THE MILLIBANDS
Britain's Labour Party elected a new leader while I was in England. After a complicated four rounds of voting, younger brother Ed Milliband (ex-Climate Change and Energy Secretary) finally beat elder brother David Milliband (ex-Foreign Secretary) by 50% and a bit to 50% less a bit. David was the favourite, and was ahead during the first three rounds (when the other three candidates dropped out one by one). In Labour's quirky electoral college, he also won the support of the majority of MP's and the majority of party members. However, Ed's support in the third section, the trade unions and other affiliated bodies, was just enough to tip the balance when it mattered, allowing him to squeak home in the final round of voting.
As a political contest, I thought that it was a yawn, despite the fact that the new leader has a fair chance of becoming the country's next Prime Minister (particularly if the coalition's forthcoming cuts make it desperately unpopular). Not only had it been going on since just after the Election, when Gordon Brown resigned as leader, but four of the five candidates were nearly identical Oxbridge-educated career politicians (the fifth, Diane Abbott, was black, left-wing and a woman, a combination which duly doomed her to first round oblivion). I am sure I am being unfair to someone, somewhere when I say this; but I suspect it is probably what most voters felt as well.
As an exercise in family psychology, on the other hand, it was riveting. What ambitious sibling wants to take on their other ambitious sibling in a winner-takes-all contest, in which the only certainty is that at least one of them will lose? When it was all over, there was lots of "I love my brother, he's a wonderful guy" stuff. But David Milliband's smile looked decidedly tight, and his decision not to seek a post in Ed's Shadow Cabinet showed that brotherly loyalty has its limits. Christmas dinner with mum is unlikely to be as jovial this year as it has been in the past.
Walter Blotscher
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When one writes a blog one must be not believe, once one has an audience, that the readers are all at primary school, or are ones children, or have never read a newspaper. One must say something new or interesting: often you do. But not this time.
ReplyDeleteOn second reading an excellent blog. I suppose the family saga is the only tag the press have to make a populist story. Not only were the Labour party candidates the same but the leaders of the other two major are of the same ilk. It is perhaps comforting that to have any of Mr Clegg, Mr Cameron, Mr Milliband leading the show is to have the same thing. Danish and Swedish politics on the other hand have different characters.
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