POOR OLD Ed Milliband: one has to feel genuine sympathy with him for his latest predicament. The 11 women members of his shadow cabinet have taken it upon themselves to hold separate meetings away from the men. The prime mover and instigator of this arrangement is none other than Hattie Harperson herself. According to the Mail on Sunday, she announced her challenge to Ed’s authority, to a somewhat bemused shadow cabinet at the end of a meeting.
The deputy leader has never shied away from her demand for equal representation in cabinet and parliament for her sex; she is a potential Gordon Brown to Ed’s – I would like to say Tony Blair; but the analogy is just not credible. However the fireworks that consumed that earlier relationship now promises a reprise, if Ed is unable to put his deputy in her proper place before she takes full advantage of what she perceives as a weak leader and a loser.
Hattie would never have made such a move under either Gordon or Tony; but Ed bless him, is a ‘new age man’ and is obliged to tolerate our arch feminists’ foibles. He dare not nip the problem in the bud…for it is fated to become his nemeses, if this shadow-shadow cabinet is allowed to mature and flourish without so much as a raising of an eyebrow in response.
What recipes can be concocted by Hattie (with her sisterhood by her side) for her leaders discomfort? For Hattie’s ambitions are the same as Gordon’s. She wants to sit where Ed sits; but will sue anybody who suggests that any such stratagem exists: like a witch concocting her potion (I am sorry, but this is Halloween), Hattie bides her time. For she knows what the country knows about her leader – but which her party cannot do anything about. David Miliband should have been the leader of the Labour Party, and Hattie knew with Ed’s election, her own career still had life left in it.
There are two traps a Labour leader needs to avoid. They must defer to women and minorities or lose any chance of leading their party; and nothing symbolises this more than what the Mail on Sunday (MoS) reported happened when Hattie announced her intention to the opposition cabinet. An unnamed source told the MoS:
'The blokes on the Shadow Cabinet just looked at each other as if to say, what the hell is all this about?
'Harriet then said that as the Tories were now losing the women's vote, it was important that we made sure our policies appeal to female voters.
‘But even Ed looked a bit surprised and joked, “When are the men going to meet then?” and when nobody laughed, he said, “Sorry, not a great joke.”.
I CAN IMAGINE IT. Poor old Ed made a joke that both fell flat with the Harperson, and the male members. Following an embarrassing silence, Ed had to apologise for his attempt at humour. For while the male members were surprised at Hattie’s declaration, they knew better than to either laugh or challenge the politically correct line.
Ed Miliband is not the strong leader that his brother would have been. Ed was fully prepared to kow-tow to the party’s union brethren, where his brother would have refused such an invitation. Ed grabbed the union’s poisoned chalice with both hands and from which he has copiously drunk in order to ‘lead’ the party.
He even, upon election, sought to defy his cynics by declaring his intention to limit the union role in leadership elections. But he later backed away from this attempted independence, when the unions, in all probability, whispered a few words in his ear. So he, just like every other pre- Blair Labour leader, was left in hock to the unions if they wished to advance in the party.
All that this display of enfeeblement did was to convince Hattie Harperson that she could use a politically correct Ed Miliband to advance her own leadership challenge in the future. She knows that Ed is a frail and fragile politician who only managed to occupy his party’s leadership via the trade union block vote.
Every member of the Labour Party, including its leadership, are enslaved to all forms of political correctness - whether of the female or minority variety. For feminism and the minorities are the new socialism. Socialism is no longer about class but feminism, and Multiculturalism.
The sisterhood are gathering behind their leaders back to empower themselves. The wretched male members of the opposition cabinet now find themselves in a similar position to those who had genuine worries about mass immigration, but were cowed by the then Labour Party with their charges of racism whenever immigration was challenged.
Now Harperson has silenced the men in the same way: now it is the men who dare not challenge this affront to their leader – for being called sexist to a Labour politician carries as much weight as racist; and will cause as much anxiety to them as challenging immigration once did to those who, like myself, spoke out.
This move by Hattie has the hallmark of the 1980’s inner party Machiavellianism, that almost destroyed the Labour Party. Then the Labour Party was lead by a weak (but brilliant politician). But Michael Foot, like Ed Milliband, never even looked like a potential prime minister and, at the 1983 General Election authored what became known as ‘the longest suicide note in history’[i], which the 1983 election manifesto later became known.
Under the present electoral arrangement for picking a leader, Hattie, who is married to a union functionary and newly elected MP, has all the right connections for winning a leadership battle for the soul of the Labour Party. She also believes, somewhat naively, that by being a woman she has the best chance of winning over those hundreds of thousands women said to be deserting the Tories and the Lib Dems.
The pre-Kinnock Labour Party never gave much thought to the electorate or what they wanted. They just wrote out their demands in the form conference motions and if the people did not like it, then they could lump it. The people, in other words, had to meet a socialist criteria if they wanted an alternative to the Tories; which is why the party was out of power from 1979-1997.
TODAY’S LABOUR PARTY is in danger of retreating back to those days. But this time the banner it carries is not inscribed with the Clause IV canon. Today’s standard is engraved with a recipe of political correctness in the form a’ rainbow coalition’ of anti-racists, gay rights, women’s rights and ethnic minority rights. Today, it is not the working class that occupy Labour’s thoughts but Multiculturalism and the various phobias that, if anyone who suggests they are wrong, are accused of having.
Ed Milliband should never have been the leader of the Labour Party. Both party activists, and members, as well as MPs, all voted for his brother. Ed could have been a minister in a future Labour government, but he should have had the personnel insight to realise that his political ambition was limited by his personality and style – was he trying to impress his mother? Or was he determined to prove to his father Ralf ,the Marxist intellectual and LSE academic, who helped indoctrinate the baby boomer generation, that he was fit for purpose. These are questions for a future biographer. But as far as the British people, the party activists and membership, as well as the MPs are concerned; it was David who should be where his brother is today.
Hattie would never have been allowed her freelancing if David Milliband had been elected, and she knows this. She only dare to challenge her leaders authority because she has the measure of the man and must have silently met his election with an inner jubilation that she successfully kept away from the camera lenses when Ed was elected…at least Michael Foot had , under Labour’s system, a compendium of his party’s support.
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