997.

Old Labour today = defeat tomorrow

In short, however much the likes of Ed Miliband may want to consign New Labour to the past, they should remember that their party would never have won one, let alone three consecutive elections without the broader centrist approach and appeal established by New Labour.

And, as I suggested when I warned that Brown would be an electoral disaster, the party is unlikely ever to win again without a leader who can communicate effectively with a much broader swathe of voters than those represented by the trades unions and the traditional Labour 'core vote' - to whom Miliband the younger is appealing for his mandate to put the clock back.

But to some of us of a certain age, it sounds like a retreat from political reality' that's at least as flabbergasting as the one led by Tony Benn and his left-wing chums back in 1979.

Another chance to compare the Labour leadership candidates' communication skills

Last week, I posted Laura Kuenssberg's BBC interviews with each of the Labour Leadership candidates HERE.

The Party has also posted a series of videos on YouTybe, with the candidates standing in front of the same backdrop answering the same questions.

So here's another chance to compare their communication skills - and/or to tease out their coded messages about where they really stand on the past, present and future of the Labour Party. I confess to having spotted one or two interesting observations about Ed Miliband - so expect another post on that particular subject in the next few days.

Meanwhile, and in the interests of preserving neutrality, they are presented here in descending order of height (for reasons explained HERE), with the Miliband brothers (top equal at 5' 11") in alphabetical order:

Listen with Mother Mandy: monarch-maker, Maggie-mimic or megalomaniac?

In case you're being distracted by the reviews of Lord Mandelson's memoirs that are still spewing out into the press and the blogosphere, spare a moment to watch tw0 extraordinary self-advertisements from the man himself.

Just in case you're näive enough to have thought that there might have been one or two other Labour MPs (not to mention back-room advisors like Philip Gould) who might have played a part in devising the 'New Labour' project, Mandelspin informs us that Blair and Brown "wouldn't have been in power without a third man" (i.e. him - 10 seconds in).

Taking a tip from Margaret Thatcher?

Mandelspin's willingness to revel in his 'Prince of Darkness' image must make him the first politician to adopt and exploit a nickname since Margaret Thatcher borrowed 'the iron lady' from the Russians to refer to herself.

He mentions it again in this next advert - for which I can only assume that he was coached by Rory Bremner:

Former MP puts Horse Manure House on the market for £1.5 million

In various posts since the parliamentary expenses row broke, I've reported on the fortune(s) of David Heathcote-Amory, former MP for the constituency in which I live and vote:

Having lost the seat he'd held for 27 years, he's put his modest little second home (above) on the market, details of which are available HERE.

As you'd expect from a property on which so much taxpayers' money had been lavished (see below), the house and garden are, as the full brochure explains, in immaculate condition.

Thursday, July 08, 2010, 11:00

3 comments

Will former MP's home get your vote?

The "horse manure" house and garden that contributed to the downfall of mid-Somerset's longest-serving MP are up for sale.

David Heathcoat-Amory had been the Wells constituency MP from 1983 until this year's General Election.

He was one of the MPs dragged into last year's parliamentary expenses scandal when the Daily Telegraphrevealed the individual receipts and invoices of MPs.

His expenses bills for his Pilton home made it on to the front page – especially the revelation he had charged the taxpayer for 550 sacks of horse manure – part of the £5,877 bill he submitted to parliament for gardening, £3,173 for food and £2,371 for cleaning the Pilton home in the previous year.

The House of Commons expense review, headed by Sir Thomas Legg, ordered Mr Heathcoat-Amory to pay back £29,691.93 of tax-payers' money wrongly given.

Critics claim that it was the publicity over the expenses that cost Mr Heathcoat-Amory his seat earlier this year.

Mr Heathcoat-Amory has decided not to stand again for parliament at Wells and with the loss of his £64,766 parliamentary salary, the Pilton home that was the subject of such controversy is suddenly surplus to requirements.

Mr Heathcoat-Amory, and his family, use their London home as their main residence and he no longer has reason to travel to and stay regularly in mid-Somerset.

So Beales House, Pilton, has gone on the market with Wells estate agents Carter Jonas, with a price tag of £1.5 million.

Mr Heathcoat-Amory said: "Yes, I am selling the house, it has always been my second home."

The particulars for Beales House reveal many of the features for which the upkeep, up until the expenses row, taxpayers had helped to fund: £10,000 was claimed over four years for gardening alone.

