Haw Maw (05/12/10)
The knives are out for Ed Miliband, apparently, which seems a tad unfair as he's only few months into the job, as opposition leader and top banana in the Labour party.
I didn't have a vote in Labour's leadership election though many people had two, three and even four, as a result of party's crazy electoral college system.
If I did have a vote, I would probably have voted for Ed's brother David, as the majority of individual party members did and the majority of MPs as well.
But no matter what's done is done even if the new leader has been foisted on the Labour party by a handful of boring trade union bosses who 'united' to put their man in the hot seat.
The problem for leaders of any political party is that you've got to hit the ground running, lead from the front, not the back, and brook no nonsense from your team.
Ed Miliband made a good start the other week when he announced that he was going to reform Labour's electoral college, yes the very same system that propelled him into office.
Ed's plan was to open things up to the public in some way, admittedly unspecified, but perhaps along the lines of the 'open' selection contests used sometimes by the Democrat and Republican parties in the USA.
An interesting proposal, if a bit woolly, but no sooner had he floated the idea than he was slapped down by his own shadow Chancellor, Alan Johnson, a former union boss himself.
Johnson flatly rejected the plan on the basis that it would enable members of other political parties to have a say in who becomes Labour leader.
Yet that is precisely what happens now in the trade union section of the electoral college.
During the Labour leadership election there were regular reports from SNP and Lib Dem supporting trade union members.
Making fun of the fact that they had been sent a ballot paper to choose between the Milliband brothers, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott - even though they supported other parties.
The obvious solution, of course, is to move to a system of One Member One Vote - which would put an end to all this nonsense.
Fair and democratic for sure, but it would lead to no end of Haw Maw in the Labour party because it would put the gas of the union bosses at a peep.
