Ed Miliband

In an article entitled "Selling England's forests tears at our heart of oak", Ed Miliband is the Sunday Times' voice of England:

What sort of cheapskate nation are we now, that we cannot agree to spend 30p a year for each person in this country to preserve its ancient oaks, ash and beech? The Liberal Democrats agree with us. Or at least, they did. On the Scottish Lib Dem website is a campaign against privatisation in Scotland, called Save our Forest! "The Liberal Democrats working with environmental organisations have won the case," it boasts beneath a picture of Nick Clegg. Which principle is there that applies in Scotland but not England?

Free prescriptions, free personal care, no bridge tolls, free tertiary education and self-governance are some principles that - thanks to Labour - apply in Scotland but not in England. It really is rather amusing that people like Ed Miliband and Bob Piper are now batting for England. Why have Labour only just latched onto this issue when I was writing about it back in mid-November? Was there a focus group or something?

English Ed continues:

This is not the big society, it is just a big sale. It is the sale of the physical heart of England, of irreplaceable national assets, enjoyed by communities for generations....The sign of a good society - big or small - is what it is prepared to protect, be that universal benefits, health or ancient woodland; public goods for the benefit of the whole nation and future generations. Unrestrained free market ideology has no place running rampant through ancient English woodlands.
Jerusalem is a song we all sing. The next time that David Cameron stands up to sing it, I hope he spares a thought for what his government is doing to England's green and pleasant land.

Pardon my cynicism, but if Labour were that concerned about England's green and pleasant land they would not have invited in 2.5M immigrants, proposed to build ten new towns in England (but none in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland) and set regional house-building targets whilst failing to protect green-belt.

John Cruddas' 'good society' appears to be one in which Labour embrace English cultural nationalism.

Can Ed Miliband find an antidote to the politics of fear and loathing?

Mr Cruddas arrived with a proposal.

Mr Miliband, he suggested, should accompany him on a trip to Billingsgate Fish Market, to hear the porters' view of the threat posed by the encroachment of the money men of neighbouring Canary Wharf.

Neither Tony Blair's God-based fervour nor Gordon Brown's cult of Britishness ever touched the nation's heart.

Mr Cruddas has offered a starter pack. He has, he tells me, invited Mr Miliband to visit the port of Dover to see how England's heritage may be sold off to the highest bidder. After that, he suggests, they could go to the threatened Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest. The idea of an English journey reminiscent of J B Priestley's odyssey would be to "rediscover an England which is not North London" and develop a "politics of virtue" to replace the hollowed-out economic view.

Whether Cruddas can entice the champagne socialists out of their rarefied North London enclaves is another matter.

This is how the English Democrats Party congratulates Ed Miliband on the birth of his baby.

The Director of Communications for this shower of shit is Steve Uncles.

Thanks to Dan Hodges of the Tribune we now know that Gordon Brown's toe-curling England photo calls and PR stunts were in part motivated by a fear that he would be outflanked on the issue of an English parliament.

Gordon Brown wasn’t concerned about his nationality. He was totally paranoid about it.

I remember discussing a list of major policy priorities with a Brownite advisor just before the transition from Tony Blair. What, I asked, had the incoming Prime Minister identified as the key issues. “An English parliament”, was the response. “You’re joking”, I said.

“No. Gordon thinks David Cameron is going to outflank us on it. It’ll be a major issue at the election.”
He didn’t. And it wasn’t.

“Gordon was obsessed”, recalls one former Government advisor. “He used to ring up the Department for Culture, Media and Sport every month demanding they sort out some photo call or press stunt with the England football team. He was convinced that, if he got enough photos of him next to Wayne Rooney, people would think he was English”.

The Scottish albatross has dropped from the neck of the Labour Party, and according to the Tribune we can expect "English Ed" Miliband with "his unique brand of Englishness" to start quietly beating the English drum.

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, benign nationalism is the first destination of the Labour politician seeking an answer to his party’s painful predicament.

We can but hope that Dan is right.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the prospects of Labour becoming a party of England as Denis MacShane MP.

Labour under Ed Miliband is now poised to become again a party of England, indeed a party of Yorkshire. If David Miliband stays in the shadow Cabinet and Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper are given top jobs, the future of Labour will be decided by two families of MPs on the train north from King's Cross every Friday. Other stellar Yorkshire Labour MPs like Rosie Winterton, John Healey, Hilary Benn, Caroline Flint, and Alan Johnson are all running for the shadow Cabinet. It is goodbye to the dominance of Labour by its Scottish tribe. After 1979, Labour became a Scottish party. Two of its leaders, John Smith and Gordon Brown, were Scots. Tony Blair was educated in Edinburgh. The stars of New Labour were Robin Cook, John Reid, Alistair Darling or Douglas Alexander. The Tartanisation of Labour is over.

For 20 years, Labour has dodged the question of a policy for England and the English question will now have to be addressed as the Government pushes ahead with its plan to cut the number of seats in the Commons and create new constituency boundaries that will disadvantage Labour.

According to the Campaign for an English Parliament members that attended the Labour conference, the cry of "Connect with the voters of England" prompted Labour delegates to snatch up CEP leaflets at such an astonishing rate that an entire suitcase full of leaflets was distributed - a phenomenon without precedence in the history of the CEP's attendence at Labour events. So perhaps they are no longer scared by the English flag and we can soon look forward to a Labour Party that wraps itself in the Cross of St George and speaks to England with the same sense of patriotism that it attempts in Scotland.

