You are here: Home » Comment »

Ed Miliband is on the side of the majority

October 19, 2012 12:50 pm

Author:

Dave Prentis

Share this Article

Tomorrow, Labour leader Ed Miliband will join union leaders to address a rally of tens of thousands of ordinary men and women who have marched through the streets of London calling out for a future that works.

The Tories, of course, will try to dismiss this as Labour being in the pockets of the unions with all the usual right-wing rhetoric it and its supporters can muster. We all know that’s just the Tories mood music; the comfort blanket it turns to whenever the public opinion tide starts to turn.

For the tide is turning and the Tories should be scared. Their covert agenda of rolling back the state; of dismantling our NHS; stripping workers of rights, of creating a large pool of cheap labour to bring about a new order, is gradually being rumbled.

No-one now believes that we are all in this together. The austerity programme offers little hope to anyone who doesn’t have a million pounds in the bank. Living standards of hard-working families are being driven down; pay is being cut and frozen while prices are allowed to soar. We have just seen the perfect storm of cost of living increases that signal economic hardship for years to come.

Today in Tory Britain, we have food banks, pay-day loan sharks, benefit cuts to those who most need them and tax cuts for those who don’t. We have more than one million of our young people without work and no hope of getting a job in the future. We have the longest period of falling wages since the 1920s, while the wealth of the richest soars.

Even the International Monetary Fund is now saying that cutting too deep and too fast is bad for the economy and will push it down even further.

This government has tried to drive a wedge between the majority of people, fostering job and pension envy, blaming the public sector for the economic crisis and demonising those who can’t help themselves. But the real divide they have engineered, is between rich and poor

Pitting the public sector worker against the private sector worker is wearing thin. People realise that care workers, teaching assistants, dinner ladies and the army of people who look after our poor, sick and vulnerable and keep our streets clean and safe, are equally struggling to make ends meet.

Our fight and our march tomorrow is about the kind of society we leave to our children. It is about defending all the good that has been introduced into our society over the past 100 years. It is against the insidious new order that these nouveau Tories want to create.

That is why it is so important that our Labour leader has chosen sides. He is prepared to stand on the same side of the street as the people who are most affected by the political and economic decisions of a millionaire’s government. That is, with us – the majority.

http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

Here’s a great pic of a placard made by someone who will be attending the march:

http://makethemarch.org.uk/here-come-the-plebs/
aracataca

Great piece Mark. A rare indictment of what is really happening to the majority of people under the Condems.
Jeremy Poynton

“Ed Miliband is on the side of the majority”

That’s as maybe, but I can assure you that the converse is not so. Frankly, if you think that the man or woman in the street is ever going to take on this privileged weirdo, you are pissing in the wind.
http://www.facebook.com/jim.crowder2 Jim Crowder

I suppose that if the majority of the country work in the public sector, then it will definitely be a majority. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves if it makes sense for a majority to work in the public sector.
Tomleslie

A friend of mine, a local government personnel administrator in the north of
England, earning £36000, took early redundancy at 53 years old, with over a
£100000 lump sum and £18000 pa pension. How
is that justified? She would have had to contributed £1000 per month for
30 years to get a pension like that.
It’s scandalous.
Jeremy_Preece

Good to see Ed climbing down from the fence. Perhaps those who can’t see the difference between the political parties will wake up and see that Labour has taken sides.

After the march he and the rest of Labour front bench need to work a bit more on “One Nation” and give us a bit more meat on the bones.

You see down here in the deep South, there are plenty of over-fed Tories who choose not to see the “insidious new order that these nouveau Tories want to create.”

If Labour can start answering the voters questions of “what would your party do about…” then we would see Labour make serious headway.
williamtheconker

The majority of whom precisely?
Serbitar

As soon as I saw “hard-working families” I stopped reading. This sound bite has be so overused by people from both the left and right of politics that it actually has its own Wikipedia entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardworking_families

This phrase, so beloved of Tony Blair, redolent of his Premiership, is a real turn off to many people.

I wish politicos had more originality.

Latest

News
More evidence of that slick Downing Street media operation…

By Mark Ferguson

Ed Miliband is addressing Google’s Bug Tent tomorrow, and is expected to attack them over tax avoidance. So the slick Downing Street operation presumably want to get out ahead of that, right? Not quite. Here’s a selection of the headlines from today’s papers: ‘Stop moralising about tax avoidance, PM told’ – Guardian p.23 ‘Tougher tax rules would cost jobs, minister warns’ – Financial Times p.3 ‘Cameron avoids showdown over Google tax row’ – Times p.15 ‘No taxing questions as PM [...]
Read more →
Comment
Where are the women over 50 on our TV screens?

By Harriet Harman

Most people like to think that we live in a society that is fair and equal but for some it is still not equal at all. When it comes to TV presenters, women disappear when they reach over the age of 50. As part of the work of the Older Women’s Commission, I wrote to the six main UK broadcasters asking them how many older women they employ on screen and behind the camera. The figures provided by broadcasters show [...]
Read more →
Featured
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Leader

By Stefan Stern

That’s it. Enough is enough. I try to be reasonable. But you can only push somebody so far. It’s time to sort this out once and for all. I am fed up with this huge and growing army of sycophants and cheerleaders constantly bigging up Ed Miliband, and making helpful or supportive interventions on his behalf. The list is endless. Let’s shine a spotlight on the guilty men and women. There’s… well, there’s… er… you know… er… thingy… on a [...]
Read more →
Comment Europe
We do not stigmatise your country, Deputy Prime Minister. It is you and your party we find distasteful

By Rob Marchant

Last Saturday a senior European politician wrote an article in the British press which made you want to shout at the computer screen. Not such an unusual event, you might think, but this was not a debater’s disagreement as one might have had with the viewpoint of a Tory, a Gaullist or a Christian Democrat. It was one which also left the reader feeling a bit nauseous. And that is because, rather than an honestly-expressed case justified with some evidence, it was [...]
Read more →
News
Watson urges investigation of “supressed” Leveson evidence – Media roundup: May 21st, 2013

Subscribers to our morning email get the best of LabourList – including the Media and blog round up – every weekday morning. If you were a subscriber you would have already received this in your inbox. You can sign up here. Labour proposes teachers spend time in industry “All teachers involved in vocational education would have to spend a period of each year in industry, under Labour plans to integrate further education with emerging skills gaps identified by businesses. The strategy – announced on [...]
Read more →