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26 March 2009

Ed Miliband must resign

. . . on political heroes, nationalised banks and family confessionals

By Peter Wilby

It is surely time for another big government resignation. No, I don’t mean another departure by Peter Mandelson, who has to be banished from office as frequently as exceptionally naughty children are banished from school, and for similar reasons. We need a Labour politician to do a bit of grandstanding and resign on principle. He or she should storm out of a cabinet meeting, and tell the waiting cameras outside No 10 that the entire political class has lost the plot. The country is crying out for such a gesture, and any minister who dared make it would become an instant hero, particularly among the young who, as Joss Garman, co-founder of Plane Stupid, pointed out in the Observer recently, are increasingly furious that they will inherit both a clapped-out economy and a clapped-out planet.

Conventional wisdom states that storming out and seeking mass popularity is bad for a political career. Best, it is said, to stay on the inside and court friends. But we do not live in conventional times: all politicians (with the possible exception of the Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable) are discredited, and one who breaks the rules might well find himself at the helm in a future hour of crisis, as Winston Churchill did in 1940.

Nothing is to be gained by staying inside government at a time like this. You find yourself implicated in more bad decisions.

All we need is the right cabinet minister. My choice is the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband. He is 39 (and therefore, as Garman pointed out, closer in age to the people who throw custard over Mandelson than he is to Gordon Brown), physically presentable, a plausible leader who has moved ahead of his brother in the betting on Brown’s successor and, as fashion demands, very slightly diffident. I realise there are no guarantees and this may turn out to be a pointless sacrifice. But sorry, Ed, you’re the man to make it.

What should be the resignation issue? I suppose something environmental such as airport runways would do, but the government’s failure completely to nationalise the banks might be better. Most people understand why banks must be saved, but can’t see why taxpayers should keep pouring in money without bankers doing what they’re told, such as extending credit. Every bank is now dependent on government support. Even where they don’t own majority shares, taxpayers are insuring “toxic assets” and guaranteeing customers’ deposits. So why not put this commanding height of the economy – the most commanding height of all, now that we don’t mine coal, manufacture steel or run trains on time – into full public ownership?

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I am no economist, so perhaps there are things I don’t understand. If so, readers will no doubt enlighten me. While they are about it, they could also explain:

1. Why we are told that withholding financiers’ bonuses, in the US or UK, will lead to “an exodus of talent”. Where will these people go? Who wants them?

2. Why “quantitative easing” – which, I believe, involves increasing the amount of money in circulation – has to be done by buying gilts and bonds, many of which are held by rich foreigners who probably won’t spend their windfalls, and certainly not on British goods. Why not hand cash out to people such as New Statesman readers who would spend it at, say, local farmers’ markets?

3. Why it is so difficult to stamp on tax havens. Several are British colonies and the European havens (such as Monaco) depend on neighbouring states for vital services such as power supplies.

Governments that lose revenue need only issue mild threats. Why don’t they?

I have other questions, but that is enough to be going on with.

I am troubled by one of Suzanne Moore’s many objections – spelt out in that admirable home of progressive thinking, the Mail on Sunday – to last week’s NS issue edited by Alastair Campbell. A six-page interview with Alex Ferguson, she says, is “really going to grab the female reader”. This is called irony, as is my last-but-one sentence.

What she means is there’s too much football. Since I prefer rugby and cricket, I agree. But in my day as editor, we tried a women’s issue, edited and written by women (including Ms Moore) about childcare and so on. Very good it was, too, but circulation fell. If you want to keep out the footballers, Suzanne, you must make a better job of rallying the sisterhood.

I am also troubled by Decca Aitkenhead’s recent interview with William Hague in the Guardian. Thanks to earnings from writing and public speaking, he has no debts and no mortgage and can therefore, he says, “be frank” and “stand up strongly for things”. I have not noticed Hague standing for anything different from what he stood for before he made his fortune. Leave that aside.

What concerns me is the recollection of what my Tory parents, long dead, always said: that Labour governments couldn’t run the country because Labour MPs and ministers had no money. I pointed out to them that ministers were not expected to finance the government from their own resources. But what they meant, I guess, was that only people with independent incomes could be trusted to govern in the wider public interest without bothering about their personal and family prosperity. Now almost every MP claims big allowances, favours augmenting their already generous pensions and loses no opportunity to grab non-executive directorships. Were my parents right, after all?

This column names the guilty men. Who started this business of writing about their children’s private lives, to which the Myersons (from whom it has been impossible to escape in recent weeks) have merely added a twist by inviting their son to bite back? I nominate my fellow NS columnist Hunter Davies, who entertained Sunday Times readers in the 1970s with tales of his daughter Caitlin. Nominations for earlier pioneers are invited.

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