Labour Mash-Up
I'm not a fan of Glee but I know what Dan Hodges is on about - Ed Miliband has a real credibility problem in his efforts to be all things to all people.
Under Ed's leadership the party supports everything from equal pay and the Living Wage to the defence of the 'squeezed middle' - but even then Labour is not finished because while it supports a cap on welfare spending and the principle of welfare reform, Labour has actively opposed every change brought in by the Coalition Government including the withdrawal of child benefit to better off families.
Not so much a clear message as a big bowl of steaming mash.
Labour has no idea what voters want, so it's decided to offer them everything
By Dan Hodges Politics - The Telegraph
Sue Sylvester, bellowing self-contradictory Labour policies in one of the less popular episodes of Glee. (Photo: Rex)
I love “Glee”. The trials and tribulations of a group of small-town American teen pop prodigies is an allegory for our times. For Vladimir Putin just think Sue Sylvester.
I think Ed Miliband might like Glee as well. I’d never had the Labour leader down as a fellow “Gleek”, until I got a press release yesterday trailing advance snippets of his forthcoming big speech on devolving power from national to local government.
And his big speech on the cost of living crisis. And his big speech reaching out to the middle classes. And his big speech on job creation. And his big speech on regional investment.
A normal politician, when grappling with themes as diverse and weighty as this would spend months, years maybe, fleshing out their ideas. Not Miliband. The crisis facing Britain is so urgent he’s going to solve it in one afternoon.
Which is where Glee comes in. The pupils of William McKinley High School are a wonderfully diverse bunch. Some are white, some are black, some are straight, some are gay, some leap out of their wheelchairs and perform “safety dance” while leading a shopping mall flashmob.
But this diversity presents a dilemma. Because they are all fans of very different musical genres. And this leads to the same crisis in every episode.
They’re facing arch-rivals Rich But Very Talented High in the regional dance-off, but they just can’t agree what to perform. Everyone’s shouting and screaming and threatening to march off and join the volleyball society when suddenly Mr Schuester says, “I know, we’ll do a mash-up!”. At which point everyone cheers and hugs and then storms to victory off the back of dance routine featuring a musical combo of Stevie Wonder, Madonna and NWA.
And that’s exactly what Miliband’s going to do today. He’s going to stand up in Birmingham and announce “I’m just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit. I took the midnight train, going anywhere.”
He’s not going to say that, exactly. But he is going to perform his own Glee style mash-up. According to the release “he will set out the interim conclusions of Andrew Adonis’s Growth Review recommending the end of a century of centralisation”. Then he’ll neatly segue into his “One Nation plan to halt the race to the bottom”. Next he will “underline his message in today’s Independent that the central mission of the next Labour government will be to restore the link between the wealth of our nation and family finances”. And finally he will get to “the focus of his speech” which, apparently, is “jobs”.
Over the past few weeks Labour has been confronted with a few problems. And one of those problems is the growing realisation no one in the Labour Party has the slightest clue about what they should be saying or doing to win the next general election.
Like the William McKinley glee club, Labour are a diverse bunch. There are the philosophers, who think Miliband should be thinking big thoughts. “You need to do a speech on a century of centralisation,” they’ve been telling him. Then there are the economists. “You need to do a speech demonstrating fiscal credibility,” they’ve urged. There are the tacticians, who have been insisting “you need to do a speech to embed your core cost of living message”. And the policy wonks: “We need a big policy offer. You need to do a major speech about devolving power.”
I n the wake of the Tories' Budget bounce, each of these groups have been pushing their favoured approach on the Labour leader. But this in turn has presented Miliband with a difficult decision. And if there’s one thing Miliband detests, it’s difficult decisions. So rather than pick one theme, he’s decided to take all of them, and try to jam them together into the same speech. A giant Mili-mash-up, if you like.
Unfortunately, not all the ideas fit together neatly. In fact, quite a few of them don’t fit together at all. Indeed, one or two directly contradict one another.
So for example, the policy wonks have their passage on devolution. Labour is committed to “at least doubling the level of devolved funding – handing control of the equivalent of more than £20 billion to City and County Regions over the course of a parliament”. But that presents problems for the economists, who needed their bit on fiscal credibility. So Labour also says the devolved money will only be handed to “those regions that meet strict tests established by the Adonis Review”. In other words, Labour’s idea of devolution involves bidding for pots of central government money that will be allocated via stringent rules also set by central government. Which is what happens already. And isn’t actually devolution at all.
Then there is Miliband’s appeal to the middle classes. Some in Labour’s ranks have been urging him to widen his appeal to voters in London and the South who have not been moved by his “One Nation” mantra. So as we’ve heard, he will repeat his pitch in the Independent to “middle-income” Britain, and his warning that “any gains middle-income Britain gets as the economy picks up will be nothing compared with the scale of the crisis that remains or the assault on family finances of recent years”.
But other people think an appeal to southern voters is too “Blairite”. They feel he needs to lock in his base via the famous 35 per cent strategy. So that’s why in the same speech he will be turning his back on the capital and embracing the regions. Britain “has become a country which builds its prosperity far too much in one city: London. We need a prosperous London, but we also need to build prosperity outside it. Today, every region outside London is below the national average when it comes to productivity, while London is 40 per cent above it”.
Labour currently has no clear idea about what the voters want or need to hear from it. So they’ve decided to say everything and anything, in the hope something will stick. Want investment? Labour will give you £20 billion of investment. Want fiscal responsibility? Labour will balance the books. Southern, middle class and feeling the pinch? Labour feels your pain. Sick of those rich southerners living high off the regions? Labour agrees. You want devolved power? You can have it. You want the government to keep a careful eye on the public finances? We will do, with our cast iron spending rules.
Vote for Labour and Ed Miliband, and you can have all these things. They only ask one thing in return. Don’t stop believing.
