You Gotta Have Faith (03/10/12)
I listened to Ed Miliband's 'leader's speech' at the Labour party conference yesterday - the full bhuna I have to confess, not just the sound bites that made their way on to TV or into the newspaper headlines.
The whole affair left me completely unmoved, I also have to say, because the speech was full of platitudes and empty slogans while saying nothing much at all about the tough times and choices facing the country.
What did interest me though was Ed's bizarre description of his commitment to politics as a 'faith' - because Ed, like myself, has always held himself out to be a non-religious person.
Now I couldn't really care two hoots whether Ed is an atheist, agnostic or whether he believes in God for that matter - to my mind that's a personal matter and has nothing to do with his role as a politician.
But I detected a bit of fancy footwork here, a bit of careful repositioning or political 'spin' you might call it, so that Ed looks rather less frightening to the God brigade.
Which is presumably why Ed got married recently after years of living perfectly happily with his partner, Justine Thornton, albeit in a previously unwedded state.
The fact that politicians do things to appear more 'normal' is not new Tony Blair once famously told Gordon Brown he would never become Prime Minister unless he (Gordo) gave up his bachelor days and ways and got himself married.
Shortly afterwards Gordon found himself a wife, of course.
Take another example the one involving Ed Miliband going to his local comprehensive school instead of some fee paying school for privileged toffs.
Which makes Ed 'one of us' in the Labour Tribe instead of one of them.
Yet dig a little deeper in the Labour Party and what do you find?
Well you find that its deputy leader, Harriet Harman, went to an exclusive fee paying school as so did one of the new rising stars of the party, Labour's business spokesperson Chuka Umanna.
An even more obvious example is that of Labour's most successful leader ever, Tony Blair, who led the party to three successive general election victories.
Tony Blair was privately educated in Edinburgh of course, as was Labour's former Scottish leader, Iain Gray.
Yet no one in the Labour Party made a fuss at the time.
'Pot and kettle' is the phrase that springs to mind.
All this political spin and manipulation is enough to try the patience of a saint.
The whole affair left me completely unmoved, I also have to say, because the speech was full of platitudes and empty slogans while saying nothing much at all about the tough times and choices facing the country.
What did interest me though was Ed's bizarre description of his commitment to politics as a 'faith' - because Ed, like myself, has always held himself out to be a non-religious person.
Now I couldn't really care two hoots whether Ed is an atheist, agnostic or whether he believes in God for that matter - to my mind that's a personal matter and has nothing to do with his role as a politician.
But I detected a bit of fancy footwork here, a bit of careful repositioning or political 'spin' you might call it, so that Ed looks rather less frightening to the God brigade.
Which is presumably why Ed got married recently after years of living perfectly happily with his partner, Justine Thornton, albeit in a previously unwedded state.
The fact that politicians do things to appear more 'normal' is not new Tony Blair once famously told Gordon Brown he would never become Prime Minister unless he (Gordo) gave up his bachelor days and ways and got himself married.
Shortly afterwards Gordon found himself a wife, of course.
Take another example the one involving Ed Miliband going to his local comprehensive school instead of some fee paying school for privileged toffs.
Which makes Ed 'one of us' in the Labour Tribe instead of one of them.
Yet dig a little deeper in the Labour Party and what do you find?
Well you find that its deputy leader, Harriet Harman, went to an exclusive fee paying school as so did one of the new rising stars of the party, Labour's business spokesperson Chuka Umanna.
An even more obvious example is that of Labour's most successful leader ever, Tony Blair, who led the party to three successive general election victories.
Tony Blair was privately educated in Edinburgh of course, as was Labour's former Scottish leader, Iain Gray.
Yet no one in the Labour Party made a fuss at the time.
'Pot and kettle' is the phrase that springs to mind.
All this political spin and manipulation is enough to try the patience of a saint.
