What is Ed Miliband up to? – politicalbetting.com
What is Ed Miliband up to? – politicalbetting.com
BREAKING: Ed Miliband tells Sky’s @SophyRidgeSky that when he saw Mandelson had been appointed as U.S Ambassador “I was worried”. Says he told David Lammy and that “I think he was worried too” pic.twitter.com/RLM8Dnz5iD
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He's up vs Robinson.
We'll see what Robbins says / implies this morning.
Robinson has moved on to attack net zero.
Some analysts are predicting that Trump's war may result in an acceleration of the green transition.
If for nothing else than it would be quite funny.
But then most of them do.
I was as much interested in those questions asked yesterday - why on earth did you appoint him? And Keith's non-answer "it was an error of judgement"
Yes - so what was the judgement that was in error? As "Dame" Diane Abbott said, everyone knew all about him. And yet he was the JFDI appointment.
Difficult for Keith to avoid that one, which I think is why Ed is calling it out. Its the error of judgement which started the entire debacle and I suspect it will be that - and not a narrow textural analysis of who did what with the vetting - which will sink him in the party. He is a walking calamity, with pretty much every call he makes wrong.
He'll be judged on his results after 4-5 years, if he's accelerated the green transition, electrification and decoupled electricity tariffs from the gas spot price then he'll have done a good job. Someone else may get to take the credit for it, but it will be down to him.
David M showed his complacency and arrogance. I do not think there is a place for primogeniture in democratic politics.
DOI: I am not the oldest brother.
And we could say that to the Iranians and the Saudis too.
If the inevitable recession then leads to these same governments cutting investment spending on the renewables transition...
David was very good at the admin side of government but he never came across as a leader.
We're not medieval nobles. It was ruthless but not betrayal.
June 2009 - David Miliband was about to resign and challenge Gordon Brown, Ed persuaded him not to, and told him, I will make sure you succeed Brown after the election.
May 2010 Ed Miliband decides to run as Labour leader, not to become leader, but to do well and get a senior shadow cabinet job without it looking as nepotism
Summer of 2010 - Ed decides to run a strong campaign as not to finish second from last.
September 2010 - Wins
David Miliband felt betrayed.
The only piece of potential good news he can see for Labour is that they *just* might come through the middle and win the Croydon mayoralty, given the abject state of the council and the split between the Tories and Reform. The Council itself staying NOC.
He thinks the Tories will lose Bromley to NOC, but Reform has decent chances of control in Barking, Bexley and Havering, the water muddied in the latter by the myriad independents that more likely will deliver an NOC.
He thinks the Greens will win a decent seat haul, but only have a shot at control of Hackney, and push Labour to lose Waltham Forest to NOC.
He predicts the LibDems are secure in their three SW councils and will also push Labour to lose Merton to NOC. The Tories to hold Kensington, and regain Westminster and Wandsworth, with Hammersmith staying Labour.
He suggests the Tories will retain Harrow, gain Barnet from Labour, and push Enfield to NOC, but that Labour will do better in West London and probably hold Ealing and Hounslow with the Greens depriving Labour of a majority in Brent. Hillingdon he predicts the Tories will lose seats to Reform and control to NOC.
In north London he suggests all of Islington, Camden and Haringey will be lost by Labour to NOC, with a mix of Green and some LibDem gains. Further east, Tower Hamlets to be held by Aspire, Newham lost to the Indys and Redbridge to NOC. South of the river, he sees Labour holding Greenwich, the Greens taking Lewisham, and Lambeth and Southwark going to NOC with both Green and LD seat gains.
Altogether that would make for only four London Boroughs remaining Labour - an appalling result for them - with the Tories on five, the LibDems on three, the Greens on two, Reform on two, one Aspire and one NIP, with all the rest - fourteen if I count correctly - being balanced councils.
Labour need to move on
If David Miliband was fool enough to not challenge Brown when he could have been PM, that's his lookout. As everyone's least favourite ex-Ambassador to the US commented to Rawnsley, David didn't have the lead in his pencil.
Running nitrogen fixing off pure ‘leccy is possible - but expensive. Guano makes a comeback?
Manufacturing aviation fuel from non fossil fuel is being experimented with.
Big electric trucks (semis) exist but haven’t been rolled out in a big way. Range, charging and upfront cost, plus a conservative industry with a big investment in existing vehicles. This could be where the war gives a big shove.
Small delivery is going electric at a rate of knots, now.
I am fast coming to the conclusion that because the media only like right wingers the nation is only governable by right wing governments. That is a shame, but it is what it is.
The main, maybe only, way to get to the top is by being a ruthless cynical backstabbing overambitious nasty piece of work. And whilst a seasoning of such people is useful in government, politics and elsewhere, you don't want everyone at the top to be like that.
Obviously if events are as TSE describes this makes it considerably shittier. But even without that interpretation it doesn't strike me as normal fraternal behaviour.
