The Guardian indulges itself with a long, cerebral and somewhat overthought piece on why Miliband crashed and burned….The undoing of Ed Miliband – and how Labour lost the election.
No need for such tortured introspection….Miliband was ‘weird’, too intellectual, he was ‘Red Ed’, a chip off the Old Bloc of his Marxist father, the voters didn’t like him nor his failure to come clean about Labour’s part in the economic crash and its immigration policies. He wasn’t Statesman-like enough…..even today his reappearance in Parliament was about Himself…being ‘famous once’….a mistake he continuously made in the election campaign. Miliband also had pick’n’mix policies designed to catch eyes and headlines with no real central theme that grabbed the voter and convinced them Labour was a solid bet….mostly Miliband seemed to want to soak the rich and give handouts to selected groups of the poorest….presumably the most telegenic.
One passage did stand out in the Guardian piece. Miliband forgot to mention the deficit and immigration in his conference speech in September 2014. The two most explosive issues for Labour and ones he had to address if he was to convince voters that Labour could be trusted. The Guardian looks in depth at the failure to mention the deficit….Curiously the Guardian forgets that Miliband also forgot to mention immigration.
Here is the standout passage…….
Miliband knew the story of his “forgetting the deficit” would prove devastating. “He was really upset,” the speech writer recalled. “He pushes himself very hard – he was very, very angry with himself even before he knew it was going to be the main story out of the speech. We tried to cheer him up, but even then he was too upset. He did not come to the celebratory party, he just did not want to come out of his room.”
Miliband was so distraught that he shut himself in his hotel room, where a series of people, including his wife, Justine, joined him and tried to offer some reassurance – pointing out that the omission had not featured prominently in the BBC political editor Nick Robinson’s report on the Six O’Clock News.
Miliband ‘forgets’ to mention the deficit, a subject absolutely central to Labour’s election campaign and the BBC barely mentions the omission? How unusual for the BBC to ‘misplace’ a crucial piece of information that undermines Labour’s credibility. Still good to know that the BBC’s coverage is ‘reassuring’ for Labour here.
One other main talking point for the Guardian is the SNP/Labour double act that was likely to occur if Miliband headed a minority government which seemed the most likely prospect for many….the BBC allowing the Polls to lead the news, a decision perhaps more often based upon wishful thinking than solid evidence by the BBC….the ‘evidence’ conveniently matching the outcome that the BBC wanted…so why rock the boat by questioning the polls or taking a more independent and detached approach to events? The BBC’s Director of News admitted that this was a failure on the part of the BBC….‘we and all other media organisations allowed the poll numbers to infect our thinking: there was too much ‘coalitionology’ as a result.’
Labour complained about the BBC’s massive amount of airtime it gave to the prospect of such an alliance however that worked, either as a formal coalition (denied by Miliband) or as an issue by issue set of agreements but seems to have forgotten that most on the Left had resigned themselves to the prospect of a minority Labour government.
‘Biased BBC’ noted the BBC’s fascination with this and divined it as a pro-Labour stance by the BBC….the BBC presenting the possibility of a Labour government as almost de facto and therefore possibly altering how people might vote….perhaps they would be convinced to vote Labour if they thought Labour were now going to win, even if as a minority government, when previously they may have thought a vote for a Labour Party that was going to lose was a waste and therefore would vote tactically to suit another agenda.
Labour didn’t see it in this way. Here is an email they sent to the BBC…
Labour was so desperate that on 22 April, Lucy Powell, the campaign chair, wrote to the BBC’s director of news, James Harding, to complain about the broadcaster’s coverage. In an email obtained by the Guardian, she alleged:
“Your bulletins and output have become disproportionately focused on the SNP and Tory claims that Labour would enter into a deal which would damage the rest of the UK … We strongly object not only to the scale of your coverage but also the apparent abandonment of any basic news values, with so much reporting now becoming extremely repetitive.
“The BBC’s relentless focus on Scotland is potentially of huge political benefit not only to the SNP but also to the Conservative party. Indeed, it is becoming apparent that this has become the main Tory message in this election and you have regularly shown images from their posters and advertising designed to reinforce this attack. But the BBC has a responsibility not only to reflect what the Conservatives are saying but also to reflect on it.
“For instance, if the BBC has ever asked David Cameron and his colleagues why they are spending most of the energy talking up the SNP, I have missed it … The BBC includes growing amounts of commentary in its news bulletins. But you have barely ever reflected our view – and that of many commentators from across the political spectrum – that the Conservatives want the SNP to win seats from Labour in Scotland because that represents their best chance of remaining in Downing Street.”
The BBC certainly did spent a vastly disproportionate amount of time on a Labour/SNP partnership but as said this was a pro-Labour narrative that fed the voters the lie that Labour had the election in the bag.
As for the BBC not noting the idea that the Tories would benefit from a Labour wipeout in Scotland….“For instance, if the BBC has ever asked David Cameron and his colleagues why they are spending most of the energy talking up the SNP, I have missed it’ …that’s nonsense…it was a prospect repeatedly mentioned….here is one quote on the BBC from Labour’s Scottish Party Leader…
Mr Murphy said Mr Cameron was “desperate” for the SNP to beat Labour so that his party would have a chance of clinging on to power.
Speaking from the Scottish Gas training academy where he was visiting apprenticeships, Mr Murphy explained: “In every election, going way back to 1924, the biggest party has gone on to form the government.
“So David Cameron is desperate for the SNP to beat Labour and he’s talking up the SNP in the hope that Scots go out and vote for them, to reduce the size of the Labour party in parliament so that he can cling on to power.”
And more of the same here.
It’s not as if no one else on the Left was talking of Labour as a minority government…Labour itself expected such an outcome so can hardly complain that the BBC also concentrated on that possibility.
Here the New Statesman explains…
For a majority, Labour and the Tories will need to look elsewhere: to the SNP, the Northern Irish DUP and, in extremis, Ukip.
It is this foreboding arithmetic that explains why Britain is increasingly likely to be led by a minority government after the election. To their principled objections to another coalition, Tory backbenchers can now add a pragmatic one: it wouldn’t give them the numbers anyway.
Most of Labour’s shadow cabinet have long believed minority government is preferable if the party falls short of a majority. It is also the option privately favoured by Ed Miliband.
So Labour would run as a minority government and not as a coalition….it would then rely on doing deals with the other parties….the biggest of which, Tories aside, would be the SNP in which case you might ask, as the Guardian did…‘Will the SNP run Britain under a minority Labour government?’
So not just the BBC investigating an SNP/Labour bloc…the right wing Guardian, and the fascist New Statesman, were also subverting democracy by pushing a Tory narrative.
Labour likes to paint the BBC as right wing but the BBC’s election coverage proved that it was absolutely the Left’s most willing fellow traveller.
