At Prime Minister’s Questions this week, David Cameron referred to today’s TUC rally as the ‘most expensive sponsored walk in history’, a joke that the Tories have now taken one step further. Ahead of Ed Miliband’s speech to marchers at tomorrow’s anti-cuts demo in central London the Conservatives have launched Red Ed’s Sponsored Walk, a satirical fundraising site for Ed’s charity walk, with all proceeds going – somewhat unsurprisingly – to the Labour party.
His online sponsors currently include Unite, GMB and Unite, who’ve ‘sponsored’ Ed to the total price of £12.4 million, accompanied by threatening messages such as ‘Don’t let us down Ed’ and ‘Remember who got you your job’.
This site shows how keen the Tories are to make political hay out of Miliband’s decision to join the march and address the rally. He has undermined his own drive to regain economic credibility for the Labour party by agreeing to attend an anti-cuts rally in what appears to be an act of obedience to the unions who elected him.
Just to hammer the point home, for anyone who might have forgotten about Labour’s potted economic history the spoof site outlines the previous achievements of Miliband’s chosen charity, which include:
‘Leaving the country with the biggest deficit in the G20; opposing a cap on benefits and immigration; and ruining our education system.’
Those of you who’ve been following the US Presidential elections closely might recognise the ‘satirical website’ formula. After this week’s second Romney/Obama debate, the DNC released the Romney Tax Plan website which promised a ‘detailed explanation of how the Romney-Ryan tax plan is able to cut taxes by $5 trillion’ — the joke being that it was impossible to enter the site…
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