Home > Nick Cohen

Sunday 27 May 2012

Obama and Miliband

Sunday, 2nd October 2011

I apologise for the advertisement, but there is a piece in the Observer that is well worth reading. Michael Cohen describes how Obama has tired of offering the hand of friendship, only for the Republicans to accuse him of being a socialist Mau Mau on a mission to destroy America. He will abandon bipartisanship and fight the 2012 presidential election as Harry Truman and FDR would have done: by painting the Republicans as the yapping lapdogs of the Wall Street plutocracy. Cohen reports that in a recent speech:

‘Obama blasted Republicans for possessing a world view where "corporations write their own rules, and we dismantle environmental regulations and we dismantle labour regulations, and we cut taxes for folks who don't need it and weren't even asking for it, and then we say to you, you're on your own – good luck, because you're not going to get any help". According to Obama, such an approach would "fundamentally cripple America".

And like Truman, Obama is proudly portraying himself as the defender of the middle class: "If asking a billionaire to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher makes me a class warrior... I will wear that charge as a badge of honour."’

Whether turning on Wall Street will help Obama win is an open question. His limp professorial style and the failure of his economic policy ought to guarantee defeat. But the American Right shoots itself in the foot so often it should be on crutches. If it cannot or will not put forward a respectable centrist Republican, or if the only respectable candidate it can offer is the dull Romney, Obama is in with a chance not only of re-election but of helping Ed Miliband.

The reaction to the Labour leader’s conference speech is one of the strangest sights I have seen in many years. Granted that much of the public think Miliband a geek, and that his tight election made him a leader with precious little legitimacy, but the contempt that greeted his unexceptional remarks remains extraordinary. In a moderate manner, Miliband told a truth about Britain. For a generation we have been told that we must let the financial markets rip because they allow the creation of wealth. Now the markets have collapsed, and the richest people in the country have turned to the taxpayer and demanded and received a bailout, the old wisdom no longer applies. Yet when Miliband states the obvious, he is derided.

There are I think three reasons why politicians and journalists want nothing to do with Miliband’s ideas.

1) They think the bailout of 2008 was a one off, and tweaks to the regulatory system will solve the systemic faults in the banking system.

2) They know that the bailout was not a one off, and that financial services will be privatizing profits and nationalizing debts for years. Nevertheless they conclude that the City is so important to Britain, it cannot be challenged. Like it or not we are stuck with state-subsidised crony capitalism that cannot be reformed for fear of the consequences.

3) They believe that the electorate will never buy a leftish shift in economic policy. Truman and Roosevelt are figures from another age. Those who hanker for the economic populism of the 1930s and 1940s do not understand the modern world.

If Obama were to win on an anti-Wall Street ticket in 2012, the last of those arguments would look threadbare and Ed Miliband would look a good deal better than he looks at the moment.

Previous Back to Nick Cohen Next

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (8)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Steve

October 2nd, 2011 10:00pm Report this comment

Great article.

The sooner a leading politician says stop QE and recapitalising the banks the better. This would prove electorally popular with the left and right and could be a real vote winner for Miliband.

sym

October 2nd, 2011 10:01pm Report this comment

The answer is not to subsidise them, i.e. not engage in the crony capitalism that Big Government - Obama included - likes so much.

Problem solved. Just let the free market be a free market.

normanc

October 3rd, 2011 7:15am Report this comment

And yet Wall Street financially heavily backs Obama / Democrats and his regime has bailed them out time and time again.

Sym is right, the free market is the only way out of this mess, politicians distorting the market to their own ends as we've seen over the last 20 odd years will only end in disaster, as it has.

If Miliband were to stand up and say 'Government is far too big, interferes far too much and can only make a mess of things and waste billions of your hard earned money' he may well be on to a winnner.

Pigs may also start becoming hazards to low flying aircraft.

Stephen

October 3rd, 2011 10:29am Report this comment

This reaction was typified by the venture capitalist on Newsnight who claimed that Milliband was deriding his business as 'predatory'. Why?

There was precisely nothing in his speech that might be interpreted as an attack on venture capitalism-- which is after all just risk and investment.

His speech lacked specifics -- that is the only true criticism.

Ricky

October 3rd, 2011 11:19am Report this comment

The only thing that the dreary Mili-bland and the hapless Obamastan have in common - is that they are both doomed.

Chris

October 3rd, 2011 3:31pm Report this comment

You are discussing the Obama who ran on a platform of reaching out and bipartisanship, and railroaded Obamacare through without a single Republican vote, are you? I do not think that 'has tired of offering the hand of friendship' means what you think it means.

GarryK

October 8th, 2011 8:22am Report this comment

It is clear that the form of free market neo-liberalism, rampant across financial markets, has failed.

Ed has expressed this (not as clearly as I would like), and if he can articulate his ideas better, they will really chime with the broad electorate.

Of course, the neo-liberal cheerleaders in major corporations and the media won't like it up 'em!

porkbelly

October 8th, 2011 10:16pm Report this comment

If Nick Cohen wants to write a blog from a left-wing perspective here on CH, let him offer up something interesting, original or illuminating, not this sort of tiresome whining. Really, if we wannt to read this sort of pap we can turn to - well, practically anywhere. Is there really no room for an actual conservative blogger on CH?

Post comment