Union backing is an indication of how far David Miliband has shifted to the left

MikeF

Diane Abbott is the only candidate who did not hold any sort of ministerial position in the last Government so she can afford to 'lacerate' its record. The oddity here is why in a contest 'dominated' by the left the most avowedly left-wing candidate is only there because of an act of grade and favour tokenism by one of the other candidates. The obvious answer is that even much of the left sees her as a posturing opportunist. This whole business is a display of the most abject mediocrity. Harold Wilson would have obliterated the lot of them - what a shower they are.

TrevorsDen

Laughable. 'impressed by his defence of the labour govt'?

But really, what do we expect? labour leadership candidates always veer to the left.

May I repeat - its easy to do 'good' things in govt. All you have to do is spend money without bothering about where it has to come from. None of the leadership candidates is being asked this question by their electorate. And they themselves are not challenging their electorate with this conunderum.

Edward

"Udsaw’s general secretary John Hannett is said to be impressed by Miliband’s defence of Labour’s record in office."

There are people out there who still defend Stalin, so anything is possible I suppose.

Occasional Ostrich

MikeF

So you think Harold Wilson was some sort of half-reasonable politician, then?

chris as usual

His father was a Marxist 'intellectual'. Pleased the jackdaw union is supporting him.

WP

USDAW's backing does not infer any shift to the left from Miliband - it should be noted that USDAW backed Hazel Blears; clearly the most 'Blairite" candidate in the deputy leadership elections a couple of years ago.

chris as usual

I've just read his drivel in the Mirror. The sooner we get a level playing field on constituency sizes and let England have the vote for English legislation the better. He's the one waging an idealogical war on us, not Osborne. The sheer humbug from a member of the most disastrous government in our lifetime. They need kicking into touch for good.

He sounds like a worn out student who has never had a proper job.

Tarka the Rotter

are we talking about which side the boy dresses? that banana has to swing somewhere...

Frank P

Shifting to the left???? He has always been a leftist ideologue; he took communism in his mother's milk and by osmosis from several generations of the Y Chromosome before him. The New Labour project was a pretence. It's called i-n-f-i-l-t-r-a-t-i-o-n!!! Now they don't have to pretend any longer. Now it's time to stir up the unions again, because the enemy is back in power - albeit with the collusion of the lefty liberals. All very messy.

You only had to watch the bare-teeth-snarling of Balls and that Green Woman on QT last night to see where it is at. Balls is the most loathsome boggled-eyed bastard in politics at present: if you can define subversion as 'politics'. As for the Green Woman, Ugghh! What a virago! And a voice like an electric metal saw.

Chris lancashire

So Milliband is "pro-business" is he. How the hell would he know anything about business in the first place never having done a decent day's work in his pathetic policy-ridden life?

MikeF

Ostrich - He was a brilliant politician and even, I think, a man who genuinely wanted the best for his country rather than himself. He would have been aghast at the Labour Party of today - an organisation in constant denial of and contempt for its own roots. That he thought the way to achieve a decent society was through large scale central direction of the economy in peacetime is another matter.

libertarian

"he is pro eu and pro business"

Make your mind up he can't be both

Pedantic Virgo

"Paul Waugh has news that David Miliband has received the backing of Udsaw (sic), the shop workers’ union." Surely that should be Usdaw - the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.

Naomi Muse

He'd promise anything to get into power. Look at the record of the last government. Most of the electoral promises given by Labour were not kept. Labour cannot blame a tiny majority for that, for they had a good majority.

He's looking for support because he wants power, not because he wants to do the right thing for the country.

David Lindsay

libertarian, I don't know how you can have arrived at that one. Among the numerous similarities between Big Business and Big Unions is their shared fondness for European federalism, for globalism in general, and for Political Correctness. They routinely join forces to campaign for those things.

USDAW organised the only ever Commons defeat of Thatcher's Premiership, when she had wanted to abolish the restrictions on Sunday trading. You can be a conservative or a capitalist, but not both. Capitalism is the way of European federalism, of globalism in general, and of Political Correctness. It is the way of Big Business and of its allies, Big Unions to which the term "trade union" does not properly apply.

Mycroft

Oh no, David Lindsay, there is no such thing as pure capitalism, just vatious forms of controlled, regulated and restricted capitalism, which can be viewed in different ways by different people involved in them (big business may often be federalist/globalist in outlook, small business tends to be less so); so Conservatism is perfectly consistent with certain forms of capitalism, and will seek to regulate it in accordance with its own outlook.

David Lindsay

Mycroft, go through the things that conservatives exist in order to conserve, and tell me exactly which of them capitalism conserves, or indeed does anything other than destroy utterly:

- agriculture, manufacturing, and small business;
-national sovereignty, the Union, and economic patriotism;
- local variation, historical consciousness, traditional moral and social values, and the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West;
- close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework ("King and People" against the Whig magnates), and conservation rather than environmentalism;
- sound money;
- a realistic foreign policy, and a strong defence capability used only for the most sparing and strictly defensive purposes;
- the Commonwealth, the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State or other such constitutional links, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world.

One could go on. Capitalism is as anti-conservative as the myth of a "Special Relationship" with the United States. Yes, as anti-conservative as that.

The Conservative Party has been hoovering up Liberals for a very long time: Liberal Unionists, Liberal Imperialists, National Liberals, Alfred Roberts’s daughter, those around the Institute of Economic Affairs (although its founders and its founding backer never actually joined), and now the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservative Party is itself therefore two parties in one, which would be entirely separate in many other countries, competing hardly at all for the same votes and co-operating hardly at all on any issue of policy.

The metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian, make-the-world-anew party has finally defeated and banished the provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business party. The Whigs have finally defeated and banished the Tories.

But in a context of electoral reform, which can only suit the Tories down to the ground.

They are not the only ones.

2trueblue

It is extraordinary that the persecuted Jewish family should escape their tormentors and then join the marxists. They then produce 2 politicians who want to persecute us!