Special mention is given by the agents to the "well-established gardens and grounds with an extensive range of plants", a small waterfall and a croquet lawn.

Many of the invoices submitted for tax-payers to pay for over the last four years were for mowing and watering and Mr Heathcoat-Amory once submitted a bill of more than £50 for a spring weed-and-feed treatment, moss killer and herbicide to his lawn.

Similarly the house, according to the agents, has been "carefully maintained and extended by the owners", with the "most recent addition" of a garden room.

Prospective buyers can be reassured that Mr Heathcoat-Amory's expenses claims would appear to back that up: one bill was submitted for £363.43 of damage caused by squirrels to the electrics in his loft, and by mice in the kitchen roof.

The house has three reception rooms and five bedrooms and anyone thinking of purchasing the property will have to consider the cost of heating such a large property: a £986.17 bill for heating oil was submitted to parliament in January 2008. An earlier claim totalled £858.

Much is made of the kitchen, which includes a built-in larder/wine store, which perhaps helped to house much of the £3,173-worth of food purchased by Mr Heathcoat-Amory and charged to tax-payers in one year.

There is also a range of outbuildings, including an artist's studio house in the old groom's quarters.

Asked by a reporter if he had any thoughts on leaving Pilton, Mr Heathcoat-Amory said: "I don't really have any. It is just one of those things."

Compare BBC interviews with Labour Leadership candidates in ascending order of height

A few days ago, I congratulated the BBC website for making it possible for some of their video clips to be embedded in other websites and blogs (HERE).

So today, I'm taking advantage of the facility by giving readers the chance to compare the communication skills of candidates for the Labour leadership in one place. To ensure 'neutrality', they're presented in order of ascending height - for reasons explained in the previous post.

5th tallest:Diane Abbott

4th tallest: Andy Burnham

3rd tallest: Ed Balls

1st= tallest: David Miliband

1st= tallest: Ed Miliband

Hair, height & the Labour leadership contest

A special welcome to those of you who've come here via Guido Fawkes. If this is your first visit, I very much hope you'll find it interesting and/or entertaining enough to become a regular. To see if it's worth it, delay a while to inspect some of the other posts - all of which are listed under COMPLETE BLOGPOST INDEX on the left.

Reflecting on the Labour leadership contest, I was reminded of something I posted during the US presidential election about the importance of a good head of hair for contemporary politicians - on which basis, there looks like being a dead heat between the male candidates in the competition (above).

But what about height? Might that be a critical factor in the outcome?

If you weren't following the blog back in October 2008, you won't have a clue what I'm talking about - so here's what I wrote then:

HAIR TODAY, WIN TOMORROW: BALDNESS AND CHARISMA?

(First posted on 8th October, 2008)

Height (on which see also Presidential Heights)
My past attempts to analyse charisma have concentrated on the speech-making and communication skills of politicians. But there are clearly other more subtle and elusive factors that are more difficult to pin down. This was highlighted by a study of US politicians, from presidents down to the lowest levels of local government, that identified the two most powerful predictors of electoral success in American politics as being the candidate’s height (the taller the better) and record of athletic achievement (the sportier the better).

Hair
But there’s some evidence that another, even more trivial, physical attribute has become a key component of charisma since the age of mass television began – namely that successful male politicians need a good head of hair. When radio was still the main form of broadcast media, how much or how little hair you had was not as visible to the public. And, even if you were out and about, it was a time when men routinely wore hats in public, which kept baldness conveniently concealed from any passing press or film cameras.

It was a consultant dermatologist who first got me thinking seriously about baldness. He claimed to have transformed some of his patients’ careers by the simple device of prescribing a wig. Bald men, who had been repeatedly rejected at for jobs as diverse as head chef and leader of an orchestra, enjoyed immediate success as soon as they appeared at an interview with a good head of hair.

Shortly after being told about this, I appeared on a television programme about the problems former Labour leader Neil Kinnock was then having with his public image. I had no qualms about discussing how his theatrical style of oratory tended to come over as too manic when transmitted to the small screens in people’s living rooms. But I also confessed to the producer that there was another possible cause of his difficulties that was far too delicate to mention on air, namely that he was bald.

Bald Tory leaders
Since then, we saw the leadership ambitions of Conservative party leaders William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith come to grief in double quick time. And, even if you never joined in the chorus yourself, it’s a sure fire bet that you heard others making snide remarks about their lack of hair.

