Ed the Red

Now obviously this blogging business did not go nearly as well as I had planned it, two blogs in two weeks and then nothing for the next six months. It doesn't matter at the end of the day I am here now and I am going to write all about Mr. Edward Samuel Miliband, better known of course as Ed.

I first started this blog intending to write a post about Ed and how his tenure as Labour party leader was progressing and so it now seems fit that just days after he made his first 'real' leaders speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool that I do just that. I shall start with a brief background into the man I shall be reviewing; Ed was the 2nd son born to Ralph Miliband, a staunch Marxist visionary who had fled from his native Belgium to avoid persecution by the Nazis in 1940. In his early life Ed worked as an intern for Tony Benn and attained a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University before going on to LSE to gain his masters in Economics. His first paid role in Parliament was as a speech writer first for Harriet Harman and then Gordon Brown before becoming a 'special adviser' to the treasury after Labour's landslide election in 1997. Ed became MP for Doncaster North in 2005 and progressed through the ranks to the heady heights of Minister for Energy and Climate Change during Gordon Brown's Government in 2008. Then of course came Labour's loss in the 2010 General Election and the Leadership contest in which Ed beat his brother and favourite for the position David by just 1% of the National vote.

I am proud to say that I am one of those who voted for Ed in that election. On meeting David Miliband on a couple of occasions prior to the election I had found him to be pompous and impolite, once cutting someone he was talking to off mid sentence to walk off. It is clear to see why David was the favourite of the New Labour elite as he appears confident and always turns out well presented, a sure fire winner for the sponsors. I though voted for Ed as his ideas at least in my eyes were much more routed in what the Labour party, the original Labour party, actually stood for and in short that is the under privileged people of the country.

Whichever view point you stand by is irrelevant, Ed became leader and as of yet has been largely inconsequential but this is hardly surprising as he has not had any power or place to make any real decisions. He made a number of good speeches, especially around the time of the News of the World Phone Hacking scandal but that was it. The Labour party conference gave him the opportunity to really get his ideas across both to the Labour Party members and the wider British public. 

Ed started the week with a bold statement that should Labour win the next election that tuition fees would be capped at £6,000 per year for students rather than the £9,000 that is currently in place and that the excess would be paid for by increasing the tax on graduates who go on to earn more than £65,000 in a year. Although this measure is still a long way from perfect as the £6,000 a year price tag may still put off some parts of society it is a move in the right direction and the extra tax on the higher earners is exactly what needs to be done.

Then came Tuesday's Leader's speech. In a highly anticipated moment Ed started by telling conference that he was not the same as his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown but was his own man with his own ideas.

(unfinished)