"Where to guv'nor?"

#11

Received a letter this week from Ed. Yes, that Ed - Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party. It was a personal letter, well at least a letter addressed to me in person – if that counts as the same thing. I would have been impressed had I not guessed that Ed has a computer-programme to do all the addressing and mailing for him. He just gets some eager, young, intern to input the electoral roll into one end of the Party’s PC and out the other come a zillion letters all individually addressed to everyone named on the register. So, maybe we’ve all had one of Ed’s letters informing us that Ed wants to know what we think? Blimey! But hang about - shouldn’t that be the other way round? Shouldn’t it be us wanting to know what Ed thinks?

And he must think something, surely? His mind can’t be a blank sheet waiting to be written all over, can it? Only last summer he fought a long campaign to win the leadership of the Party and I bet they were rather hoping he already had a few ideas of his own. Or can it be that Ed’s ‘Big Idea’ was simply this: “Elect me as leader and I’ll drop Dave a line; see what Dave thinks we should do….”? Well that’s all very flattering – or rather it would be if I could believe a word of it. But look again at his letter…

“Dear Dave,

What are your priorities to move Britain forward?…Your ideas are invaluable – thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Ed.”

Well, he’s clearly asking for it, no mistake. So here goes; a reply straight from the Bus Lane:-

Dear Ed,

Thanks for yours of the ult. inst. I see you are having a policy review. This implies you do actually already have some policies. I mean, logically you must have, otherwise what’s to review? So what are your policies, Ed? Are they anything like the speech bubbles on the back of your letter? “Protecting jobs during the recession…More support for parents bringing up kids.” Sorry Ed, I don’t want to nit-pick but these are mere sentiments; they don’t actually qualify as ‘policies’. To count as policies, you’d have to say how you are going to protect jobs and what support you want to make available to which parents and for doing what. Can you do that? Apparently not, judging by the evidence available to date.

Evidently you want us to look favourably on you as a listening, caring, in-touch kind of guy - just like Cameron and Cleggy do. What actually comes across is that you are a skilled, professional, politician. Politics is what you are good at; it’s what you do. It’s probably all you have ever done. Reading your letter, I worry that you see yourself as something akin to a political taxi-driver. Since University, you’ve been busy doing the Westminster equivalent of ‘The Knowledge’. It’s as if we are all invited to hail Ed’s taxi-cab and be taken wherever we want to go. Or will it become a case of “Trust Honest Ed”? He’s the boy who knows all the highways and byways - and by now, no doubt, some of the back-doubles too.

Sorry Ed, but I don’t want a ride in a taxi. I want to travel on a bus because a bus tells me where it’s going before we start. I want the route number and the destination displayed up there on the front, in black and white, for all to see. And if I can work out which bus-stop I’m waiting at, then I’ll also know how far your bus has to go before it reaches its destination. I want to be able to anticipate the places we’ll pass through on our journey. I want to be able to hazard a guess at how long it might take for us to get there from here.

That’s the way our party-based democracy works, Ed. You build and paint your bus and tell us where you want to go and how you plan to get there. We decide if we want to take a ride on your bus or someone else’s. So please don’t pretend you’re a cab, available by negotiation for private hire. You owe it to us to have sorted out where you wanted to go and how you reckon to get there before you ran for the leadership, not afterwards. If you don’t know those things, why are you in politics? If you find you’re more interested in the process of politics and less concerned with the destination, then you’re not my kind of politician. I don’t want to take a taxi, no matter how astute the driver or how much he enjoys the business of driving. I want a bus and preferably a big red one. Please tell me what you think the Labour Party is about. I need to know if you’re really as clueless as your letter implies.

Yours sincerely,

Dave.

Next week: Royal Flush: Down the tubes with the House of Windsor.