Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesEXCLUSIVE: Ed Miliband “told BBC he knew nothing about Tunisia”
Posted on March 08, 2011The question of whether British politicians have got a good enough handle on the uprisings in North Africa is increasingly occupying the minds of political commentators. Against that background, I was recently told a fascinating snippet from someone inside the BBC which casts further doubt on whether Westminster is up to speed.
It goes a little something like this…
When Ed Miliband appeared on the Andrew Marr Show back on 16th January, he arrived for makeup beforehand, plonked himself down in the chair and announced “By the way, what’s been happening in Tunisia? I know absolutely nothing about it.”
A slightly shocked silence ensued, with the BBC staff present dually wondering a) how on earth he hadn’t been briefed for a major interview on unrest that by then had been running for a month and had in the previous two days led to the Tunisian President fleeing into exile, and b) whether they should prep Marr to grill him on it as a weak point.
As it turned out, for whatever reason Marr didn’t ask about the topic at all – but it hardly inspires confidence that Ed didn’t know about the topic and, more worryingly for Labour, just merrily announced that he didn’t to the staff of the BBC’s major political chatshow.
I should say at this point that this is single-sourced (albeit from a person who was apparently there at the time) , so it’s further to the tittle-tattle end of the news scale than the hard-copy-leaked-document end, but interesting nonetheless.
EU cracks open in Westminster and Fleet Street
Posted on February 28, 2011For those interested in eurosceptic politics, there are some serious rumblings under way in the Westminster jungle. The tectonic plates of Westminster perception are starting to shift – almost imperceptibly, but it’s still happening and it’s not unreasonable to read into their movement some hope for the future.
Politics is as much about perception as about reality. There have been polls for ages showing the public dislike of Brussels, and the true harm being done to the economy and our legal system is well-documented. Despite that, the feeling has persisted in the Westminster Village that no-one is interested, or worse that discussing the issue marks one out as toxic. That’s due to all sorts of factors, not least the feedback loop of people who think that telling their friends that it is so, who then reinforce their own assumption and so on ad infinitum.
But now cracks are starting to appear in those assumptions. When The Freedom Association launched the Better Off Out campaign in 2006, its aim was not to convert every MP overnight but to demonstrate that the doomsayers were mistaken.
By proving that the sky did not fall in on the heads of Philip Davies, Philip Hollobone or Douglas Carswell, they started a process of erosion that has seen many other MPs feel free to speak out on the topic. There are now 21 MPs as well as numerous MEPs, councillors and Members of the Northern Irish Assembly who are signed up.
Davies, Hollobone and Carswell turned marginal seats at 2005 into hefty majorities in 2010 despite or because of their EU views – they drank from a supposedly poisoned chalice and they are in hearty health.
Others in Parliament are yet to come out against the whole project but now feel more free to speak out and act against the EU more generally – a trend most notable in the recent snub to the European Court of Human Rights over votes for prisoners.
Things are changing on the pro-EU side, too. It’s long been the case that those opposed to Brussels want a referendum, while those in favour of the EU either oppose one entirely or promise it and then dodge around their commitment later.
That situation, too, seems to be changing. Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society recently came out in favour of an In/Out referendum, whilst reporting that the Shadow Europe Minister Wayne David has said it’s on the table for Labour’s policy review. David and Katwala have been joined by Keith Vaz, another of the EU’s prominent cheerleaders.
On the other side of the debate, James Forsyth has reported that Coalition Ministers (even Liberal Democrats) have started realising to their horror quite how much the EU binds their hands in Government. If you’d asked me a few months ago whether Oliver Letwin would ever be reported to be thinking that maybe Britain should leave the European project, I’d have laughed you out of town – nevertheless, Forsyth reports exactly that.
There is a third leg to the policy tripod, though. If MPs’ assumptions in the Commons change, and Ministers start to want the same thing, they are still unlikely to act unless public opinion will be on their side. They need to see that voters will not just not mind but actually reward them for taking a particular step.
This is already being tested by the Daily Express’ adoption of a Better Off Out position, which serves a similar role to Better Off Out MPs in breaking open the market of ideas on Fleet Street. For those that may scoff at the Express’s influence, don’t forget that they were early adopters in helping the TaxPayers’ Alliance break into the market and eventually establish a level of profile that distinctly irks the TPA’s critics. In the old story, the boy who pointed out that the Emperor was naked was just a kid, and yet he still managed to smash a farcical illusion held by the entire Royal Court.
The question is whether other papers or commentators will follow the Express’s lead. The first hint of that possibility appeared this weekend on the Twitter feed of the Express’s Patrick O’Flynn, where he said that on days where they go big on the EU “definitely put sales up” for the paper.
