VISIONER: Labour befinner sig mitt i en kamp om vem som skall bli ny partiledare efter Gordon Brown.
De fem kandidaterna har porträtterats i New Statesman.
[S]o far, the five candidates competing to become the next leader of the Labour Party have been accused of lacking what can be called the “vision thing”. In a recent issue of this magazine, they were caricatured as five politicians in search of a big idea – in search of something, anything, to galvanise this slumberous, summer-long campaign. Commentators have written of the desultory nature of the contest, as the candidates travel around the country addressing one dreary hustings after another: a slow-moving convoy of repetition, the sound of a party speaking only to itself.
[…]
Midway through the contest, each has a settled persona. David Miliband is the prime-minister-in-waiting, the long-time favourite, prepared to defend the successes of the New Labour years while seeking to strike out in daring, new directions. His brother, Ed, is the insurgent, the figure most attractive to young activists in and around the party, as well as those who long to transcend the old factionalism of the Blair-Brown feud, the detritus of which is once more being excavated by the Mandelson memoir. Ed Balls is emerging as the fighter, a natural opposition politician, a ferocious antagonist and opponent of the coalition and, especially, of its doctrinaire deficit reduction programme. Andy Burnham is the outsider, the candidate keenest to position himself as the embodiment of working-class aspiration. [Diane] Abbott remains as she ever was: a voice from the often-neglected hard left of the party.
[...] David Miliband, described correctly by Blair as ‘not perfect’, denies it was lack of courage that stopped him challenging Brown two years ago. He tells Mandelson he held back because a change of leadership would have forced Labour into an early election. Consider the rationale. Having chucked out one Prime Minister, the last thing Labour’s high command wanted was for voters to have a say on his unelected successor. […] [...]
[...] intressanta med valet av Ed Miliband i Labour var att han inte var förhandstipset. Inte heller var han [...]
[...] trodde att David Miliband var självklara valet för Labour. Istället blev det lillebror Ed Miliband som tog hem [...]