Ed Miliband says he wants "a new, more responsible, productive capitalism" and claims that there are "hard-headed" economic arguments for why we should change to a system that reflects the British values of "responsibility, fairness, concern for each other".
He said this to an audience at a Social Market Foundation conference this afternoon. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that many people outside the room were paying much attention. In an otherwise relatively quiet news day, this was a chance for the Labour leader to dominate the agenda. This speech won't do that, though. Speaking to a think tank audience, Miliband was in his geeky, idelogical element.
Miliband's idea has some practical measures associated with it - he proposes, among other thigns, only awarding government contracts to firms that provide apprenticeships, making it compulsory for companies to have an employee on their remuneration committee and more intervention from the government to ensure that "market failures in our finance system don’t leave British business behind".
If he can truly make the case that his value-based economy will mean that we can pay off the deficit more quickly, return the economy to growth and secure jobs, he won't have any problems securing cross-party consensus for it.
However, there wasn't much evidence of this argument here. I came away with the impression that a soft-hearted Labour leader believes more "responsible" capitalism will make the world a better place. Just insisting that something will be better for the country doesn't consitute a hard-headed argument that it will be better for the economy.
But he did say that he'll be revisiting this topic in future speeches. Like Cameron and the big society, this is clearly something that Miliband cares about personally. The challenge will be whether he can articulate it in such a way that less soft-hearted people prick up their ears.
You can read the full text of Ed Miliband's speech to the Social Market Foundation here
Comments
Paul Garrard (of-course-blog) / November 17 2011 10:20pm
I feer our Ed needs to shout a bit louder. This country is badly in need of a charismatic and enthusiastic leader with credible answers.
Clr Ralph Baldwin / November 21 2011 9:02am
Its truly amazing that when a geek has someone write a speech for him the media do their best to try and make it look as though the dope reading it actually gives a damn. I watched Eds "performance" and it was awful. I do often wonder how he would react as a person if he was on a sinking ship, would we get a more emotive, meaningful and intelligent comment from applicable to the surrounding reality or would he geek-out as people rush to the lifeboats?
"Hard headed" indeed. Nah he'll just try and do all he can to direct policy back towards the last failed manifesto riddled with self and vested interests to restore his reputation as he sees it over the next few years with some minor more modern alterations. There was plenty of "hard-headed" stuff in their which had "this is what we will do and we don't give a xxxx what you the public think of it in any case because we polled you all and we have a good idea of what companies we can secure contracts for under this policy bilge"
Re founding Labour became re-floundering it, they tweaked their campaign machine, made empty commitments towards community to follow David Camerons Big Society, on policy:
Welfare - at one with the Tories no difference of any meaning there - no change and the disabled very unhappy.
Crime - Further Right and Authoritarian than the more sensible and trusted and more human Ken Clarke. Labour looks more like an old Communist style Party here and that's the key to beating them.
Tough on Crime became tough on Freedom.
Banking Sector - As darling said the banks are clever any single tax on the bankers to "create" jobs would not be sustainable as they would work around it. Also there are plenty of ex-bankers in Labour now which is recruiting them, electing them and even on my Council there are senior Councillor's pro-Tory (against taxing the rich regardless of the consequences) in policy implementation and has no real worries about the cuts.
Labour is no longer economically competent with either public services it wants to slowly privatize or with the private sector as it hates competition due to corruption. It prefers massive big institutions that are fixed in place as it resounds with their Communist undemocratic instincts especially if we try and make it exciting by calling it "modern". No change here.
Europe Labour hates democracy and competition so its position here remains the same.
Unemployed and vulnerable - Labour doesn't want to be seen with these people as it no longer needs them anymore. The PLP have made their dough and winning elections is more of an ego thing than an ideological and passionate battle for equality, Labour has not ended the fixing in selections of Parliamentary candidates and therefore does not believe in equality, as always everything is controlled with only minor gestures towards fairness and democracy.
Accountability, zilch change here on Question Time, even as opposition Labour MPs refuse to answer public questions again expressing their true contempt for the public with a heavy dose of we don't give a damn what the plebs think.
Its a fine line between "hard-headed" and "knuckle-brained".