I must be one of the few people who has actually watched Ed Miliband's speech yesterday as he tried to convince the Labour party faithful that he could tackle Britain's economy. The speech had its moments to be fair, but he totally forgot to talk about the deficit and immigration - although these are consistently the 2 biggest issues pollsters say voters are concerned with. Freud might have something to say about the unconscious erasing of past mistakes and the inability to deal with present problems, but lets not try and psycho analyse the Labour leader too much. But what you "forget" is also very indicative.
For the real problem is the lack of candour from anyone in Labour about the scale of the financial challenges facing a Labour government, if it came to power next year, because the economy is not out of the woods and it is not sunlit uplands all the way from May 2015. Just ask French President Francois Hollande how his anti austerity super socialist measures are going in La Belle France: the reality is that socialism is a jobs and economic disaster. France is the sick man of Europe.
Ed Balls said on Monday that Labour was facing difficult, unpopular decisions, but then undermined his bad cop routine by failing to outline any meaningful cuts to any budgets. And this from an Opposition who has opposed every attempt at Budget Reduction between 2010-2014.
The truth is that Ed Miliband is simply not concerned by the economy, balancing the books and cutting the deficit. We have to remember that Ed Miliband is after all:
- a former Treasury Policy wonk under Tony Blair,
- an advisor to Gordon Brown [remember "no more boom and bust"]
- and now advised on the economy by Ed Balls
So his lack of understanding of the economy is not altogether surprising.
