T-Shirt Stunt


Janan Ganesh who writes for The Financial Times is one of the very best political commentators around these days and Janan is on top form here as he lays bare the threadbare strategy at the heart of the Ed Miliband project.

Cunning stunts do not a Prime Minister make and while Ed Miliband does indeed face a generally hostile press, the same thing can be said for David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage - and Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, as the recent referendum on Scottish independence demonstrated only too well.   

Ed Miliband’s policies are more impulse than strategy




By Janan Ganesh - The Financial Times http://www.ft.com

Labour leader is authentically leftwing, and was only ever going to seek a leftwing path to power
©GettyW

hen Martin Amis is asked why he decided on the Holocaust as the subject of his latest novel, he disputes the verb. “One never decides to write a novel,” he told an interviewer. “It picks you.” An author just feels compelled to address a certain topic, he says, and literary critics are mistaken to think choice comes into it.

Political commentators make a similar mistake. We write as though politicians decide their message to the electorate. We read “strategy” into everything. In reality, politicians end up doing what they are compelled to by their instincts. They experiment with ideas in moments of trouble but, over a parliamentary term, a party’s pitch to voters is ultimately a distillation of its leader’s sincere beliefs. And nobody chooses what to believe any more than they choose who to find attractive.

Tony Blair’s critics wasted years deploring his cynical “triangulation” between left and right, only to see in the twilight of his UK premiership that he was a Third Way man to his bones. David Cameron, his successor but one, is a conventional Tory with some liberal trimmings, and governs as such.

The difference between decision and compulsion helps clear up what is wrong with Ed Miliband. The Labour leader’s ratings have sunk to a pit of aw­fulness that reduces allies to in­sisting he goes down well in small private gatherings (known as the Gordon Brown de­fence). An opposition primed for power would be comfortably ahead in the polls six months before a general election. Labour is no longer ahead at all.

Commentators blame his “35 per cent strategy”. This alleged blueprint for victory next May involves retaining Labour’s core vote – optimistically equated with the 29 per cent the party won in 2010 – and adding some leftwing Liberal Democrats irked by their party’s coalition with the Tories. Add the inequities of the electoral system, and this paltry vote share should be enough to give Mr Miliband the seals of office. But it leaves little margin for error, as he is learning the hard way.

The critics have half a point. They are right about the “35 per cent” bit but wrong about the “strategy” bit. They talk of it as a conscious calculation gone wrong, like a bad chess move or a pilot misjudging a landing. They assume he would do something different if he had his time again.

But Mr Miliband does not have a 35 per cent strategy. He has a 35 per cent world view. He is authentically leftwing and was only ever going to seek a leftwing path to power. His effort to cobble together enough like-minded voters to pull off a slight but doctrinally pure victory is better understood as an urge – what Amis calls a “frisson” – than a decision. And it was not his error to follow this path; it was Labour’s error to choose as its leader someone who was always incapable of doing anything else.

That leadership campaign four years ago was a miniature of his supposed plan for May. He spent months reinforcing his party’s certainties on everything from economics to foreign policy. In a stupor of self-congratulation, Labour elected him – just. Critics accused him of “pandering” and admirers credited him with “guile”, but both words, like strategy, imply he did not mean it. He did.

Last week Mr Miliband and Harriet Harman, his deputy, grown adults with a combined age of 108 and aspirations to high office, wore T-shirts scrawled with a feminist slogan that looked like the rushed homework of an indifferent GCSE design student. Mr Cameron declined to follow. Mr Blair would have laughed the idea out of the room. It is hard to picture Alistair Darling, the august former chancellor of the exchequer who announced his retirement this week, going along with it.

The T-shirt stunt, like the minimalist route to victory in May, is unedifying. But the critics must stop calling these things misjudgments. This is just who Mr Miliband is. He is of the liberal left. He doubtless thinks Russell Brand, the celebrity anti-capitalist, “has a point”. The election will tell us whether people like this amount to 35 per cent of the electorate or, as the polls are beginning to hint, quite a bit less.

janan.ganesh@ft.com



None So Blind (3 November 2014)


The politicians sporting these "This is what a feminist looks like" T-shirts now look completely ridiculous following this report on the BBC web site.

