Across the pond

Predictably the right wing press has had a field day in painting the Labour party’s new leader, as Red Ed. Basing their analysis on the fact that Ed defeated his brother on the fourth vote because he had more of the trade unionists’ vote.

Less predictably the BBC, our public service broadcaster which of often castigated as being left wing, and The Guardian/Observer, which is our only well funded left of centre media group, mostly went along with this scenario.

Forgetting that the trade unions are not limited liability companies with bosses appointed by the shareholders and paid millions more than in the days of Arthur Scargill and Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones, in the 1960s and the 1970s when the trade union bosses were courted as avidly by the then Conservative leader, Edward Heath, as by Harold Wilson. The trade union bosses are elected by their members and cannot stay in office unless they continue to have the support of their members.

The mainstream press talks to the union leaders, including Derek Simpson, who as head of Unite, ran a very effective campaign supporting Ed.

But the votes which won Ed the leadership, were cast not by the trade union bosses, but by the members. No-one knows which unions the people who supported Ed, as compared with the many trade unionists who voted for the other candidates, including his brother.

But only a small percentage of trade unionists voted.

Who they were and why they voted that way, no-one knows.

But the assumption of the mainstream press is that they are blue collar workers led by trade union bosses.

But it is equally likely that they were white collar workers, some of them in not very well paid public sector jobs. Others highly paid engineers, etc., who happen to believe in trade unionism.

Which means working, with colleagues to influence what happens in whatever organisation employs you.

Ed Miliband won because, alone amongst the candidates, he remembered the historic links between Labour and the trade unionists. He risked the wrath of the Daily Mail.

Today’s Daily Mail online is front paging with:

An open door to benefit tourists: EU warns Britain it can’t stop thousands more migrants claiming welfare handouts

The only mention of the Labour leadership battle is in a column by their favourite red-bashing colunmnist, Richard Littlejohn, with a a hatched job alleging that Ed did not sign his child’s birth certificate. In the course of which Littlejohn harasses Ed for not being married.

He lives with a partner!!!

A woman not his wife.

Sadly, for the Daily Mail, this is not such a great scandal in 2010. If only Ed had had a male partner, the Daily Mail would have been able to frontpage on that.

Instead of leading with yet another story pandering to working class, and middle class, fears about foreigners.