Miliband is trapped in his own foggy argument

Frederick James

One begins to wonder whether Ed Miliband does actually think that reducing the deficit means the debt is being paid off. He does not have a numerate background, but it's a bit chilling if he doesn't even understand that much.

Surely it could not be deliberate obfuscation.

Dave B

"he is actually highlighting that there isn't as much fiscal difference between Labour and the Tories"

Both parties are irresponsibly ignoring the government's overspending problem.

sandy

He's doing a great job,just the kind of leader Britain needs the Labour party to have.

Heartless P.

... Miliband's is a foggy, nebulous position ... sort of, - to push metaphors even further, - lost in space?

Heartless P.

Afterthought - is he serving onions with it by any chance? attracting the Northern climes an' all?

Halcyondaze

Over-grown leftie student union rep. Or adenoidal half-wit. You decide.

E Hart

Well said. Labour is Coalition-lite. This is a lions dressed as lemmings moment. The whole of the Western World has bought the myth of expansionary austerity. This will lead them all into another recession. It remains to be seen whether they will conclude in their collective delusion that they should cut still further to get out of it. The EU countries have an excuse - they are tied into the Euro. Britain and the US are sleep-walking voluntarily into this whilst controlling their own currencies, interest rates, printing presses etc. Expansionary austerity has never worked nor can it work; it will merely result in very high unemployment and depressed aggregate demand.

The difference between the Coalition and Labour is that the former proposed to slaughter the recovery more quickly.

David Ossitt

sandy

“He's doing a great job,just the kind of leader Britain needs the Labour party to have.”

As one who is to the right of the blessed Margaret, Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, I could not agree with you more.

I sincerely hope that he leads the Labour party for many a year.

Cell time

Your headline is an apt Euphemism.

Pettros

I predict Lab will ditch Ed in the middle of next year....Mrs Balls will come in, hoover up the vast amount of people with left leaning tendancies (just by not being David Cameron and being a women). In 2015 again Tories will be denied a clear majority.

Jeremy

Ed Miliband:

"It's not going to be a situation that we saw after the 1997 election where we had big investment in the public realm."

In other words, after the Tories left office in 1997, Labour spent-and-bankrupted the country.

fergus pickering

I assumed that andy was being ironic. He was, wasn't he?

jon dee

Whatever the buzzwords and populist rhetoric his scriptwriters provide him, he just looks and sounds, dopey.

graham

Ed Milibandwagon is useless. He lacks gravitas, a sense of humour & an opinion. I try & listen to him but I soon get bored & tune out. He is a boring man who lacks a real political poistion. He is all over the place on every big issue. The man is a loser...he can't last much longer if the left want to win the new election!

sandy

Think about it Fergus,think about it.

Cynic

"Miliband's is a foggy, nebulous position. Labour MPs might well ask whether it's going to get them anywhere." Rest assured, you can fool some of the people all of the time - unfortunately.

Cynic

"Mrs Balls will come in, hoover up the vast amount of people with left leaning tendancies (just by not being David Cameron and being a women)." So are you saying, Pettros, that the left will vote for anybody, irrespective of merit, as long as they aren't male or Tory?

whatawaste

The PLP and trade unions have chosen badly. Darling would have made a good temporary Leader of the Opposition. As a lawyer he is well spoken and unlike many on the shadow bench can think on his feet, something Cameron does well to Ed's detriment.

Darling could well be remembered as "the best Labour leader that they never had". The other problem with Ed now is that he lacks respect from his own shadow cabinet.

Forlornehope

@whatawaste - Darling seems to be an intelligent and decent man. In fact his proposed strategy for dealing with the deficit was not that different from Osborne's. Had he become leader of the Labour party, the faithful would have shredded him something that he knew perfectly well. He's better off out of it.

Tarka the Rotter

"Mrs Balls will come in, hoover up the vast amount of people with left leaning tendancies..." Do you mean she'll do the shake and vac to put the freshness back into clapped out marxism and fabian control-freakery? Should be entertaining...

Simon Stephenson.

Pettros : 3.34pm

"Mrs Balls will come in, hoover up the vast amount of people with left leaning tendancies"

This is possible, but she won't do it by being straight or honest with the public about the sort of outcomes they can look forward to under a government controlled by neanderthal Statists unable to see any path for society outside the failed theories of 80 years ago. No, she'd have to be a con-artist on the same level as Mr Blair, able with a straight face to link a Labour government with the sort of prosperous well-being and contentment that she knows is nothing other than 100% fantasy.

Can she pull this off? I don't think so.

Ed P

In what should be a solidly Labour seat they neither shone or motivated the electorate to actually bother to vote. Ed Mediocreband (Lukewarm from It ain't half hot mum?) is a gift to the Tories - long may he "lead" Labour.

David Lindsay

Ed Miliband is not who the Blairite media wanted, so never mind opinion polls, even actual votes for a party led by him do not count.

Labour's fifth by-election win in succession since Ed Miliband became Leader. An 8.5 per cent swing from the Conservatives to Labour.

But none of that counts, because, rather poignantly today, he is The Wrong Brother.

Michael Dixon

For their policy on housing Miliband, when he became leader of the Labour Party, asked his then Shadow Minister,(since changed-again),to present a comprehensive policy review by 2012. So for two years housing policy, as an example of others no doubt, has been a blank piece of paper. In many ways that accurately describes Miliband and his Party, which is why he and they are in trouble.

Nobody really has clue, as the article indicates here, what Miliband and Labour believe in or stand for.

Nicholas

Ha ha ha! Pettros' fantasy of a Labour Mrs Thatcher, the indomitable Yvette Cooper, with the intellect of a second rate, student union, protest monkey and the authoritarian instincts of an East German Stasi leader.

Really, really funny that leftist clowns still believe this guff. "Game changer", eh, Pettros? Ha ha ha!