But even more appalling if you ask me, is that none of them have had a word to say about the fight for equal pay over the past 10 years - a cause which affects thousands of low paid women council workers in England as well as Scotland.

In fact one area where the play gap between male and female council workers was at its most scandalous, was Birmingham City Council, a Labour controlled council for most of the past two decades and, interestingly, an area where Harriet Harman's husband (Jack Dromey) is now a Labour MP.

Regular readers will know that Jack, in a previous life, was deputy general secretary of Unite, the Labour Party's largest financial donor.     

'Sweatshop' claims over Fawcett Society slogan T-shirt

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have been photographed wearing the shirt

The charity behind a pro-feminism T-shirt worn by leading politicians has vowed to investigate claims that the item was made in sweatshop conditions.

Equality campaigning group the Fawcett Society said it was "disappointed" to learn of the allegations.

The Mail on Sunday reported the £45 "This is what a feminist looks like" shirt is made by women paid 62p an hour on the island of Mauritius.

The Fawcett Society said it was told the garment would be made ethically.

The T-shirt has been worn by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Labour leader Ed Miliband in promotional pictures - but Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly declined to be photographed in it.

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman then wore it in the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions.

The design of the Fawcett Society T-shirt was a collaboration with Elle magazine, which has described the garment as being part of an "ethically-produced" range.

High street chain Whistles was approached to design and produce the item, with all profits going to the charity.

Eva Neitzert, deputy CEO of the Fawcett Society, said they had been "assured that the garments would be produced ethically here in the UK".

She said in a statement: "Upon receiving samples of the range at our offices in early October we noted that the T-shirts had in fact been produced in Mauritius, upon which we queried (over email) the ethical credentials of the Mauritian factory, and the fabric used."

A reply from Whistles gave assurances about the T-shirts and sweatshirts - which had already been manufactured by then.

The Mail on Sunday toured one of six factories on Mauritius owned by Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile (CMT), which makes the garments, and claimed machinists slept 16 to a room.

The newspaper also alleged that women working at the factory make 6,000 rupees, or £120, a month - which the paper said was a quarter of the country's average wage.
Harriet Harman wore the T-shirt in the House of Commons

A spokesman for Whistles told the paper: "We place a high priority on environmental, social and ethical issues.

"The allegations regarding the production of T-shirts in the CMT factory in Mauritius are extremely serious and we are investigating them as a matter of urgency."

The Fawcett Society statement continued: "We have been very disappointed to hear the allegations that conditions in the Mauritius factory may not adhere to the ethical standards that we, as the Fawcett Society, would require of any product that bears our name.

"At this stage, we require evidence to back up the claims being made by a journalist at the Mail on Sunday.

"However, as a charity that campaigns on issues of women's economic equality, we take these allegations extremely seriously and will do our utmost to investigate them." 'Unaware of origins'

If there is evidence that factory makers have been mistreated, the charity will ask Whistles to withdraw the range "and donate part of the profits to an ethical trading campaigning body".

Dr Neitzert added: "Whilst we wish to apologise to all those concerned who may have experienced adverse conditions, we remain confident that we took every practicable and reasonable step to ensure that the range would be ethically produced and await a fuller understanding of the circumstances under which the garments were produced."

Elle said the range, also including a phone case and clutch bag, had been created as part of its first feminism issue.

Celebrities including actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Tom Hiddleston have been photographed wearing the T-shirt for the magazine.

A spokesman for the deputy prime minister said: "Nick Clegg had no idea where these T-shirts were being made and can only assume that the Fawcett Society were unaware of the origins, or they would not have asked him to wear it.

"He remains entirely supportive of efforts to ensure all women are treated as equals in this country and the world over."

A Labour party spokesman told the BBC: "It was a campaign run by Elle and the Fawcett Society to promote feminism and we were happy to support it."

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