Ultimately any party which asserts popular sovereignty on behalf of the Scottish people, but does not do so for the English, must resign itself to accusations that it is anti-English. The election of Ed Miliband raises little prospect of Labour reversing that discriminatory treatment.

UPDATE

And as if to prove my suspicions correct, David brings us What’s missing?

The hand-wringing continued at the Fabian's Labour fringe event on Sunday:

Can Labour Speak for England?
With Jon Cruddas MP, Kwami Kwei-Armah (British playwright, actor and broadcaster), Gisela Stuart MP, John Denham MP, Yvette Cooper MP and chaired by Tim Horton (Fabian Society Research Director)

Covered by Sunder Katwala:

"At times, the Labour leadership contest this summer - equality and fairness sounded like one long John Rawls lecture. All of the hopey change stuff is very good but it isn't enough", said Cruddas. If the left could not find a popular and radical response to issues of identity and belonging it would fail to counter a visceral politics "which is creating in England an embryonic tea party from a populist nationalist right. If we don't do this, we will find that growing populist response to a profound sense of economic and social rupture, with deep cuts coming", he said.

Unfortunately we now have a Labour leader who does not know the date of St George's Day, and who is opposed to democratic English government.

I'm not in favour of a separate English Parliament and I’m against creating two-tiers of MPs in the House of Commons. I think one thing we must do is change our approach to politics. Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has strengthened the Union. - Ed Miliband, Our Kingdom

For the benefit of John Cruddas and Nick Lowles I offer this Tom Nairn quote, upon which they should muse:

Blair’s Project makes it likely that England will return on the street corner, rather than via a maternity room with appropriate care and facilities. Croaking tabloids, saloon-bar resentment and back-bench populism are likely to attend the birth and to have their say. Democracy is constitutional or nothing. Without a systematic form, its ugly cousins will be tempted to move in and demand their rights – their nation, the one always sat upon and then at last betrayed by an elite of faint hearts, half-breeds and alien interests. - Tom Nairn, After Britain (2000)

The Labour Leadership campaign has finally turned nasty.

I hardly think Diane Abbott's wideness is relevant to the debate. Shame on you Ed.

For a long time it's really annoyed me that the Labour Party have campaigned in Scotland at the General Election on devolved issues, encouraging voters in Scotland to vote on issues that should be voted on at elections to the Scottish Parliament rather than the UK Parliament. I blogged about it here and on numerous occasions on the old CEP blog.

Now, thanks to this article in the Times, I learn how Labour justified this tactic:

Scottish Labour has ditched guarantees to voters on health and education being made in the rest of the UK and will fight the general election instead on key pledges on knife crime and apprenticeships, The Times has learnt.

Voters will miss out on legally binding guarantees, including personal tuition for pupils falling behind at school and a legal right to private health care if you have not been treated on the NHS within 18 weeks.

The decision comes as Labour fights for the first time a UK general election as the main opposition party in Scotland. Senior strategists ruled out making promises on devolved areas such as health and education ahead of the 2011 Holyrood election because it would give opponents too much time to attack Labour’s plans.

Previously Labour sought to persuade the Scots to vote for them in a general election on the strength of manifesto pledges concerning devolved or English domestic policy, and they did this on the basis of the fact that they governed both England and Scotland and could theoretically seek to implement the same policy in both nations, or could make general election promises to Scotland that they could implement as the Government of Scotland. The fact that Scotland now has a nationalist government means that Labour can no longer do that, so it is thanks to the SNP that we may for the first time see a general election campaign that recognises the fact of devolution.

A senior Labour source said: “Not being in government in Scotland has given us a problem in that we can’t promise health and education policies but ... we will be replacing reserved policies with ideas we know have a resonance with the public and strong attack lines on the SNP.”

Ed Miliband is working on Labour's UK manifesto. Given that the UK manifesto will be substantially different from the Scottish manifesto, both in terms of scope and policy, it will be fascinating to see how it is worded. Will it mention England or will it still pretend the be a 'UK manifesto'?

I find it absolutely hilarious that Labour will be fighting the General Election in Scotland on the issues of knife crime and apprenticeships, for fear of divulging future Scottish Labour policy to the SNP. Alex Salmond must be praying that the Times article is true.

You may remember that I wrote to Ed Miliband a while back. Just for the record, I'm still waiting for a reply to this.

Dear Mr Miliband,

Back in March 2009 I sent you an email after you encouraged me to write to you expressing my concerns so that you could "see what we can do to help".

I did so in good faith, but to date I have not received a reply or even an acknowledgment that you have received my letter.

May I ask whether you have read it?

Do you intend to respond?

Yours in anticipation,

Ed Miliband has responded to the Campaign for a National Conversation for England.

Ed Miliband says:

"I believe that devolution has made us stronger as a United Kingdom and given democratic accountability for decisions in Scotland and Wales that used to be made centrally. Across the country, we need to see whether there are further ways of devolving power. However, I do not see a new parliament for England as the answer. The vast majority of the UK parliament is comprised of English MPs, and so there is no reason to believe an English Parliament would enhance accountability. I would encourage all of you with concerns about issues within England to tell us specifically what you care about and see what we can do to help."

My reply is here.