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Miliband puts Cameron on the back foot – and delivers his best speech yet

June 30, 2012 4:01 pm

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Today, Ed Miliband gave his best speech yet as Labour leader – and having seen dozens of them, that’s not something I say lightly.

It was a powerful intervention on an issue that threatens to dominate the political summer in the way that phone hacking scandal dominated last summer. Like then, he has followed the now famous Rahm Emmanuel maxim to the letter – never let a crisis go to waste. Instead use it to make the major changes in society that are necessary but not always politically or presentationally possible.

Calling for an indepedent enquiry into the banking sector, criminal charges for those who have done wrong and greater competition to the big four banks not only resonated in the room but pushes the agenda forward. And it feels like Miliband is now delivering a speech – not reading it – because he feels it.

As I left the hall, someone said to me that they couldn’t imagine any other frontline politician giving that speech. That echoes what Tom Watson has said about Miliband’s intervention on phone hacking – even though Watson backed Ed Balls for leader. These kind of reactive speeches bring out the wry best in the Labour leader, and although some might (unfairly) lambast them as opportunist, they reveal a thoughtful politician with a finely attuned sense of what he believes is right.

Those of us who sometimes worry that he is indecisive can take much heart from that.

What is all the more impressive about this speech – like the one he delivered on Thursday at the Unite conference – is that it was pulled together in a matter of hours. Miliband and his team only started working on this speech last night. It was peppered with the sort of language that resonates with people on the doorstep – attacking criminal behaviour in banks and “Bollinger bankers”, lambasting lying and fiddling in finance and asking why shoplifters go straight to jail, whilst those who aide untold damage to the economy walk away with a slap on the wrist.

It is a powerful kind of moral populism.

Right now Miliband has the bit between his teeth. He’s looks like he’s going somewhere with this. He is once again driving the agenda and putting Cameron on the back foot. Another u-turn beckons – unless Cameron wishes to look like the Prime Minister for corrupt financiers.

The next three years will be no doubt be tough, but if he has the heart and the guts which he suggested he has today, Downing Street may have moved a little closer.

Overly optimistic? Of course. But today – I can hope.

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  • Gffhaigh

    A statesman talking not a graduate or rich boy!

    • treborc

       I’ve not heard it, so if your all right it’s about time that somebody in Labour has seen the light over the banking industry and the massive bonus payments.

      The banking industry have ruined the while of the economic financial world and they still do not get it, Cameron Osborne get it but cannot  do anything about it.

      So lets hope he can keep it up and not ruin it by saying something like Welfare will have to pay for this.

      • Alan Giles

        Luckilly Ed Miliband can speak like this and with authority  for one very important reason – as one of only 3 members of the 2009 cabinet not to be implicated in the expenses scandal – had he been …. well, lets name no names, but they know who they are :-) – it would have been the height of hypocrisy, but as it is he doesn’t sound trite or bogus.

        I would hope, having seen how even the Daily Mail-reading public have turned against Cameron for his draconian ideas on how to treat under 25s, that Labour will now start being sensible on the question of welfare, not just for under 25s but everybody else. With large unemployment and a flat-lining economy it is absurd to penalise people for events outside their control.

        I hope EM has a reshuffle and find a more credible shadow minister than Liam Byrne.

        • treborc

           has something gone wrong with labour list, you can give your self a like, and you cannot edit your own comments

        • aracataca

          Nice post Alan but let’s remove the personal demonisation of particular individual politicians for good, eh?

          • Alan Giles

            But this is the crucial point: EM can say this and sound genuine – I named nobody in the post above, but let’s just put a few names out as an example of how EMs eminently sensible and straightforward views would sound laughably bogus coming from other mouths:

            Blair, Balls – even David Miliband – all of them (well in fact all but 3 of the 2005- 2009 cabinet) had issues where expenses and personal integrity were concerned. That said Tories and LibDems were as bad, which sort of highlights the bogosity of the complaints of George Osborne and David Cameron, for example. 

            How could people like that complain about the avarice of others when we know of their history?. So many ministers and MPs exploited the system, they should never be allowed to forget it – especially as most of them got away with it.

          • aracataca

            Yes but my point is that policy is far more important. If the policy is wrong but implemented by Lenin or Jesus Christ Almighty then the results would be disastrous. We need to focus on policies-let the Tories and the Fib Dems do personality assassination. 

        • aracataca

          Nice post Alan but let’s remove the personal demonisation of particular individual politicians for good, eh?

        • aracataca

          Nice post Alan but let’s remove the personal demonisation of particular individual politicians for good, eh?

  • Chilbaldi

    I was there and it was a fantastic speech. I was pleasantly surprised.

    It was assertive, passionate and offered answers to the problems faced. It was really practical as well as visionary.

    Well done Ed, pat on the back from me. More of the same please.

  • http://twitter.com/outofafrica46 Linda Le Roux

    Hopeless and no charisma!!

    • treborc

       You can get treatment for that, sorry your  not well.

    • http://twitter.com/QMannRed Q ‘Straw Hat’ Mannan

      why the hell does charisma matter. does it feed you? ot are you still living in ’97?!

      • treborc

        Charisma should not matter your right, but Blair was seen as being Charismatic, and to be honest Clegg and Cameron were picked to be Blair clones, and now look at us, but the media the TV are all in this sort of Charisma TV full of personalities.

    • Ejp

      Charisma?? Cameron, Blair???? little less please happy with a bit of substance if you don’t mind

  • John Dore

    Is this on YouTube?