FWIW my politically non-aligned wife - who does have siblings - absolutely cannot stand Ed Miliband purely as a result of this. Of all the weird things that politicians have done over the last 25 years which normal people simply wouldn't, this is the one which, for her, sticks out as marking them out as a different species with different standards of behaviour: her vote in the 2015 GE was solely motivated by her desire not to let such a weird man become PM.
Starmer will limp on and become more the object of ridicule and mirth than he currently is.
Labour MPs will cast around looking for jobs outside parliament.
(hyperbolic metaphors involving violence should be discouraged)
If the war ended definitively tomorrow the disruption would last well into the summer - but with an upward slope to offset the low stocks and high prices. But it rumbles on and the stand off continues to get worse. So the disruption will turn into outright shortages with all that entails.
Chatting with my brother last night about this and he said "you're driving to Spain [this summer] aren't you?" True - but taking the ship on the way south. Already contemplating a late switch to driving due to a lack of fuel...
His evidence may well compromise Starmer anyway
How much battery capacity is manufactured annually in Britain now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3oIbypHFHc
No one else would have the ability to cope...
Ed M has been at the top of the party for decades, he obviously had more drive and stamina for the job.
He'd not be good, but whilst i'd be upset if i was up against my brother it was just as much his turn.
We’ve already got food inflation and the building industry is getting a massive jump in prices for materials. Happening right now.
Expect a massive jump in the price/demand for electric cars, as every diesel driver tries to switch. But the jump in prices for small electric vans will be epic.
Santander bars and restaurants are good and very good value compared to San Sebastian, it also has lovely swimming beaches inside the inlet and surfing on the ocean beaches.
Counter - May and Brown were not.
Is his coalition in the media cracking?
Yes.
There's another serious point here about democracy. It's common that we get a new Prime Minister between elections, without a direct democratic mandate, e.g. Gordon Brown, TM, BJ, LT, RS, etc. Fair enough, we are a Parliamentary democracy.
But none of those other PMs had previously stood for PM and been implicitly but unambiguously rejected by the voters, as EdM would have been, albeit more than a decade before.
I would say that he'd start his Premiership, if it ever happens, with not so much a weak or non-existent mandate as a significantly negative one.
David Miliband could return from his self-imposed exile, DOI I've got £2 on him at 1000-1
The really self-aware ones go into "business", where the rewards are greater and the scrutiny is less.
There are many reasons why Starmer was the least bad option in 2020 and 2024 and (probably, just about) still so now.
Maybe that appeals to the Labour selectorate ?
1) No-one believes that having knowingly appointed a dodgy person he would have been put off by being told by the vetters that he had sadly appointed a dodgy person
2) No-one believes Starmer should have ignored advice from Case to vet first and appoint later
3) Everyone thinks that in appointing PeterM, and now admitting it was wrong at the time to do so, he committed a graver and more sackable error than, for example, Robbins.
Solar, is not as slow. I doubt we will see any more nuclear power stations approved as long as Labour are in power. Something sensible to look at would be to mandate solar panels on every new government building (where practically possible).
"Ed persuaded him not to, and told him, I will make sure you succeed Brown after the election."
The first big problem is likely to be fertiliser for farming, which is needed soon and is unlikely to turn up.
Aviation fuel can be tankered on the plane in extremis, so for example Emirates can fly an A380 from Dubai to London, and back to Dubai without refuelling. Not all routes and planes can do that though, and it adds a fair bit of cost to the trip.
Diesel shortages are the big one as so much logistics relies on it, apart from a few electric vans doing the last mile. A fleet of Tesla Semi trucks pretty much needs its own power station to charge at night.
Dismissive attitude to Mandelson's vetting from no 10
https://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/ferry-routes/ferries-spain
https://images.ctfassets.net/zmjc9gr9hbbf/44qQSxEhvmMpe8MYpyb5Gl/8a5cf7fe0f311c0d8ad2a8c3bfa61263/Portsmouth_Spain_EN.png
And I can imagine that Miliband would have been the only candidate nominated in such a crisis.
I don't think he would have been any actual good, but even allowing for Labour's pathetic incompetence at regicide I can see how it could have happened.
Remember, Corbyn survived in 2017 only because a load of dinosaurs agreed to be a makeshift shadow cabinet after Benn and Thornberry walked out on him. In government that would not have been an option.
Whether the public appreciates it depends on the prices before the decoupling as most people only look at things very short term - as an example see how quickly the 4p reduction in NI was taken for granted by people
Thornberry has opened with a bouncer "started by saying that Robbins did not tell the whole truth about this process when he gave evidence to it in November"
Cutting corners on nuclear to get them onstream? That's going to go well...
It just means we will be expected to pay through the nose even more than we do now. How is that going to stack up with South Korea's nuclear power being 1/5th the cost of ours? We are simply not competitive on energy against competitors.