Very good!

36 year old leader, hell why not? Let the cult of youth prevail…go Georgina go!

Assuming there’s still a Labour Party.

http://www.nextleft.org/2009/06/miliband-younger.html

Many congratulations to Ed Miliband and his partner Justine Thornton on the birth of their baby boy on Tuesday.

Their son is yet to be named. Senior Westminster insiders believe he could be a strong candidate for the Labour leadership contest of 2045, running on a red-green ticket.

Today, Sunny is proposing brother Ed. Ed is an eloquent politician who appears to be a decent person. As secretary of state, he has delivered nothing that can be measured. As secretary of state for saving the world, what? He is a career politician who is so lazy that he hasn’t published anything that we can throw at him. If you don’t say anything, you are bullet proof.

Did Ralph Miliband have any other kids?

Untainted, clever, articulate, and very very good on the recession, where it comes from, and what to do about it.

Oh, and socialist.

Hague is by the far the most gifted modern parliamentarian, but he’s tainted by leading an already-ruined Tory party. Miliband should see the leadership as a poisoned chalice. At least AJ would have the respect and influence to unite Labour after an inevitable defeat – he also has the gravitas to command a slow rebuild.

This “centrist” stuff is over-played.

When the two parties lack proper visions of the society that they would like to build, they both tend to pursue steady-as-she-goes policies based on the gradual economic growth and sound stewardship of the economy. Those with a different agenda can then be accused of destabilising the progress that is being made (insert inverted commas as applicable). Because these people are on the fringes of existing parties rather than parties in their own rights, the “centre” deprives them of a proper forum for debate and makes it difficult to put that point across. This makes it seem as though centrism is where the votes are.

However, Labour and the Tories have now pursued broadly similar policies for well over a decade and justified them on the grounds that they were centrist, pragmatic and in line with the evidence. As though the evidence could only be interpreted one way. However, as the global financial crisis is demonstrating – centrist or not, these policies were, in fact, equally benighted.

It was wrong to assume that finance could be the motor of the global economy. It was wrong to assume that colossal balance of trade deficits could be run up indefinitely. It was wrong to assume that growth could sensibly be underwritten by epic private debts and, having excluded house prices from measures of inflation, it was wrong to claim that the dragon of inflation was slain. It was strategically stupid to invade Iraq, financially dishonest to force public procurement into PFI and so on and so on ad infinitum.

And so we arrive at a place where nobody knows for certain what policies are the right ones for this uncertain new world – the evidence no longer exists.

The challenge for politicians is therefore to articulate a vision of the way they would like the world to be and then to come up with the policies to deliver it. That vision will have to be very different from the way we live today and so, by definition, it cannot be “centrist”.

The idea that Ed Miliband (or David Cameron) has such a vision is, frankly laughable. Politicians will rightly continue to be held in contempt until one of them comes up with such a vision.

I’m not sure about “inevitable”.

Labour wasn’t in the centre in the mid-40s or the mid-60s, nor the Tories under Thatcher. Elections aren’t won in the centre, they are won by certainty.

Blair – with Brown’s help – brought Labour back to the centre, and made them electable for the first time in over 20 years – and subsequently winning three times.

Labour was perfectly electable from 1987 onwards, and would arguably have won in 1992 if it had had a more competent leader (one who didn’t spend so much time initating fights within his own party, for instance). It would have won in 1997 even if it had brought back Michael Foot as leader. And it won in 2005 despite Blair and his policies, not because of them. The only election Blair can truly claim credit for is 2001, and even that had more to do with how ridiculous William Hague was.

In a contest between old Labour and old Tory the old Tories did rather better.

They certainly won more. But Labour effectively controlled the political agenda in this country, set the limits of political debate, from 1945 until 1987 (Thatcher remained at least reasonably limited in what she could do until that point). The long process of becoming New Labour involved ceding control of the agenda to the Tories, and even though the Conservative Party was comparatively weak from 1995 until 2005, it was a Conservative ideology that set the terms of debate. Personally, I have come to believe that it is more important to control the ground on which an election is fought than to actually win the election.

Between old Labour and new Tory it would be no contest whatever.

Oh I think that’s absolutely true. There is a widespread and growing appetite for radical change. Cameron will stick to the Thatcherite consensus so won’t satisfy that appetite. We are approaching the generational tipping-point where the old consensus ends and a new one is formed (as per 1905, 1945 and 1979). 2014 or 2019 will provide golden opportunities for Labour to be elected on a radical alternative to the current consensus, and so decide what the next consensus will be, to set the agenda for the next three or four decades. I don’t think it would have been entirely impossible for Blair and Brown to break the Thatcherite consensus, but such a break will become inevitable over the next five to ten years.

I believe in certain parts of Mun-ches-ta it’s known as a ‘Fergie’.
http://www.metro.co.uk/sport/football/article.html?Revealed:_What_happened_when_Beckham_was_hit_by_a_boot_in_the_face&in_article_id=638192&in_page_id=43

If that happened the issue wouldn’t get debated properly. And i don’t think PR along is enough for proper constitutional reform.

Trying to get one done beforehand would be seen as – and indeed would be – a desperate attempt to avoid (deserved) obliteration. The risk then might be that it would not pass…

There is that possibility, true.

Anyway, the next leader will be some Kinnock type who will esentially spend his years in opposition trying to make the party electable before finally losing out to someone unconnected to the present shower.

Blair – with Brown’s help – brought Labour back to the centre, and made them electable for the first time in over 20 years – and subsequently winning three times.

You would be unwise to be thinking – great, now it’s back to the good old days of “old” Labour.
Be careful what you wish for.
In a contest between old Labour and old Tory the old Tories did rather better.
Between old Labour and new Tory it would be no contest whatever.

Of course if, from your perspective, you believe Labour achieved nothing, then you have nothing to lose…