Daily View: Ed Miliband as Labour leader
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Ed Miliband's victory as the leader of the Labour party gets commentators talking about how he will select his shadow cabinet, what his defining policies will be and whether he is in with a chance of winning the next election.
a mischievous way to get Ed Miliband鈥檚 rivals angry:
鈥淥ne of your earliest and trickiest decisions will be how to deploy your defeated rivals. Ed Balls used the leadership campaign to showcase how effective he can be as a pugilist against the government. He is desperate to be shadow chancellor, the second most important role on the opposition frontbench after your own, and he will be unforgiving if you don't requite his ambition. You may be tempted to divide and rule by giving the job to his wife, Yvette Cooper, who is a good bet to come top of the shadow cabinet elections. That will probably make him even angrier. But you won't forgive yourself if you set things up for a second generation of the Blair-Brown uncivil wars.鈥
there will be one flaw for Ed Miliband to consider if he decides to oppose the coalition government鈥檚 planned cuts:
鈥淢r Cameron鈥檚 belief is that the next election won鈥檛 be about the deficit. He hopes that the economic cycle will be perfectly aligned for a re-election effort in 2015. The economy should be growing, and he鈥檒l be able to tell the nation that his medicine restored Labour鈥檚 sick economy to health. If Ed Miliband has been opposing every austerity measure he will not be able to claim to have played any part in the recovery of Britain鈥檚 public finances.鈥
Rather than just cuts, that policy specifically on benefits will mark a difference between Labour and the coalition:
"Miliband's defence of a universal welfare state could yet prove a far more important dividing line with the coalition. While he believes that everyone, including the middle classes, should contribute and benefit, Cameron and Clegg increasingly favour a residual welfare state, primarily intended as a safety net for the poor. Miliband's position is part politics - the need to maintain public support for state provision - and part principle - the state has an obligation to support families, the elderly and the young, regardless of their income. Prepare for this to be one of the defining debates of the coming months."
that he went to the same primary school as Ed and David Miliband during the three-day weeks of the 1970s:
鈥淚 note that Ed Miliband has emerged blatantly from the bowels of the trade unions, and that it was thanks to union chiefs that he edged a millimetre ahead of the elder Miliband. I note that he and other senior Labour figures are now pledging to support strike action - no matter how unreasonable, no matter how much damage it may do to the interests of the general public or the British economy - in the hope of scoring political points against the Coalition Government.
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鈥淚 note, in other words, that under Ed Miliband the trade unions seem set to dominate the Labour Party in exactly the way that Blair and Brown managed successfully to avoid.
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鈥淭here are many lessons from an inner London primary school in the 1970s - and it would be tragic if Ed were to take the wrong one.鈥
that even though Ed Miliband is left-wing he should think about privatising healthcare:
鈥淚f Mr Miliband is serious about helping the poor, he should take a leaf out of other successful left-wing politicians across the world and focus on public service reform that offers choice and flexibility to the poor by taking the state out of people鈥檚 lives. There isn鈥檛 really such a thing as right-wing and left-wing policies, just good and bad policies - Ed Miliband now has the chance to make a break with the past and propose reforms that would really help the poor.鈥
that he found Ed Miliband鈥檚 speech after the results were announced formulaic:
鈥淚n silence he is superb. When he speaks we've heard it all before. And not even from him. 鈥業 am the change.鈥 That's what Gordon Brown claimed at the start of the most disastrous Labour leadership since Michael Foot's. Ed also said he wasn't going to represent the left but the middle ground. That's what Michael Howard said before falling back on to a 'core vote' policy.
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鈥淎nd the pause itself, to think of it again, that long, inaugural silence - that was pinched from Robert Redford in The Candidate.鈥
Another sketch writer, the Mr Miliband鈥檚 mannerisms and then gives him the thumbs up:
鈥淸D]espite the squint and those flappy-pancake lips and the voice which seems to have fluff on its stylus, Her Majesty鈥檚 new Leader of the Opposition has some zing. He may initially interest millions who don鈥檛 much follow politics. The man who biffed his bro鈥! He could do with biffing the unions now.鈥
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