  • peteyvv

    Hope is what Britain needs and Ed has vision. Last year I wanted him to resign and now I can’t wait to see him as PM

    • treborc

      He has a lot more to do yet,  all he has done is maybe change his speech writers. Gone is the squeezed middle, now of course hard working is in.

      I think he has a long long way to go yet to prove he can Govern.

  • Bill Lockhart

    ” As I left the hall, someone said to me that they couldn’t imagine any other frontline politician giving that speech.”

    So the two of you really couldn’t imagine any other frontline politician “courageously” taking the opportunity to trickle the ball side-foot into the gaping, ever-open goal marked “slag the bamks”? Really? No-one? Wow. Looks like you’ve got yourselves a rare statesman.

    • treborc

      Well yours  is not doing to well is he.

      • Holly

        Maybe, just maybe, IF Labour had not encouraged bankers to behave the way they clearly did during Labour’s time in the treasury, and maybe, just maybe, IF those in the treasury had used the tax grab to invest in encouraging the private sector to grow, in a more beneficial way than PFI schemes might I add, instead of relying on one sector, and maybe, just maybe IF the Labour government had not been so eager to show the Tories as nasty, racist nut jobs, and controlled immigration for the benefit of Brits, AND, maybe, just maybe if  Blair & Bozo, (BOTH Labour politicians and in government)had not rolled over and played dead so often, where our EU membership was concerned, Cameron maybe, just maybe, still in opposition.

        Loads of maybe’s, and loads of wishing they had done things differently by Labour bods now, but we are where we are because of Labour’s failure to connect, not Cameron’s having to try to fix stuff.

        Now don’t get me wrong, I AM watching Cameron, and the results of his actions, and you can believe MY word IS my bond, he WILL NOT get my vote at the next election if he does not deliver something better, for the country as a whole,than he inherited

        What also gets me down is Labour MP’s as a whole continued to trust, believe and support the very bods who were there while all this was happening, but because of their ‘loyalty’ to the party, as opposed to loyalty to the public who elected them, they saw no reason why they should, or dared,(which is worse)to utter discontent.
        The majority of the public only really take any notice at election time, we rely on others, in the parties to represent/look after our interests in the years in-between.

        Many of Cameron’s ‘problems’ stem from what happened under Labour, whether he corrects them enough by the next general election, we will have to wait and see, but the ammunition being fired from Labour will only serve them as far as the polls are concerned, the real test is how many of those, who were around at the time, are still there to have their part in our current problems fired back at them in any TV debate, political broadcast, or news interviews.
        A lot can happen, and more can be fixed, and come good in the next few years, just as more ‘problems’ that occurred under Labour’s watch can come to light.
        Time will tell.

        Labour bods may be seeming to get the upper hand, and Miliband may be giving fantastic speeches, but IF he, and those now applauding him, had done what he is now preaching, years ago, he would not be having the ‘comfort’ of making them today, as Labour would still be in government. 

        • treborc

          The problem we have had Thatcher Blair Brown,Cameron, and to be honest if the banking crises had not hit Miliband would have done the same.

          We have been living a lie for so long it became the truth, it’s like the expenses and one Dr Owen stated on TV, people have been fiddling expenses for so long they did not see it as being wrong, because for years going way back expenses were seen as a payment to live, wages were for saving.

          We have been living with Banker and politician who main job has  been to look after number one me.

    • trotters1957

      Where did you hear the speech?

  • ovaljason

    The slight problem for Labour is that in this particular scandal the role of Rebekah Brooks is played Ed Balls and the role of Rupert Murdoch by Gordon Brown.

    • Dave Postles

       Setting the rate of Libor: nothing to do with Brown or Balls – Thatcher 1986 and the British Bankers Association.

      • Holly

        Time will tell Mr Dave.
        But, IF a Conservative government had been in power, and this was just hitting the fan, what would your’s, mine, and millions of others opinion be?
        More than likely exactly the same. And with perfect justification.

        The thing I am most angry at is the way Miliband, Balls and others are being so conspicuous at trying to lay blame at everyone else’s door, when they were the one’s with the REAL power to avoid, or stop most of the problems the current government are faced with.
        Now maybe the Thatcher government’s regulation of the sector left a bit to be desired, and was far from perfect, but by god the Labour government put in place loads of stuff, yet never implemented any of it. That goes for everything,
        tough on this, that, and the next thing is fantastic, but if they are not watched properly, or ignored completely, as is now coming to light, the regulations, rules & laws are meaningless drivel. With hellish consequences for all of us.

        If Thatchers regulations were so rubbish why didn’t Labour change them?
        Oh bugger, they did. But only in a ‘headliney’ way, so as to appear competent.
        With the hellish consequences we are living through now.

        I don’t think Cameron is perfect, and I doubt any human could come up with any perfect solution that will satisfy everyone, but he has to be given the space and time to at least try.
        I would have more trust and respect for Miliband if he would stop sniping, and look to be joining forces with the government to put this right, because after all he was there, so has a lot of insider knowledge on what has gone wrong and most importantly why.

        Pity the reality is, ‘stuff the country’, ‘I want electing’, currently rules the way politics work in Britain eh?
        Maybe us supporters, of whatever hue, could help in changing the way our political masters behave when the country is in a dire predicament, as it is today?
        There’s my bloody annoying optimism again.

  • http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone

    Ed: “… for all we know the traders responsible for the interest rate fixing might still be working in the industry… “*

    And even if they’re not they will have been handsomely rewarded for their contribution to the banks coffers.

    I’m astonished at how those who have benefited most from the system now appear to be hell-bent on its destruction. Greed/’aspiration’ has developed into a form of madness.

    *http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18659660 

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