“It is game on” for British politics, according to David Miliband because they managed to keep hold of Glenrothes in the latest by-election… ignoring the fact that they have lost thelastthree.
To add to this, the latest poll is giving the Conservatives a 13-point lead over Labour, with 43% to 30% - and the Lib Dems down on 18%. But Brown and Darling are currently still seen as a safer pair of hands to guide Britain through the economic downturn.
The game has been “on” for years. Ever since David Cameron took over a Conservative leader, and definitely so since the current line-up of party leaders - Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg - took over, the game has been played.
If Miliband is only just realising this, one must question what exactly he’s been doing for the past year… Unless he was convcined that Labour was going to lose the next election and this result has given him a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just more likely to be a train than the other side.
In his photo in this BBC story, David Miliband seems to have some bum-fluff on his lip. Is the 12 year-old Foreign Secretary trying to make himself look older and more distinguished for an attempt to wrest the Premiership from Gordon Brown?
How much does the Labour Party hate us? One hell of a lot if they can even consider making Harriet Harman leader!
She’s the worst possible alternative to Gordon Brown. Despite being English and middle-class, in alternative to Brown’s dour Scottishness, she is more likely than anyone to alienate the inhabitants of Middle England that Labour needs to attract/hold on to in order to stay in government.
The only real, logical, alternative to Brown as Prime Minister is Jack Straw. David Miliband is simply not stupid enough to want it right now. He’s not interested until after the election, and the opportunity for renewal is possible. So only Straw has the stature and experience - and name recognition - to have any chance as PM.
Of course, as a Conservative, I want Brown to stay on. He’s doing such a good job [for us]!
Remember Question Time on 7 February 2007? No? Here’s a refresher of what was said:
Yes, he really did say: “I predict that when I come back on this programme in six months or a years time, people will be saying, ‘oh, wouldn’t it be great to have that Blair back, we can’t stand that Gordon Brown’.”
That prediction has most certainly come true. Maybe he is a Hero… or just politically astute enough to know that challenging Gordon Brown right after Blair left would damage him more than to just wait for Brown to kill himself off and then just assume the vacated throne?
It certainly hasn’t taken the Labour Party long to start missing top-of-the-polls performace, especially with the latest polls…
How is comparing Labour’s approach to the EU Constitution “Reform Treaty” to Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938 a “Hitler jibe” worthy of demanding an apology? But Miliband thinks it is - for some reason.
Maybe I feel this particularly personally but to say this is the equivalent of Neville Chamberlain coming back in the late 1930s from Munich claiming to have had an agreement with Adolf Hitler is not worthy of any committee… We are all sensitive about it for quite good reason.
The son of a Jewish immigrant Miliband may be, but I can’t see how that makes any difference in this case. At all. Jews were the victim of Hitler long before Munich, and Miliband himself is not being compared to Hitler, but Chamberlain.
The comparison is, of course, disturbing accurate.
We should have a referendum on the EU treaty so that whatever happens and whichever decision is made it is the people who have made the decision.
Giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, David Miliband has just agreed to produce a letter tomorrow, which will be made available to the press, outlining precisely, line-by-line and article-by-article, where in the new European Treaty Britain’s so-called “Red Lines” are protected. He had little alternative once Labour MP for Thurrock Andrew Mackinlay demanded such a letter. Should make a VERY interesting read.
I want to know how he can possibly justify not holding a referendum on the EU “Reform Treaty” [ie. Constitution under another name]. I’m looking forward to reading “his” letter and then seeing it ripped to shreds in the media and by bloggers.
Maybe he’ll even post it on his poor excuse for a blog? Even if he does, I bet he won’t have the balls to link to anyone who disagrees with him.
This just has to be right at the top my list of the most idiotic thing I have ever heard anyone ever say:
Climate change is the “greatest long-term threat” to achieving global equality, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told the United Nations. (BBC)
Erm, WTF? How on earth can climate change [it's lucky that they stopped using the term "global warming" because it's bloody freezing at the moment] be the greatest threat to global equality? Surely dictatorship, totalitarian government and PC extremism [as well as the culture of state dependency - on the development of which Theo Spark has a great parable] is a greater threat?
Equality is not prevented by global warming in the slightest. If anything it will do the opposite - if the doomsday claims by eco-fascists is correct - by reducing us all to the same level? If anything under their conditions, us in the developed world would be far more screwed than third world countries.
Climate change is not - and cannot - itself threaten global equality. It might have some impact on it, in a roundabout way, but to claim that it is the “greatest long-term threat” to achieving global equality is utter rubbish, and gives the issue far far more importance than it deserves.
The gay icon Foreign Secretary, David Miliband has, as I reported he intended to, restarted his blog. The aim of his blog is, he says to
help to open up the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and explain the arguments, values and ideas behind Britain’s foreign policy
But will they be worth my time reading?
But he’s not alone - he has friends blogging with him! There are six of them from the Foreign Office blogging - Milibland himself, Jim Murphy (Minister for Europe), the “Strategy Adviser to the UK Ambassador to the EU”, and other officials. They want to have a “global conversation” - whatever one of them is.
But the burning question is - how much does this cost us, the taxpayer? Miliband’s original blog at Defra was costing us £40,000 a year, but how much more is this one going to cost, considering that there are six of them? I think we have a right to know.
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How much does the Labour Party hate us? One hell of a lot if they can even 
