2nd October 2011

I have actually met both of the Milliband Brothers.

My meeting with Milliband the elder was at a New Labour bash at Somerset House.

He criticised me for wearing a blue tie.

Polite laughter from all the creeps gather round who were relieved that they had chosen the red tie or were wearing the black tie.

I was not amused because I had been given the tie by a friend who had apparently acquired it from a Saudi Prince and I thought it rather smart I was even less amused when later that evening I spilt some soup on it and rather ruined it.

I even suspected that Milliband the elder had jogged my elbow on purpose because he didn’t like my tie.

Milliband the elder struck me as a rather confident, possibly overconfident, man who knew that his career was moving in the right direction and that it was only a matter of time before he was running things.

Later he became Foreign Secretary and impressed Mrs Clinton.

Milliband the younger spoke at a meeting of Chief Executives of Charities and reassured us how important we all were and how crucial the work our charities were doing was in the scheme of things.

I wasn’t wearing a tie that night.

So I asked him if that was true, why the Government wasn’t paying properly for the work.

He looked pained and I had a sense that even though he didn’t have an answer to the question what he really wanted to hear was positive comments from his audience rather that critical questions.

Now I am retired and a citizen of the Twilight Zone.

I doubt if I will meet either Milliband again or indeed any one else in Government or in Opposition.

But if I did my question would not be about ties or about paying charities properly for the services they provide to the communities they serve, my question would be do you actually understand what the role of an Opposition actually is.

The Labour Conference was an exercise in electioneering for an election that is still four years away.

We want the votes of Conservative voters.

What do we have to promise to do to get them, compliment them on their blue ties? Or answer their questions about the Meals on Wheels they used to deliver before the service was cut because of loss of funding?

No.

Opposition is about taking each policy proposal that emerges from the current con-dem Government and exposing it for what it is.

Forensically examining each policy, each statement, each green or white paper and demonstrating why it fails to address the crucial questions facing the country.

My meeting with Milliband the Elder was at a DfES reception for people sponsoring Academies, which is why pouring scorn on a blue tie was a bit inept I thought, but why is no-one from the Labour party now exposing why their Academy Policy was so different than that being proposed by Gove?

Ed Balls ties himself in knots over the economy, trying to convince Conservative voters that he can be trusted whilst not alienating Labour Voters by appearing too right wing, so he comes across all coalition lite.

But he is a co-op party sponsored MP.

Right there he has a better model for an economy that will work on behalf of all its stakeholders.

Community/member ownership. Mutuality. Fair trade. Local Sourcing.

This Government is truly shocking and its policies partisan in the extreme.

It is now the job of the Labour Party under Ed Milliband to oppose it.