Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband I should perhaps have to remind you, is having a torrid time…..the Tories have just overtaken Labour in the polls, he is being condemned left, right and centre, even from within his own labour ranks, he has no big policy ideas and the ones he does come up with are almost immediately shot down.
You might suppose a grilling on the Nicky Campbell show would be the last thing to look forward to if you were Miliband.
That’s of course if he were to get a grilling. What he in fact got was a few soft questions lobbed half heartedly in his direction and a lot of airtime to assure Britain that Labour has the ‘solution’….not quite sure what the problem is that Labour has the solution to though.
Campbell had a pleasant little chat this morning with Miliband (08:36) who had learnt his lines well and refused to deviate from the script….‘there is a ‘deep sense of discontent in the UK, a sense that the country only worls for a few people at the top and not for most ordinary families…and ‘we’, Labour, have the solutions.’
Campbell asked Miliband about his refusal to meet the CEO of Pfizer after having claimed that the ‘stakes couldn’t be higher’….Miliband dodged the question and Campbell didn’t press it.
The same with the recent video released attacking Clegg…Miliband claimed it was merely a ‘light hearted’ comment on the government……not admitting it was targeted at Clegg personally and was highly offensive to the Tories.
Campbell did suggest it was ‘chippy and mean-spirited’ but once again Miliband was allowed to brush that off saying he didn’t see it that way and that when you’ve seen the pain and suffering that results from the unfair and unjust decisions of this government you can understand the sense of anger out there.
Campbell didn’t raise the question of just who might ultimately have been responsible for all that ‘pain and suffering’…could it not have been a Labour government that destroyed the economy and left us in the worst recession in living memory?
Campbell didn’t get Miliband to expand on his economic policies and exactly what he was going to do with the economy….the best he got out of him was that Labour would protect scientific research and create high skilled and highly paid jobs…not saying how and where the money would come from.
Then Campbell asked about Miliband’s latest proposal on providing GP access…Campbell decided not to challenge him on this merely asking if Miliband had ‘sorted out the problems with that policy’ when it was last tried by Gordon Brown.
Miliband assured us that it was all good and that it was a no cost policy…..the savings made on cutting this government’s bureaucracy would pay for it.
Campbell didn’t question that…you might have thought he would as GPs themselves say the policy would cost £3 billion.
Ed Miliband’s promise to give all patients a “same-day consultation” and a guarantee of an early GP appointment was questioned this morning after the Royal College of GPs said the policy would cost £3 billion to implement.
Campbell’s final probing question was which of the leaders of the other parties would Miliband have a pint with?
The real question might be would any of them want to have a pint with Miliband?
All in all a pretty poor interview when elections are due in just over a week and the national election in a years time with Miliband campaigning hard already….Miliband wasn’t exactly on the ropes and must have traipsed away happy that he’d got away with it again.
I imagine Cameron, Clegg and Farage have been lined up for similar interviews…..wonder what treatment they will get, just how rigorous will the questioning be?
The problem isn’t Milliband. He seems a decent chap. The problem is socialism. People see what’s happening here and what’s happening in France and the Euro Med. All the BBC soft soap can’t scrub out our economic recovery.
He seems a decent chap? Are you serious? A decent chap does not stab his own brother in the back in the way Ed Miliband did to David. If he is prepared to do that to his own kin, what the hell would he be prepared to do to the rest of us?
Miliband’s incompetence and inexperience is only matched by his ruthlessness. Those are a very very dangerous combination of characteristics to have in a potential prime minister.
Sly, evasive and an inveterate liar.
Not a decent chap.
Dear old tony in a nutshell..
“Look North” last night provided an opportunity for Ed to make a stab at appearing like a normal bloke, easier for him when he just had to answer “Tell us why you are so fab” type prompts. I wonder whether other parties have had/ or will get such an easy ride from the programme in its Euro election reporting.
Campbell-Miliband?
Suffering beyond the call of duty eh Alan?
Who the hell would begin to take notice of these two windsocks sniffing each others loafers by way of “public service broadcasting”?
One hopefully will be consigned to the bodybag of history…the other hopefully repatriated after Septembers vote so he can earn a bawbie under Wee Salmonds Regime.
Life really is too short-the weather way too nice-to give these two poltroons any house room.
But thanks.
Campbell isn’t a journalist, although I’m sure he likes to think of himself as one, like Andrew Neil, he’s just a celebrity broadcaster who ticks the BBC’s boxes, just like Bacon, Derbyshire, and, and…..
As Dan Hodges wrote last week in the Telegraph, the best thing that Labour can do for their election prospects is to hide Miliband from public view. His personal ratings are dire despite the BBC trying to boost his image for over a year now. So the more he appears on the BBC the better. Every time he is on another 10,000 people decide not to vote Labour. But if , as looks increasingly likely there is a Tory government after the next election , can they please make sure that they deal effectively with the BBC. Getting rid of the BBC is the most effective thing any government can do if the UK is to become a successful country. The BBC makes it almost impossible to implement any policy it doesn’t agree with. A few hundred unelected powerful senior folks at the BBC have more influence , almost always negative, than do our elected representatives at Westminster.