Miliband is right to dismiss trade union agitating
I agree with the Eds on this one, not Unite leader Len McCluskey.
Liverpool's own Len reckons Miliband was setting Labour on course for electoral "disaster" and undermining his own leadership by accepting Government cuts and the cap on public sector pay.
No, Mr McCluskey, what would set our party on course for disaster would be if a leader the public already feel only lukewarm about was seen to be the puppet of the Trade Unions.
It may have escaped the notice of some of the party, but a lot of the public actually think public sector workers are doing all right, thanks very much, when compared with those in the private sector with nothing to cushion them as this double dip recession sets in.
Let's be clear, this is a planned 1% public sector pay cap, not a pay cut. Balls and Miliband are right to say they would not reverse this.
As for the cuts at large, that is too complex an issue to treat with such a broad brush. The coalition is making too many cuts, and in the wrong places, but to pretend like we wouldn't have to make cuts too is plain wrong.
The cupboards are bare, and making promises to all and sundry we everyone else knows we can't keep will discredit any manifesto we produce.
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David Bartlett
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Blue Labourite, I think you need a history lesson on where the Labour Party evolved from... They evolved basically from the Trade Unions.
The leader of my Union, Len McCluskey is only doing the job that Labour should be doing, but is not currently doing very effectively, that is speaking up for the poor, the vulnerable and the unemployed.
Union leader slams Ed Miliband but who put him there in the first place?
Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey has launched a stinging attack on the Labour leader Ed Miliband claiming that he {Miliband] is “leading Labour to destruction”. McCluskey lambasts the Labour leader for “failing to support millions of low paid trade unionists” and thereby “disenfranchising the party’s [Labour] core support”.
All this ire from a union leader so influential, and rightfully so, but McCluskey not once mentions that he supported Ed Miliband's leadership bid, he urged 1.3million members to vote for him and gave Ed Miliband £100,000 of members' money so he could campaign to become Labour leader.
Worse still, in my view, Unite and Len McCluskey ensured that John Mcdonnell would not get on the ballot paper, thus preventing members from having a real choice. Strange seeing as it is Mcdonnell not Miliband who has always mirrored Unite’s policies on repeal of anti union laws and has a record of unwavering support for workers in struggle.
At first glance of McCluskey‘s outpourings one might think that Ed Milliband has suddenly and out of the blue made a dramatic rightwards shift in his position.
Does McCluskey not remember a year ago in April 2011 Milliband’s ‘Blue Labour’ hit the headlines. Then weeks later in June he failed to support ¼ million striking public sector workers, some of the poorest paid workers, for what he called ‘irresponsible strikes’, insulting all those prepared to fight.
A month later in July he refused to speak at the Durham Miners Gala which is always attended by over 100,000 trade unionists and natural Labour voters.
By November last year the Labour leader surpassed himself even by his standards when not backing over one million trade unionists [Unite included] who were taking part in the biggest strike in recent history over cuts to their pensions.
McCluskey criticises aplenty and I agree with his comments, but he should have seen it coming, he has been slow to speak out, and he offers no alternative and no solution.
There is an alternative, and my position is clear and consistent. Unite should only fund the Labour Party when it supports our union's policies. I say to McCluskey “Stop wringing your hands, stop moaning and stop funding them!”
This should be the day we say “Defy the cuts, confront the anti union laws and follow the lead given by construction workers, by supporting demonstrations, walkouts and occupations.”
The bosses of the banks and financial institutions caused this crisis. That is why we should not pay the price in cuts to jobs, pay, pensions and services. The very rich and big business owes us the debt and they should be paying the price. They have failed to pay £120 billion in non-collected tax. Tax the banking bosses’ bonuses along with the profits of big business. End the foreign adventures; bring the troops and warplanes home.
In times of crisis good judgement is crucial. Oh Len [McCluskey], I can’t seem to stop myself humming the ‘Con’[nie] Francis song ‘Who's sorry now’?
I am sorry to see this Blue Labour nonsense still being promoted here. I thought we had seen the back of it after it was supposed to have been disbanded following the accusations of racism and simply pandering to the middle classes.
Everything our friend Blue Labourite says is basically going against what the labour party is supposed to be representing and any reason ordinary working people are expected to vote for it.
The cupboard is not bare, there is money for wars and there is even money for yachts by the sound of it. There is money for a new High-speed train link. But there is oddly no money when it comes to dismantling public services, which is being driven as much by ideology as it is by the deficit.