In fact, if you want to find the last British prime ministers who were bald, you have to go back more than fifty years to Attlee and Churchill, both of whom were elected to office before the age of mass television. After them, the only ones with even slightly thinning hair were Sir Alec Douglas Home and James Callaghan -- but both of them only became P.M. when their predecessors resigned in mid-term, and both of them went on to lose the first general elections they fought as party leaders.

Bald 'successors'
It’s much the same story on the other side of the Atlantic, where the last really bald president was Eisenhower. After that, the long succession of presidents with plenty of hair was only interrupted by Lyndon Johnston and Gerald Ford. And, like Home and Callaghan, they were far from being completely bald, they too came to power without winning an election for the job and neither of them survived much longer than Home and Callaghan: Johnston declined to run for a second term, and Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

Two intriguing patterns emerge from this. The first is that, apart from Churchill, Attlee and Eisenhower, the only bald or balding leaders who got to the top in Britain or America since then did so because of the death or resignation of their predecessor, rather than by the popular vote of their parties or the electorate at large. The second is that those who did fight a general election were promptly defeated.

Obama v. McCain
If voters really do prefer candidates with a good head of hair, the main political parties in the UK have made all made safe choices for the next election. But in the USA, the Republicans have arguably taken quite a risk by pitting John McCain’s receding hairline against Barack Obama’s full head of hair. When it comes to sport, there may not be much to chose between them: McCain apparently excelled at wrestling and boxing and Obama still plays basketball. But the other big risk the Republicans have taken is to have selected a candidate who is a good six inches shorter than his rival.

The tallest Labour leadership candidate?

If hair doesn't single out any of the male candidates as frontrunner for the Labour leadership, height puts Balls and Burnham in 3rd and 4th place respectively, leaving the Miliband brothers in equal first place at 5 ft. 11 ins.

So, on the basis of this analysis, all may depend on which Miliband has the more impressive record of athletic achievement - on which further research is clearly needed.

Good news from the BBC's revamped website: Mandelson embedded!

I've just noticed that there's a very welcome innovation on the revamped BBC website that brings it into line with YouTube and other sites from which you can embed video clips in blog posts.

This is going to make life much easier for those of us who like to be able to post examples illustrating whatever it is we're blogging about.

To celebrate, what better way than to embed the first clip on which I noticed that this is now possible, namely an interview in which Lord Mandelson explains (?) why his loyalty to the Labour Party is unaffected by washing so much dirty linen in public via his memoirs and their current serialisation in The Times:

So it was the cash!

Followers of Twitter may have noticed that I put out some tweets the other day asking what had motivated Mandelson to wash so much dirty linen in public at such a difficult time for a party that's just lost an election and is still engaged in electing a new leader:

To put the record straight?
To assert his own importance in the history of New Labour?
Or to collect as much cash as possible while the going's good?

All the replies I received suggested people thought it was the third of thes - and two moments of disarming honesty in the above confirm that a desire to cash in was indeed at the heart of his motivation:

1. "If I'd done that (i.e. written a 'normal ordinary political memoir') not only would people probably not have bought it or read it, but you'd be here asking why weren't you more honest..." (1.10 minutes in)

2. ".. how topical should you be? Should you wait for two years or more by which time everyone's lost interest in what you have to say ... so in my view better to get it out while it's fresh..." (2.14 minutes in).

In another interview in The Guardian, Mandelson is just as open about the importance of his 'warts and all' approach for finding a publisher and selling a few books:

But has he not betrayed confidences for personal gain ? "It's a memoir. I did not want a nondescript work that glossed over everything. I cannot tell a story about myself without telling a story about Tony and Gordon. We were so intertwined. You either don't tell that story at all or you tell it truthfully, warts and all; you cannot be half-pregnant in a situation like this.

"The days of anodyne memoirs where everything is hushed up and swept under the carpet for 30 years are long gone. You would not find a publisher and you would not find anyone to buy it, and if anyone was unlucky enough to buy it they would be asleep."

Slight exaggeration?

".. I've been a member of the party all my life .." (1.30 minutes in).

Lord Mandelson was born on 21 October 1953 - but I'll gladly leave it to other anoraks to check out whether the Labour Party has any record of his parents signing him up as a member on that particular date.