To change the politics of the EU debate, we need to sweep away a deeply entrenched system of perception and assumption. The cracks are showing in Parliament, the stubborn obstructionism of our opponents is starting to break down, Fleet Street’s unanimity is broken and – crucially – there are signs that there may be sales and votes in the issue.
Make no mistake about it, the plates are shifting.
The genius of Tumblr
Posted on January 14, 2011Tumblr photoblogs are one of the glorious, niche pleasures of the internet. My favourite is still probably the hilarious “Kim Jong Il Looking At Things” but there’s a new kid on the block which is a close second.
I present for your delectation, “Awkward Ed Miliband Moments” – which, among other classics, gives me an opportunity to repost this:
Has Ed been hitting the (hair dye) bottle?
Posted on December 22, 2010It’s a Miliband family trait to have a tuft of white hair – both David and Ed have one. Or at least Ed did, prior to today’s speech. Compare and contrast his thatch at a recent PMQs and at today’s speech:
Has Ed been at the hair dye? If not, he’s the only man in history to have a new baby in the house and yet get fewer grey hairs…
UPDATE: Over at PoliticsHome the inestimable Paul Waugh has succeeded in getting an official statement on the issue from the Labour Party Leader’s Press Office…
“No, he does not dye his hair. He had a haircut recently and the grey is less visible. After careful checking, I’m confident the grey bit is still there.”
The image of a press officer carrying out “careful checking” on the Rt Honourable scalp is a memorable one.
Jack Straw’s Colemanballs moment
Posted on September 29, 2010In amidst the endless navel-gazing about the Milibands – from the BBC’s montage package you’d assume a) David Milibad was a weedier version of Rocky and b) that he was now dead – there’s just been a howler from Jack Straw.
Poor old Jack had been wheeled out to say how much he thought David’s decision to take a step back from the front bench was the right one. Live on air straight after the clip of D-Mili’s announcement he came out with this gem that is deserving of Private Eye’s Colemanballs section:
“As you have seen from those pictures on television, he is a relieved man, and so is his wife, Louise.”
Hasn’t Mrs M had a tough enough week?
Labour’s house divided
Posted on September 28, 2010When I arrived at Labour Conference yesterday I fully expected there to be some consternation and lingering anger over the leadership result. After all, the more mainstream frontrunner had been pipped at the post by his brother, courtesy of the heavy hand of the unions.
In reality, I was taken aback by quite how much bitterness there was on both sides of the Miliband divide. Talking to Labour activists, staffers and MPs as well as political journalists I was amazed by how personal and tribal the dispute is becoming. Notably, it seemed to be getting worse as the day went on, not fading away as you’d assume if it was just a hurtful blip.
The fracture lines are all around the issues that have the potential to be most toxic and most damaging. The huge influence and dodgy practices of the unions, the fraternal betrayal, the allegations of broken rules and most recently the very personal briefing against each side by the other.
For example, David Miliband’s camp are furious that the Ed camp are briefing that David has always been a bottler who missed numerous chances to knife Gordon Brown. That attack (whilst justified) is pretty personal when it comes from your brother – but to make it worse, it was Ed who persuaded David not to knife Brown in the first place.
Looking back on the years of Tory infighting and Brownite/Blairite tension, it’s clear that this could become an extremely serious problem for the Labour Party. In the short term, David’s continuing silence on his own future is overshadowing the whole media narrative and disrupting the start of Ed’s term in office. In the longer term, there is now entrenched and acidic resentment between key constituent parts of the Labour Party that will come to a head eventually.
As far as I can see there is no way that David Miliband could serve in his brother’s Shadow Cabinet. Nor, really, could he just sit on the backbenches in obscurity, and his chances of being the next Labour Leader are shot to pieces thanks to the problems of following one Miliband with another. I think it’s much more likely that he will leave the Commons in the next year or two.
For all the talk that Ed Miliband will stand up to the unions to prove his independence, I don’t think there’s a cat in hell’s chance of that. While some would say he’s safe now he’s been elected, you’ve got to remember that it only takes a couple of dozen Labour MPs to launch a leadership challenge – and the unions now own a lot more MPs than that. If the unions did challenge him it’s highly unlikely that the Blairites would save him after the events of the last few days.
Whilst this is undoubtedly really bad news for Labour, I expect things will get better for them for the next couple of days. The media are a bit worried that if they hammer Ed too hard then he will get the public’s sympathy – so I expect them to lay off him a bit. Until he makes a mistake, at which point it will be no holds barred.
An undercover Bear
Posted on September 13, 2010A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the radical redesign David Miliband’s campaign team put him through at his “Movement for Change” rally. Well, true to form Tory Bear went one better and actually went undercover at the rally itself.
His hilarious write-up of his afternoon with the “Movement for Strange, including full details of the weird evangelical overtones and in some casesbizarrely Communist members of the audience, is online here. Go read – and remember next time D-Mili talks about “Change” and the grassroots what the reality is actually like.