Does Ed Milliband Want To Be Labour Leader?
Ed Milliband is one of these people, who are very anonymous. Take most senior politicians and you have an image of them in your mind. If you look at Labour politicians of the last few years, there were a few characters, whether you liked their policies or not.
Surely though Ed Milliband must be one of the most unrecognisable Labour politicians of recent years as he just looks like so many of the others.
So why is this a problem?
If say I see someone on the television news saying something that I might find interesting, I like to know who’s speaking. With Ed Milliband, unless there’s a caption under the screen, I have difficulty recognising him.
And it’s not just Labour politicians, it’s a good percentage of all of them. I suspect that the selection process is so tight these days, that people like Kenneth Clarke, Boris Johnson, John Prescott and many others would not be selected. If you look at the women politicians, the ones that stand out have their little quirks. Just like my neighbour many years ago, Gwyneth Dunwoody.
To illustrate my point, there’s a government minister on the box at the moment, and I’ve no idea who he is.
I would think that Ed Milliband could rectify this anonymity problem, but he diesn’t seem to be trying hard.
So why did I give this post the title I did?
It would appear that he is not backing the strikes today. Is this because he is trying to be sensible or because he doesn’t want the job. The BBC puts their view here.
If he isn’t backing the strikes, his stance is surely a very simple way to alienate a large proportion of his supposedly core support.
You might ask what my view is on the strikes. I’m usually against strikes as in most cases the fact that a strike is called is a failure of company and employees to see the sensible solution. I’m not going to name them as I don’t want to shilt them, but there are lots of good companies and organisations, where there has never been a sniff of a strike.
With pensions, there was bound to be a problem, as the numbers just don’t add up. And they haven’t for years! So the blame for this problem is all of those politicians of the last fifty years or so, who put their head in the sand and hoped that some new disease would start to kill people at 65.
The Anonymous Widower 
On the other hand, perhaps Ed M does not personally support the strikes, and is showing integrity. I guess there is a first for everything .
I dont agree with strikes either, and have never been on strike even when my union was. I have however always been in a trade union, and when I had a new member of staff join my department, I notified the relevant union rep that they were starting and told the new staff member who their union rep was and gave them the rep’s phone number, and encouraged them to join. It amazies me how many people dont join a union, and think it is a waste of money.
Comment by liz | June 30, 2011 |