ed miliband

[caminito]

 Cameron shackled by Clegg and the Labour party led by a wishy washy Miliband . Salmond hoping to lead scotland out of the Union .
This doesn't bode well for the UK !
United we aint !

[Oldtimer]

Dont see any shackles on Cameron and his veto on the EU a one man Government one of the reasons we need to be united.
We need to think outside the box?
Without party polotics always suspect for personal gains in the past.
We did it in WW2 no reason why we cant do it to day.
Cameron is not a knight in shining armour but favours the elite. and wealthy in any party.Money to money!!

[avalonmpk2]

Ghadzy the last thing in this world that we need is yet another -------------- religious fanatic they cause more trouble that anthing else on this planet

[caminito]

I have no faith in any of the politicians that are leading this country at the moment 
Certainly Cameron is not one of my favourites .Out of touch with the ordinary person!
All coalitions mean that there has to be trade offs in their manifestos. So yes ,he is shackled! Not that it means he would do any better than he is ?

[xetog]

It seems that Ed Miliband has at last realised that public spending by borrowing the money is a route to disaster.  If only the Labour Government had realised this simple fact instead of it's spend, spend, spend attitude with no thought for tomorrow, they might still be in power.  Also. I have to say that whilst my leanings are not towards the left, I abhor the personal vilification of him practiced by much of the press on both sides of the political divide.  The man was elected and is doing his best to stand up to the mark and become a leader.  More power to him.
M.

[caminito]

Unfortunately Red Ed was elected by the Unions NOT by the Labour MPs who he has to lead.!

[Papaumau]

Unlike you, it would seem,Caminito, I think that it is unhelpful to chuck badges like "Red Ed" about on the one hand and then say that the Labour party is still full of Blairites on the other hand. You need to make up your mind whether the present Labour group are Tory-like Blairites or Communist-like Miliband-ites.

I do not actually think that either description is accurate as even if Blair did take New-Labour, ( not  true-LABOUR BTW ), lurching over to the right when he won those three landslide victories and by those acts turned the Labour party into a centre-right party while he called it New-Labour, neither he nor Ed Miliband are "reds" in the correct meaning of the term.

Ed Miliband was NOT voted into the Labour party leadership by the unions alone as even if he did get more union votes than his brother David got the competition was almost too close to call as both of these candidates had a lot of support from the other grass-roots members of the party.

Ed Miliband is NOT a Blairite as he has denied holding any Blairite ambitions many times and it is only as we get closer and closer to the next general election that we will see the true worth of this man.

[David G]

Papaumau. Even more to the point, the Labour party need to make up their minds whether the present Labour group are Tory-like Blairites or Communist-like Miliband-ites, because they're still the same lot who were there backing Blair and Brown, nothing has changed, and no one man, leader or not makes a political party. I can't see them having a moment of revelation and coming to the conclusion that hey, actually Ed is a brilliant and inspiring leader, I don't think he will even be the leader come the next general election.

[caminito]

quote from Papa  ....
You need to make up your mind whether the present Labour group are Tory-like Blairites or Communist-like Miliband-ites.

I don't think that the present labour group know what they are and who they are  . Nor does the electorate . Hence the low opinion poll rating !

The trade union vote DID make the difference in Red Ed being elected leader of Nu Old Labour !
Even Nick Clegg is a more effectual opposition leader at present

BTW Papa .How can you be supporter of the glorious leader Alex Salmond and his SNP AND be a card carrying labour man  
Surely one or the other . Or are you hedging your bets ?

And there is no difference in me calling him Red Ed and you calling the conservatives  "Tory bully -boys "

[Dottie1943]

Boys,

I really am enjoying the banter between Tories and Labour as I am sure others are who would never dream to enter into it (we bow to both superior knowledge on either side) however, can we cool it a little bit as it does appear from the side lines to be getting just a little bit too heated

I have never hidden the fact that I love Maggie, I hated Cherie Blair but at one time thought Tony was doing ok but now he has been married to her for too long and has become as money grabbing as her, Ed the Red was named that way before he was even voted in as a leader, my friend worked in Westminster in his offices and called him that a good few years ago so it is a name like the Snatcher Thatcher which will stick with him for ever unfortunately.

Dottie

[Papaumau]

Dottie...."heated debate" is the life's blood of the forum system on the internet.

I think that the difference we must maintain is that that heated debate does not fall into invective and bad blood.

As has been said before by Caminito and myself - and others -  we are not going to get into nasty name-calling or anything else as we "debate" our views. YES, many of us, including me, can be very opinionated but that is not a bad thing to be either so long as we actually listen to each-other's opinions.

Back to the motley.....

I think that it is true that people always put other people into pigeon-holes and while those pigeon-holes are often a bit unfair they do usually give us a flavour of the person being discussed. NOT a terribly accurate way to evaluate anyone though.

Anyway...To answer your very astute question about my rather - some might say - paradoxical political stance, Caminito: Yes, at first glance it seems that my being a middle-of-the-road Socialist on the one hand and my being an SNP supporter on the other hand does on the surface look like a very paradoxical view of Scottish politics. Looked at a bit closer this stance can be easily explained: While the SNP used to be called "The Tartan Tories" many years ago, in the past few decades they have been seen as much further left than they used to be. Now, I believe that they are far enough to the centre-left of Scottish politics for a Socialist like myself not to feel uncomfortable in their midst.