Hypocrite, Coward and Fool

Dan Hodges doesn't pull his punches in this article about Ed Miliband in which he describes the Labour leader as a 'hypocrite, coward and a fool'.

Now Dan seems like quite a pleasant and reasonable chap to me, so what's got him so worked up?

The fact that having promised he would never try and out-Ukip Ukip, that Ed does exactly that by promising tough action on welfare benefits if Labour wins the May 2015 general election.

Now I'm not against a tough stance myself, but after years of denting the existence of a problem and with his poll ratings at rock bottom I can't help thinking that this is the worst kind of knee-jerk politics, designed solely to capture a favourable headline or two.  

Desperate stuff, if you ask me. 


Labour's new immigration policy: out-Ukip Ukip, then pretend you haven't

Ed Miliband needs to stop treating the public like idiots

By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph

Apart from the fact he’s a hypocrite, a coward and a fool, Ed Miliband would make a great prime minister. But he is a hypocrite, a coward and a fool. So he won’t.

Last Thursday Labour’s leader treated us to his latest quarterly relaunch. Aside from some paranoid rambling about how a sinister cabal of powerful interests were out to get him, it was the usual incoherent mishmash of liberal idealism, Left-wing populism and state interventionism.

But from amid the rhetorical chaos there emerged one powerful – and seemingly sincere – passage. "I think it is time we levelled with people about Ukip”, he said. “They’ve got away with it for too long. It is time we had a debate about where they really stand. They do have a vision of the past. But I say to working people in this country, let’s really examine their vision. Because when you stop and look at it, it is not really very attractive. And it is rooted in the same failed ideas that have let our country down”. He gave an example of one of those failed ideas. It was the idea that: “You feel safer when you don’t have someone who is foreign living next door”. And he gave the following pledge, “What we will never do is try to out-Ukip Ukip”.

This morning Ed Miliband has tried to out-Ukip Ukip. Or rather, he’s sent out Yvette Cooper to out-Ukip Ukip on his behalf.

At his party’s recent conference in Doncaster, Ukip’s immigration spokesman Steven Woolf unveiled Nigel Farage as the gatekeeper of Fortress Britain. “We are borderless Britain”, he warned. “For too long these hard-working public servants have been put under too much pressure by successive governments. They need our support. So today I am announcing that Ukip’s general election manifesto will include a provision to increase front-line staff and search teams at UK Border entry points by 2,500 officers.”

Today Yvette Cooper claimed Steven Woolf was wrong. It’s Ed Miliband, not Nigel Farage, who will be standing watch on the battlements of Dover castle. “Enforcement has got worse in the last five years. Under Theresa May basic checks are just not being done, and that is undermining confidence in the whole system”, she said. “The number of people stopped and turned away at the border has halved”. As a result Labour would be recruiting “1,000 new border guards”.

Last September Nigel Farage attacked the Government for failing to deal with an immigration crime wave that was being perpetrated by “foreign criminal gangs”. Today Yvette Cooper attacked the government for failing to deal with an immigration crime wave that was being perpetrated by “human traffickers” and “drug smugglers”.

Two weeks ago Nigel Farage visited Calais. What he witnessed there“isn’t just a trade in very real human tragedy and misery, but a clear and present threat to our national security”, he said. Today Yvette Cooper warned that “at Calais there are now serious and growing problems – where we have seen not just abuse but tragedy”.

Not a week goes by without Nigel Farage condemning the “liberal media elite” and their attempts to caricature his views on immigration. Today Yvette Cooper attacked “liberal commentators” who “seem to think talking about immigration at all is a problem and they dismiss people's genuine concerns”.

There is something comically Orwellian about Ed Miliband’s immigration hypocrisy. Last week he said that Labour "will be talking more about immigration as a party. But always on the basis of Labour values, not UKIP values”. He might as well have said, “when I talk about immigration, I do it standing on four legs. When Nigel Farage talks about immigration, he does it standing on two”.

Ukip say they want to turn the country into Fortress Britain. Ed Miliband promises us a British Fortress. Nigel Farage has set his sights on foreign criminals. Ed Miliband pledges a crack down on criminal foreigners. Farage looks at Calais, and sees a tragic threat. Ed Miliband looks across the Channel and spies a threatening tragedy. Nigel Farage rails at liberals in the media. Ed Miliband chastises media liberalism.

There is nothing comical about Miliband’s cowardice, however. Yvette Cooper should know better than to put her name to this rubbish. But at least she does have the guts to put her name to it.

Labour’s leader has a yellow streak down his back a mile wide. We see it on immigration. We see it on welfare. We see it on the economy. A member of the shadow cabinet will be dispatched to deliver the hard messages he dare not deliver himself. They will take the brickbats, whilst he cowers. And then, when the brickbats have finally stopped flying, he will emerge with some self-righteous homily aimed at reassuring his party they still occupy the moral highground.

And this is why Ed Miliband is also a fool. He genuinely thinks people will fall for this charade. He honestly thinks by saying “I won’t out Ukip, Ukip”, he can pop up two days before the Rochester by-election, whack on his Nigel Farage party mask, and people will say “there’s my guy”.

OK, the Labour Party will fall for it. Miliband’s desperate activists will see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, seize the fatuous talk of “Labour immigration values” and ignore the rest. But the country won’t. The voters aren’t idiots. In the same way they have rejected David Cameron’s “Ukip Lite” in favour of the real thing, so they will reject Miliband’s brand of “Ukip Lite” as well.

The electorate looked from Miliband to Farage, and from Farage to Miliband, and from Miliband to Farage again. And it was still all too easy to say which was which.