Miliband Minor, Greed and Careerism.

In an otherwise typically whiney New Statesman article about how Red Ed isn’t red enough for him, Mehdi Hasan comes up with a couple of gems. First up, there’s his thoughts on pay:

Let's be clear. There is nothing "red" about objecting to reckless, irresponsible and unfair pay rises and telephone-number salaries.

Well, yes there is. In fact, I think that a certain level of equality of outcome – which is what this sort of observation leads to – is almost by definition left-wing, and therefore “red”. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is wrong; but it does mean it is a left-of-centre idea.

Of course, I do believe it is wrong, and just the use of “reckless, irresponsible and unfair” is deeply problematic as all three terms are relative. But that’s a tangential, ongoing debate.

In fact, the public would be on your side if you did - polls show voters support a high pay commission and higher taxes on bonuses and object to the growing gap between rich and poor in modern Britain.

Two points – firstly, if polls (never the most accurate representation of public opinion) do suggest that, then it would be nice to see that “fact” backed up by some sort of link. After all, a failure to link or reference something leads to people being able to claim whatever they like without the inconvenience of having to back it up – just as I now claim that a majority of people in this country don’t give a fuck in the grand scheme of things about pay inequity. Nothing to back that up, mind, but if that absence of proof is good enough for Mehdi, then it’s good enough for me.

Besides, even if the polls did show public support for reducing pay differentials and higher taxes on bonuses, that doesn’t make either principle right. Tyranny of the majority, anyone?

St Vince of Cable, the Business Secretary, became spectacularly popular in opposition not just because he could dance but because he relentlessly attacked the excesses and greed of our financial elites.

Ah, Vince Cable – these days he can be used to pretty much prove anything. If you are left-wing and looking for a moderate figure to back up your left-wing desires, then Cable’s your man. Likewise, if you want to give the coalition a broader base of consensus than it might otherwise have, then the fact that Cable is a minister in that government is solid gold. In fact, given his background (economist for Shell, Labour candidate, Lib Dem Deputy Leader, Minister in a Tory led coalition)and occasionally left-wing rhetoric, Cable is so amorphous that he could be a friend to anyone politically, yet a man totally lacking principle to the discerning.

But I do have to take issue with the idea that it was Cable’s attacks’s on financial elites that made him popular under the last government. In part his popularity is down to his (largely spurious) claims to have predicted, and come up with the solutions to, the global financial crisis. But the main reason for his fame is his quip about Gordon Brown and Mr Bean. It is that which struck a chord with the people, and it is that which allowed this vacuous non-entity to become a political celebrity in this country.

Anyway, back to the article: I’ll also point out this curious phrase, which claims that Miliband Minor

…ran as an outsider…

Did he? Did he really? Because I’m pretty sure that Miliband Minor ran as the only real alternative to his brother. And I’m also sure that he really wasn’t an outsider within Nu Labour circles, having been a Nu Labour advisor, then a Nu Labour minister, and he even wrote the last Labour manifesto. I’d say he’s the very definition of an insider. The fact that he was not the heir apparent doesn’t mean he was an outsider.

But the curious desire to paint Miliband Minor as an outsider shows one of the key problems the new Labour leader has in defining himself. He doesn’t want to present himself as a Nu Labour type (despite the fact that he clearly was) because Nu Labour was comprehensively rejected at the polls, while he doesn’t want to incur the wrath of the right-wing media by actually being Red Ed. The results is we have yet another blander than bland leader. The truth is he’s an insider through and through – a careerist politician more interested in personal progression than actual principles.