[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZtVm8wtyFI]
Well, it’s clear why British Labour leader Ed Miliband has been dubbed the “Milibot” by satirical site NewsThump. I honestly can’t remember a train wreck of an interview like this since Stéphane Dion‘s in the ’08 election, and in this instance the interviewer was very fair. I do love the interviewer’s slight irritated tone when he comments that they had Francis Maude on the show and he was quite conciliatory (and presumably didn’t repeat the same three remarks ad nauseum).
It’s not that Milibot needs more coaching, I wouldn’t say. One can imagine his advisors drumming the soundbites into his head, but seriously, one has to assume the Opposition leader has at least a rudimentary grasp of filling in the blanks.
Now repeat after me: reckless and provocative manner, put aside the rhetoric, get around the negotiating table, and above all, these strikes are wrong. And I mean that unanimously.
I don’t get UK politics right now. The Coalition is vastly unpopular for massive cuts made necessary by the previous Labour administration’s recessionary spending. The Lib Dems are shite now because instead of letting the Tories form a minority government that would have fallen already, the party went into government. The Coalition replaced Labour, the government that brought Britain the Iraq War, identity cards, ASBOs and Margaret Hodge’s heartfelt understanding of why working class white people vote BNP.
Sorry, the Coalition isn’t an improvement why? At least from a social-liberal point-of-view, there’s a lot to like about Cleggeron, and yes, cuts are dreadful but the federal Liberals here had no choice after 1993 and neither does the Coalition now.
What’s happening with the Lib Dems is tragic, just tragic. Worse even than the by-election ass-kickings (e.g. 2.2% yesterday in Inverclyde) or the regional assembly drubbings is the realization Clegg and his party must be having: that they aren’t much more than a protest vote. Their previous low-to-mid-twenties support is just dust now, and all over the UK, Lib Dem activists must be reeling in existential angst, wondering what they did to deserve their fate. I don’t have an answer.
Meanwhile, Labour holds Inverclyde with a reduced but respectable majority as the Milibot natters on about the rights of those who suffer the most heinous discrimination, parents and the public, and I, for one, find it refreshing that finally a politician out there is appealing to families and everyone in society.
P.S. These strikes are wrong.
