Showing posts with label labour conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label labour conference. Show all posts

Sunday, 25 September 2011

Tessa and Ed join the queue

The queue of Labour politicians wanting to aplogise for the last administration was joined by former Blairite Tessa Jowell this morning.

According to the Independent on Sunday,she puts the blame on last year's electoral defeat as

because it was addicted to the "crack cocaine" of courting media barons such as Rupert Murdoch rather than listening to the public's concerns.


The shadow Olympics minister warns that

"nobody is listening" to Labour because of a breakdown in trust with the public on the economy, its relations with the media, and a failure to talk about welfare and immigration. Voters can only hear "white noise", she says, and Labour must promise to open the "gilded cages" of the Westminster, media and City establishments.

She joins the party's policy chief, Liam Byrne, and former home secretary Alan Johnson in calling for Mr Miliband to apologise for Labour's mistakes on the economy.

Meanwhile Ed Balls is pouring his heart out to the Telegraph's Patrick Hennessey.

He tells the chief political correspondent that

"With Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling and Tony Blair, and many other people, I didn't see this financial regulation crisis coming. So I hold my hands up.


Interestingly or not he also reveals that his leadership ambitions have now vanished.

Should such a vacancy exist,he tells the paper, he would happily stand aside in favour of his wife Yvette, the shadow home secretary, if she wanted to got for it.

Saturday, 24 September 2011

Warnings for Labour and Ed ahead of Liverpool

As the Labour Party converges on Liverpool for its annual conference,this morning's papers paint a rather bleak picture for its leader.

Two polls in the Guardian and the Sun will not make great reading for Ed.

A YouGov poll for the Sun discovered 70 per cent of voters think the Labour party is "not fit for government" whilst the Guardian's monthly ICM poll puts Ed as having the lowest approval ratings of any party head.

There is some good news though in that Guardian poll for the party as a whole is still ahead but its results suggest it has yet to convince voters it has the right team and policies to run the country.

But the bad news continues.According to the Times,a report by the Fabian Society warns that the party’s “economic credibility gap” is now so wide that Mr Miliband urgently needs to set out a clear plan for how Labour would cut the deficit and spark growth.

Whilst the Independent warns that that Labour is losing the crucial political battle on the economy despite growing fears that the Coalition Government's tough deficit reduction programme is hurting but not working.