Ed Was Best Of A Bad Bunch, But He Needs To Loosen Up And Stay True To What He Campaigned On

Just watched Ed Miliband's speech. Firstly, relief he has confirmed his support for the Alternative Vote, that to me is very important if we really are going to change politics and remove safe seats that ignore millions of votes and safe politicians who ignore millions of voters.

Ed managed to put down some of the criticism of him from the Tory press, who are still licking their wounds that 'their man David' did not win, but he didn't squash it all.

I would have added the following to Ed's speech:-

"Media Barons regularly tell their readers how to vote, for instance nearly every paper from the Mirror to the Telegraph supported my brother for leader, but to their frustration the people voting this time couldn't be persuaded no matter how much dirt was thrown at me. The hundreds of thousands of people who have joined the Labour party and the hundreds of thousands of ordinary union members who voted in this election wouldn't be Labour party levy payers if they listened to media barons who are afterall overwhelmingly right wing. For media barons to say that unions shouldn't give direction on who to vote for is the ultimate hypocrisy.

And it is absurd to say the union vote swung it for me. I won 20,000 votes more than any other candidate and won a majority of the votes. Only the fact that MP's votes are worth 12,000 times a union member's vote and party member's votes 600 times, made this election 'close'. Under one member, one vote I would have won by a landslide. Even among MPs and party members, a large majority had me as either their first or second preference.

And if David Cameron or anyone else wants to make jokes in the Commons about my legitimacy and support in the parliamentary Labour party or about the Alternative Vote system used to elect me, they should remember that Cameron lost his party leadership election to David Davis among his own MPs if a 'first-past-the-post' system had been used to elect their leader. In fact his own Tory MPs gave him less first preference backing than I achieved from my fellow MPs.

And to those in the press who label me 'Red Ed', I say if it is 'red' to campaign for a living wage, red to tax bankers not cleaners, red to eliminate the deficit by state supported growth and jobs rather than ideological cuts that will take us back to the pre-Keynes, pre-Beveridge 1930s, I say welcome to 'Red Labour' and welcome to a party that fights for a real liberalism that most certainly is left-of-centre and proud of it".

My advice Ed, is to be bold. Don't lose like Gordon did, by dithering and buffeting from one press baron to another and one focus group to another. Oh and do something about your hair.

The 'Undeserving Rich' Are A Bigger Problem Than The 'Underserving Poor'.

George 'Gideon' Osborne makes me really angry. If ever we needed a reminder of how nasty the Tories were in the 1980s and 1990s he is its epitome. It now seems like a crime to have worked in the public sector or ever been on the dole.

Does anyone think this heir to millions would last 5 minutes in a low wage job, yet alone the years of slog he expects from everyone else. As Chris Dillow puts it, the hypocrisy of the man is breathtaking - of all the people to criticise someone getting something for nothing, he is the worst example. There are FIVE, yes FIVE million people in this country who work for less than £6.75 an hour - that's just £13,000 a year!!!

The tabloids focus relentlessly on benefit scroungers and find the ripest candidate of layabout families they can. Nobody, I repeat nobody wants to be on benefits. If it is a 'lifestyle choice' it is because it is a 'hobsons' choice. Who can blame people being on benefit when to work makes their subsistence existence no better financially. The problem is not benefits being too high - all benefits do is allow you to exist - it just about covers your rent and provides £7 a day for everything else if you are lucky - hardly luxury - try living on that for long. Most on benefit end up in debt - it is a miserable existence. The real problem is that wages do not pay any more than benefits.

I have more sympathy for the single mother struggling to pay the rent failing to declare a boyfriend who lives with her so she can claim a few grand, than millionnaires who pay less tax than their cleaners because they are so good at tax dodging. Yet no-one targets them. No tabloid leads on the front page with tax cheats, only 'benefit cheats'. All the right-wing press ignore the fact that benefit fraud and error is much lower than unclaimed benefit or tax avoidance by the wealthy.

If we really wanted to get people off benefit, the wealthiest 10% who have millions plus in assets and earn in excess of £20 an hour and £40,000 a year have got to start paying a living wage around £7.50 an hour, or £15,000 a year (and we need to sort out wage taxes so no-one on this low wage pays tax). If we don't do that, we cannot complain when people choose to sit on their arse rather than effectively be slaves eking out a miserable existence to fund the ruling classes yachts. Cut benefits and see crime rise. In the end, until the Tory classes can see past the mistakes of the Victorians in classifying people in this way, they will be the losers along with the rest of us as society descends into a nasty maelstrom of crime and decline. We will all be the losers but only the ruling classes will be to blame.

My Vote Match Results For Labour Leadership

1. Diane Abbott 52%
2. Ed Miliband 44%
3. Ed Balls 33%
4. David Miliband 25%
5. Andy Burnham did not provide answers to VoteMatch.