Have I Got The Love?
Duncan Barkes is pleasantly surprised by Ed Miliband's speech to Labour Party Conference.
27 Sep 2011, 16:30
Miliband: A job well done?
Maybe the conference location of Liverpool and its rich union heritage put some fire in his belly, or perhaps it was the hiring of an ace script writer, either way, I found myself actually starting to like the bloke after a while and this matters. Increasingly politics is not about policies but about personalities and, like it or not, many will make their mind up on voting based on what they've seen of him on the telly.
The jokes about his nose and about his two boys not going into politics show a degree of self mockery, and an acknowledgment of what people may think about him. The British like this. The gag about boundary changes turning Clegg into a Tory was also a nice touch.
There were some easy hits - some roars of applause when he talked about bashing the bankers and a standing ovation when he talked about protecting the NHS, but you would not expect anything else from the party faithful. Sure, the speech lacked any real substance or policy announcements, but then I do not think that was its aim.
Today's speech was all about showing the country that he was on their side, understood their frustrations and to paint the picture of him as a likeable bloke. This is the battle that is currently being fought not just by Ed, but by Dave as well. Who can forget those carefully managed pictures from the weekend of the Prime Minister taking his sons to the Villa v QPR match? Both leaders are desperate to be seen as regular guys breathing the same air as us.
Ed did well today, in fact if I was in Liverpool I would happily take him over the road to the Baltic Fleet, one of Liverpool's finest real ale pubs, for a pint as today he took a step closer to becoming 'the bloke you'd like to have a pint with'. There is still a long way to go but it's a not a bad start after several stalled attempts over the last year.
Just one word of advice to any members of the Labour Party hierarchy who may be reading this. Dump the celebrity endorsements from folk like Eddie Izzard and Kate Walsh, that toothy ex Apprentice star. Not only are they starting to become embarrassing but they are increasingly desperate.
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Clearly the author of this article must be a labour apologist, nothing in Ed's speech carried any substance, the only thing he managed to do was use the word ''Value / Values'' 43 times.
Milliband failed to address how he would fix the Labour caused defecit in public spending, he failed to state how he would be able to implement his vague proposals for identifying the moral producers and the predators, all I could work out from this part of his speech was that he was going to employ even more Public Sector workers to enforce something that the EU would rule illegal.
This Labour conference has been a disaster, nothing has gone right for them, and even their 16 year old school-boy turned out to be a hypocrite.
28/09/2011 21:33