There's not much overly leftwing about the new Labour leader, despite
Tory press claims
|
Labour party leader Ed Miliband (left) greets his elder
brother David onstage during the Labour party conference
Photograph: David Moir/REUTERS
|
Gosh! How well informed the rightwing press is about the new
Miliband
regime. "New
Labour is Dead," shouts
today's Telegraph. Across at the
Daily Mail the mood is scarcely less adamant.
"Last Rites for New Labour."
There's a lot of detail to back up this verdict.
Ed Miliband's generally tentative
remarks have been firmed up along with claims that the unions virtually
stole the election. No, they didn't. They clinched his victory under the
rules. Accepting a result you don't like is part of the democratic
process.
I'm struck reading today's papers by the treatment afforded to
allegations that
David Beckham
had an affair with a
woman the Sun dubs a "lying hooker". Beckham strongly denies the claim
and is suing for damages. It does not prevent the paper spreading her
latest claims across page one, pushing its "Ed's Reddy for Action" (Geddit?)
spread to the inside pages.
For whatever reason, the tabloids are all agreed that her claims against
the former England captain, reported in the German-owned, US-published
magazine, In Touch, are false. It does not stop them recycling them in
immense detail even as they dub her a "desperate brazen liar" (Sun)
promoting "a tissue of lies" (Daily Mail).
No surprise there, then. Remember what some of them did to
Madeleine
McCann's family before having to pay up. But do bear it in
mind when the same papers trot out any old rubbish about Miliband and
treat the dafter pronouncements of trade union leaders as if they were
already Labour policy.
As I noted yesterday, Miliband keeps protesting that "there's nothing
very leftwing" about attacking investment bankers' bonuses or the terms
of the coalition's timetable for deficit cuts – on which the coalition
is likely to have to retreat, I suspect.
Opposing free schools? Many sensible people opposed them and Michael
Gove's claim that he would release huge pent-up demand has (so far)
proved illusory. A graduate tax? Ditto, though I happen to think he's
got it wrong (so far).
Defence of universal benefits from bus passes to child benefit? Ditto
again. A higher minimum wage and a high pay commission to address rising
levels of inequality? Sounds good to me. More unequal societies tend to
be unhappier ones.
Behind all this lies what Polly Toynbee rightly calls
the imaginary "middle class" routinely presented by the Mail,
Telegraph and Express as earning much more than it does. Articles
repeatedly suggest incomes and lifestyles far above what folk actually
earn.
In real life, the median income is around £25,000, the median household
income £36,000. In the mid-market Tory papers readers can often be
forgiven for thinking it is at least double those figures.
It matters because it leads to an over-emphasis on, for instance, the
40% rate of income tax – which most people don't pay. As Robin Cook once
reminded his Today programme tormentor – John Humphreys, I suspect –
that "more of your listeners are interested in the rate of benefits than
in the top tax rate".
There are all sorts of issues to be teased out about the wisdom of the
50% rate – Ed Mil wants to keep it while Alistair Darling sees it as
temporary – and how hard governments should wisely press the very rich
and their accountants. All those other issues, too.
But the coalition's renewed assault on the benefits of the real middle
class are much more direct and much more pressing – 20 October is less
than a month away – than whatever it is Ed Miliband eventually decides
to offer in the 2015 election manifesto.
By then, much will have changed, including Ed Miliband. At university,
by the way, he used to be Ted. Red Ted? That sounds cuddlier already. |