The polls for the general election next year place the Conservatives and Labour pretty much neck and neck, UKip on around 20% and the Liberal Democrats around 11% and that’s being nice.
The polls appear to suggest that everything is up for grabs between the Conservatives and Labour; we might even have another coalition. My question is can Ed Miliband win, Ed brought the shadow cabinet to Scotland last week for a wee meeting behind closed doors, and did one or two interviews with virtually no questions being asked. Had a photo-op with Margaret Curran and Johann Lamont where they fawned over him and actually never said anything of any note. Basically he did little and we learned even less, he didn’t visit the slums of Glasgow where his followers live, he didn’t empathise with the poor or make statements for the brothers and sisters. Why did he even bother coming to Scotland at all.
Now Ed Miliband won the Labour Leadership contest ahead of brother David and with huge support from the unions, the membership voted for his brother.
Ed Miliband is from the never-ending line of the public schoolboy private education system of Oxford and the likes. While he briefly held a job somewhere as a television journalist he quickly got a job as a Labour Party researcher and as we know that gets you a safe seat in parliament no matter the party, the system truly is broken.
However, can Ed become Prime Minister? There is no difference between the three main parties anymore in Westminster. Ed Miliband has stated that he will keep to the Conservative policy of austerity which implies he is offering no difference. He rarely makes a statement that allows you to decide wether he is for real or not or that he actually stands for something. Here are some of his statements:
‘I come from a generation that suffered school lessons in crumbling portacabins and crumbling hospitals. I tell you one thing, for the eighteen years they were in power the Tories did nothing to fix the roof when the sun was shining ‘. He might be from the same generation but he never experienced the same hardship and no indication of what he intended to do about it.
‘The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different values, different ideas, different ways of doing politics‘. This different way must be to not actually say what these different things are, vacuous to the extreme.
‘While there is capitalism there will be socialism, because there is always a response to injustice’. What does that mean? Does it tell you anything?
‘A company is accountable to just not its shareholders, but to it’s employees and it’s customers’. What is Labour going to do about it then? Answers on a postcard.
I have no idea what Labour and Ed Miliband stand for, either for the UK as a whole or for Scotland. If, with a year to go until the next general election no one knows what you stand for how can you expect to win. While I accept that many many Labour followers will vote for Ed no matter what they won’t be enough. From what I see, from what Ed and his party say or don’t say, they just don’t look like a party with a leader who can capture the south east vote, and as we know the south east is where our UK governments are decided. They just don’t look like a government, neither do the others.
My contention then is that Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister and cannot win in 2015. I feel that what we will get in Scotland, no matter what we vote, will be a Conservative and Liberal coalition, or a Conservative and Ukip coalition. Look more to the latter as the anti European elements of the Conservative Party will favour a deal with Farage if he can turn the polls into votes. For Scotland this will mean the nightmare scenario of another five years at least of right-wing Conservative attacks on the poor and vulnerable, a London Government for London and we will not get a look in.
Voters in Scotland must accept that Ed Miliband can’t win, that Ed Miliband won’t win and the result of a no vote will be more Conservative Government but this time in the event of a no vote a mandate from the south to really go to town on Scotland and how it operates and it’s settlement. A no vote will mean that there will never be another vote, that any regrets will be too late, Ed Miliband is not going to usher in a fairer society. Even in the unlikely event he won, he is just a Tory in red.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
I thought the people of Scotland would see sense in 2010 after the days of the feeble fifty when Labour won seats in Scotland and did not raise their heads over the parapet, but they didn’t. The first sniff of the Tories looking like they will get into power and like sheep they all go and vote Labour. Hard to believe but there are still people out there who think that Labour are socialist. Well I would say they are as socialist as the Democrats are in the States. We have acquired the same system with one or two exceptions. They are all profoundly the same, well except for Ukip, they want much the same as the Tories but they want out of Europe.
I said on Wings that Ed Miliband has had an easy time up till now, but there are those in England who will not trust Labour on the economy and will hold their noses and vote Tory or Ukip.
Helena
I agree, I also don’t get the Scottish fascination with the Labour Party, esp on the west coast. A lot of Scotland has turned their back on them and we do really need the west coast to do the same or that party will never change. They are just the red tories now, but anyway the post came about due to watching some of the Miliband coverage when he was in Scotland last week. He looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, he was so out of place and uncomfortable it was frightening. I just thought that there is no way that he will ever be PM, he is vacuous in the extreme and has nothing to offer. He made Curran and Lamont look like giants and that has to take some doing.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
Ed will never be PM, no chance – for the right reasons and for the wrong reasons.
The right reasons are, because he’s an ineffective blethering faux-socialist mouthpiece.
And for the wrong reasons: he’s a daft looking, vacuous tape recorder with all the gravitas a presence of a dog turd.
I don’t mind if a leader has nothing in the way of chutzpah or presence – as long as he is competent.
Miliband unfortunately has/is neither.
Pa
He is just empty, there is nothing about him that makes you suspect he can ever lead. I really think it will be another five years of tory government and that is something that I think is truly frightening.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
And he looks like a bogbrush