Milburn's return highlights the "big beast" conundrum

bernerlap

Milburn a 'big beast'? He has always been an intellectual and political light weight who owed his cabinet post to his origins in Labour's North east nomenklatura and slavish devotion to Tony Blair.

Ivy Eileen

... or is this positioning by Milburn in anticipation of a leadership contest after the General Election ?

Also, where are all those young thrusting acolytes of the Brown credo (other than the Ballses)ready and waiting for promotion ? ...er, yes, conspicuous by their absence, so our Great Leader has to fall back on his predecessor's young acolytes.

Steve

Remember this is Milburn's second comeback. He was brought back to coordinate Labour's 2005 election campaign which he royally screwed up by okaying disgusting anti-semitic posters slurring the background of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin. He also spun the lie of Tory cuts versus Labour investment which were easily picked apart by the media, although in today's economy the Tories probably regret the charge didn't stick. Milburn did such a lousy job he announced on election night he would not be serving in Blair's cabinet. I doubt this return will be much more successful.

Verity

Meanwhile, despite the discontent with his continued mimicking of NuLabour (which the Labourites themselves are abandoning)as though he thinks that's what the voters want, David Cameron has taken it upon himself to reprimand Prince Harry for using the word "Paki". He described it as "completely unacceptable" - which is the dated ZanuLab term that voters are now wise to.

This is stupid on so many levels it beggars description. First, what the hell business is it of his what Prince Harry says? He's not in any position of authority whatsoever over Harry. Who the hell cares what he thinks?

Second, and here's the best bit: isn't it rather insulting to Pakistanis to splutter that referring to their ethnicity is somehow a universal insult? How did "Paki" get engineered into being "completely unacceptable", when Brit, Ozzie, Canuck, Yank - even Froggie and Kraut - etc are deemed unnoteworthy?

Brown may have a clunking fist, but Cameron's got a clumping foot and he keeps putting it in it. The Daily Mail has thousands - as in, perhaps six or seven thousand - comments on their article describing Harry's words - most of them saying, "Oh, God - enough engineered political correctness! We hate it! We're sick of it!" The only people condemning Harry's reference are obvious Labourite voters. All others decried political correctness as manipulative and hateful.

And then up pops David Cameron in The Browngraph saying this was "completely unacceptable".

Nicholas

The circus tent just got bigger and another clown joins in the anarchic game of creating more loony tunes hoops to make the long suffering British jump through. Go away and leave us alone Brown and take your ghastly mob of incompetents with you.

"Big Beast". Ha!

Charlie T

Milburn is no "big beast" he`s ponced off hard working taxpayers all his adult life. A typical specimen of the hopeless useless effete power elite.

JDR

Another indication that the return of Mandelson was a masked coup d'etat.

Verity

I was astounded that those posters saw the light of day. The politically correct Labour Party, viciously racist when it suits its ambitions.

Fergus Pickering

Peter, it's not a conundrum, it's a problem. This is almost, though not quite, as bad as saying that someone refutes something when all they do is deny it. You wouldn't do that, would you?

TrevorsDen

Milburn just shows himself to be a festering whore

egh

Has Brown had a face-lift, or is it just the ever truthful camera?

Nick

Milburn's the Labour equivalent of that other "Geordie Messiah" Kevin Keegan. After a few years of obscurity spending time on the golf course/with the family, he makes a return to the spotlight and the fans think the good times are just around the corner. It doesn't take long before there's a falling-out with the board/Gord, and he's off again.
What are the chances of Blunkett coming back before the summer?

SW11

Verity. Paki is - was - an accurate description of those from Pakistan. As in Afghan, Afghanistan etc

However the PC brigade knew it had become a p*ss-take, so set out to outlaw it.

This they did successfully via prosecution a few years ago of football fans who were chanting the word at a match. The case 'established' that 'Paki' was a term of abuse.

BTW - i hear that those in inner city areas not too enthusiastic about sub-continental immigration immediately switched to using the term 'stans' as a new nickname/term of abuse.

mitch

Standing next to millvolt maybe!

The Laughing Cavalier

I do wish you would stop referrring to Brown as "The Dear Leader". That was a satirical description of Blair. Brown is not dear but deranged. He is The Dour Leader.

David Lindsay

Alan Milburn is a big beast? Pull the other one!

And his little bit of news comes just after the Government’s wheeze to pay for internships for this year’s crop of new graduates.

Why? Why should they be paid twice the dole merely for having degrees? Academic education is an end in itself or it is nothing, and other things deserve at least as much respect.

Thus properly understood, there are far too many universities in this country, with far too many people at them. I certainly do not say that in order to encourage smugness at or about institutions that merely happen to be old.

As for social mobility, because there used to be hardly any, and there is now also hardly any, people allow themselves to assume that there has always been hardly any.

But there used to be an astonishing amount, particularly in the decades just after the War. And there was a reason for that. It was called grammar schools.

I’d have to check, but I rather expect that Alan Milburn went to one. Still, don’t let that put you off them.