The deficit could be managed by any number of measures without destroying public services and the class ideology of it all is reflected in the targeting of the most deprived areas being singled out for the biggest cuts. Then we are supposed to be grateful for Simon Hughes or Clegg or even Hezza, saying they will give help. We don’t want hand-outs, we want to protect our existing services.
Blue Labourite when you reduce every argument to one of electoral credibility and start repeating the lie that the public sector is “doing very well thank you” compared to the private sector, you are simply feeding and regurgitating the jaundiced views of the Daily mail readers - that public sector workers have had it too easy too long. That they all get paid a fortune for nothing, whereas the private sector is all suffering terribly. It is true that in the public sector there has been a seismic shift in pay but only for those at Chief Executive and Director level and a small number of senior managers. The gap between them and the next levels of management and staff was measured in the 50 to 250k region. Those on the front line doing the vital face-to-face jobs have had an awful time and are being hit the hardest. And no I am not in the public sector I am in the private sector and it is a lot easier with much better pay thanks.
You basically want to swing the Labour party to ideas and an ideology that is based on the same claptrap that we are in it together, you will just do it in a nicer way, but still slash and burn the public sector when it comes down to it. Simply because that kind of talk wins votes down south. Can you not see that people are not as easily fooled now? Well I hope not. Not since the corruption and greed of the House of Commons was exposed, Now that they also see the issues on a global scale, the involvement of the media and the criminals running the financial systems that can virtually dismiss a government or ensure the right one is elected. Even Murdoch showed us that. Labour’s landslide in 97 was as much down to the backing from the Sun Newspaper as it was from dissatisfaction with John major’s government.
If you present Labour with only one vital policy, which is to do everything you can to ensure in the eyes of the average Daily mail reader that you can be trusted on the economy, if you continue to attack the public sector as if they are part of the problem and that they are also to be blamed when they try to protect their terms ad conditions which in most cases are pretty poor, and when Labour or Blue Labour make big tough speeches about benefit scroungers trying to dehumanise and make an enemy within of the poorest and most vulnerable, on the basis that inevitably some people will make fraudulent claims or you talk of forcing people to work for low pay whilst saying nothing about cutting Housing benefits and other benefits without which they could not survive on those low paid jobs and by whipping up and joining in the scare mongering around asylum and immigration creating divisions and pandering to the arguments of the BNP or EDL When you do all of that and at the same time say NOTHING about bringing to account the thieves, speculators and the tax dodgers who got us into this mess then all you become is an organisation that has one purpose. You want to get jobs for yourself in political office. As if you have the divine right to be politicians. In other words it is complete self-interest. Find a policy or do, say anything that will make you look credible enough to sway the middle classes to vote for you and the riff raff on the estates and in the run down neighbourhoods, the trades unionists will follow as usual because they have nobody else to vote for other than the hopeless and splintered far left or Trotskyites.
All you are going to do, all you are offering is the same protection to the rich, and a little tinkering with the system wagging a naughty boy finger at the likes of Fred Goodwin and hi ilk amongst the global bankers and then carry on making the poorest pay for their greed and their crimes. You just say you will do it with a little tear in your eye and you will understand the pain. Bless you.
So yes the fight is on Bring it on to quote Ed. We must do everything we can to get you elected……. and that's it really isn't it. Come back in 2015 or 2020 for the next game of blind mans bluff. Throw a few crumbs from the table to make us feel better when we have all paid with jibs futures homes and possibly lives.
That's why the last election was thrown away as well why there was no agreement reached with the Lib dems, because you needed the worst cuts to be carried out by the Tories to retain some element of credibility and keep the idiots thinking “ohh we must get the Condems out” to be replaced by what? Well the way you represent yourself with Blue Labour it is just a different coloured shirt, playing for the same team. The Rich FC.
Blue Labour strikes me as the new middle class version of Militant. You should get out and form your own party. How about the name New Tory?
The 1 % pay cap is a 2 year cap which follows 3 years of zero % which itself follows a 1 % pay rise. Add it up and then factor in inflation and you get the picture.
Ed Miliband's 'pay freeze to protect jobs' misses the fact that 3/4 million public sector workers are being sacked.
He has now made kicking the public sector an across the board sport.
Question is - if the unions voted him in as labour leader and are the main financial backers of the party why would a union member want to give money to Ed to buy him his new pair of kicking boots
He is unashamedly going for the middle ground of voters but he misses the obvious and he will lose the Labour party core support in the process who will abstain.
Look out for a highly unpopular not to say incompetent Tory party getting a land slide at the next election as people stay home.
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