whose football team is the most loathsome in the world. However, that town, and also Reading, have been mentioned as places which need to be won back from the Tories. While the erstwhile MP for Watford, Claire "Slapper" Ward, will not be missed, one Iain Martin, who says this below, is not wrong. He is cited by the excellent John Rentoul, who provides the only reason I can think of for going anywhere near the Independent, which was a LibDem comic last time I looked at it, admittedly some time ago.
Martin professes himself baffled by Miliband’s answers at his news conference yesterday:
Offered the chance to say that there could have been a little more caution exercised when it came to spending towards the end of the boom years, Mili E instead lashed himself to the Brownite mast. It was all perfectly sustainable, says the Labour leader, and then the bankers blew up the world.
His loyalty to his friend, mentor and former master is touching. But I am at a loss to see what is in this line of attack electorally for Miliband. I can see what is in it for David Cameron — he’ll love it.
Martin explains why:
Miliband could say that, on reflection, whilst he was proud of much of the investment (code for spending money) he has learnt that there is such a thing as the business cycle. That there will always be fluctuations and it is best to proceed sensibly on the spending front knowing that government tax revenues can go down as well as up.
This is not the position Ed Miliband has picked. At the next election one wonders whether there will be much of a market, beyond parts of the Labour core vote, for a policy which runs as follows. High spending is always good and it is sensible to say that boom will never turns to bust. And if the boom does go boom-banga-bust, then you can just spend even more, which other people – many of them floating voters – will have to pay for in higher taxes, cuts to services and lost growth. In Reading or Watford (the kind of places Labour needs to win to stand a chance) is that argument going to sound credible and be the key that unlocks the door to a parliamentary majority and the premiership for Ed Miliband at the general election? I’m struggling to see how.
Quite so. Happy now, boys?
13 comments:
The Independent isn't really a Lib Dem comic - it's more a sort of Daily Mail for people who recycle.
Why on earth would you describe the Watford football team the most loathsome in the world? Under the self effacing Malkey Mackay they are currently playing a marvellous brand of passing football which is very easy on the eye and has resulted in them "scoring goals for fun" as the cliché would have it. I would have thought that any side managed by the obnoxious Jose Mourinho would be far more likely to fall into this category.
I don't care two hoots about Jose Mourinho, special or not - my old home team is Luton Town.
Luton Town?! Blimey, for one so young you really have known pain and suffering, Jane!
Just out of interest which UK based newspaper do you approve of?
Mr Dynamite since you ask I do not "approve" or otherwise of any UK newspaper. The one I choose to read from time to time is The Times. Not on paper, obviously, how twentieth century would that be. I read Le Monde on a fairly regular basis too. They have a philosophy correspondent. I also read Vogue and Marie-Claire, both French and English, The Economist sometimes, and When Saturday Comes. Next?
Labour won't win back Reading East or West.
They are becoming more and more irrelevant in the South at each
election.
Of course they would have held
Reading East in 2005 if you had
been the candidate.
As a long time member of the Labour Party, my paper of choice is The Daily Mail.
I am not being at all facetious. It is the peoples' paper and it is my paper and I love it.
So jolly well there.
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Um, you just called a fellow ex-Labour MP a 'slapper'.
Yep - and your problem is?
It's rude and naughty . . . but terribly funny.
Keep it up.
Wasn't that precisely the problem?
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