Showing posts with label Ed Miliband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ed Miliband. Show all posts
February 21, 2018
Ed Miliband on Universal Basic Income - BBC Newsnight
March 06, 2013
BBC: Labour leader Ed Miliband has accused David Cameron of being "out of touch" for opposing European Union plans to cap bankers' bonuses.
He claimed the prime minister was "straining every muscle" to help the rich while doing little for the poor.
But Mr Cameron said the Labour leader wanted to "play and pose politics", while the UK needed to do all it could to attract the world's largest banks.
The UK was the only EU country to oppose the cap in a vote on Tuesday.
Under the plan, bonuses would be limited to 100% of a banker's annual salary - or to 200% if shareholders approve.
During a lively Prime Minister's Questions session, Mr Miliband said Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne were the only people who thought it was "a priority to fight for bigger bonuses". » | Wednesday, March 06, 2013
October 07, 2012
THE OBSERVER – EDITORIAL: He proposes that they should be kept on a short leash. It's a start, and will cheer Labour conference delegates
When Ed Miliband tells Labour conference delegates that he plans to break up Britain's banks should they backslide on tough new regulations, he is going further than the usual banker-bashing. When he attacks the government, which he argues has capitulated to intense lobbying and let the banks off the regulatory hook, it is not from the easy hit school of political point-scoring.
His strategy is broader and goes back to his long-held belief that a buccaneering, devil-take-the-hindmost approach to business is out of place in the 21st century. More than that, it is counterproductive and harmful to an economy that needs to shift away from a reliance on the money made by banks and their chief asset – the inflated loans made on seemingly irresistible property speculation.
Miliband may seem an awkward, even alien performer to some , but he will strengthen his appeal if he can stitch together policies that resonate with an audience that has spent the last four years watching incredulously as the City and the wealthy successfully defend their corner. Responsible capitalism sounds dull and un-British, but it also presents an opportunity for a little reinvention and a greater degree of fairness. It also has the potential to enthuse disenchanted Liberal Democrats as much as it does delegates desperate for some policy meat from the podium.
At the moment, we are going backwards, with income inequality getting worse and austerity leaving the wealthy unscathed. The crimes of the banks are many and well documented. They stretch from the branches and call centres that mis-sold payment protection insurance to the trading rooms that fiddled industry-wide interest rates and the boardrooms, where characters such as Barclays' boss Bob Diamond sanctioned aggressive tax-avoidance schemes. Not to mention the drug-running and money-laundering schemes that went on under the noses of HSBC and Standard Chartered and for which they have paid multibillion pound fines. Yet their lobbying power remains undiminished. » | Editorial | Saturday, September 29, 2012
October 03, 2012
March 21, 2012
February 13, 2012
But the man most likely to be France's next President warned David Cameron that any attempt to create a "sanctuary" from regulation for the City of London was "not acceptable".
Mr Hollande will visit London on 29 February to speak to the Labour leader, Ed Milliband [sic], and perhaps the Prime Minister.
In a meeting with British and American journalists, he said: "We need a Great Britain that will take its place in Europe."
The polls place Mr Hollande way ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent conservative, who is expected to officially launch his re-election bid this week.
Mr Hollande sent ripples of alarm in the City last month by laying into "big finance", calling London's financial centre his "greatest adversary" in his first major campaign rally.
Yesterday, he warned that Britain could not expect to escape more financial regulation, despite Mr Cameron's decision not to sign the recent European fiscal pact.
"David Cameron's attempt to create a sanctuary from regulation for the City of London is not acceptable," he said. » | Henry Samuel in Paris | Monday, February 13, 2012
November 17, 2011
Mr Miliband condemned “unjustified” pay rises for city executives and suggested new laws may be necessary to stop “predatory” businesses operating for “short term” profit.
He called on the government to “change course” by spending more on public services to foster growth and joining a cross party movement to reform the way capitalist markets operate.
Mr Miliband's speech, to a think-tank in London, follows results showing the number of unemployed young people reached one million for the first time.
On Wednesday, the Bank of England warned of an increased threat of a double-dip recession and cut its official growth forecasts to 1% for both 2011 and 2012.
Speaking to the Social Market Foundation, Mr Miliband said the figures marked a “black day for Britain” and accused David Cameron and George Osborne of “hiding away” from the news. » | Tim Ross, Political correspondent | Thursday, November 17, 2011
October 03, 2011
THE ECONOMIST: The more you look at Labour’s new capitalism, the worse it seems
ED MILIBAND, the Labour leader, gave the speech of his life at his party’s annual conference on September 27th. Then he died and went to heaven. At least, it looked like that from the hall.
Grave of tone and dressed for a funeral (charcoal suit, slate-grey tie), Mr Miliband spent almost an hour telling British voters that what they want is a new, more moral economy—one that rewards “producers“ and workers, but punishes “predators” and cheats of all kinds, from bosses wrongly rewarded for failure to scroungers fiddling their welfare claims. Then, his elfin wife at his side, Mr Miliband slowly climbed a staircase to a doorway flooded with blinding light, as if passing to another realm.
After just a year as leader of the opposition, it is a little early for apotheosis. The daily press was scathing about what was—dodgy stage-management aside—a dreary, earthbound slab of oratory. A lurch to the left bereft of clear policies, said many newspapers. Nobody was listening, argued others: in an age of snap judgments, this baby-faced, panda-eyed policy wonk is too “weird” to earn a public hearing.
All true, perhaps. But it was still the speech of Mr Miliband’s life, summing up what he wants for Britain. If it was confusing at times, that may be because Mr Miliband frightens himself with his beliefs, which run some distance beyond where public opinion is thought to lie. Thus he expressed his views in code.
Those views matter. For all his flaws, he is at least the second most likely candidate to be prime minister after the next election. Mr Miliband is, at heart, a continental-style social democrat, with a Germanic admiration for consensual capitalism and a weakness for French-style industrial policy. His shadow cabinet allies can talk for hours about the iniquities of Anglo-Saxon globalised capitalism and the stagnation of rewards for the “squeezed middle” of workers. They bemoan the way that Labour ministers turned “too late” to activist industrial policies in the years before the 2010 election. » | Bagehot | Saturday, October 01, 2011
September 27, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Labour will offer a "new bargain" to the people of Britain to end the "fast buck" culture of the last 30 years and reshape society so that hard work and responsibility are rewarded, the party's leader Ed Miliband said today.
In his keynote speech to Labour's conference in Liverpool, Mr Miliband said he wanted to become Prime Minister so he can "write a new chapter in our country's history".
Launching a scathing attack on "unjustified rewards" at the top of companies, asset-stripping "predators" in business and bankers who profited even as their mistakes caused economic meltdown, Mr Miliband said that a Labour government would use tax breaks, regulation and contracts to reward firms which contribute to their community.
And he said he was determined to reform the welfare system to ensure that it pays to work, to end "cosy cartels" which set top pay, break up the "rigged market" which allows energy companies to charge high prices and rebalance Britain's economy away from the reliance on financial services and towards production and manufacturing.
Against the backdrop of opinion polls suggesting voters do not see him as a potential prime minister, Mr Miliband sought to shake off the legacy of the last two Labour leaders to hold power, telling the conference: "I'm not Tony Blair. I'm not Gordon Brown either... I'm my own man and I'm going to do things my own way."
And he declared that he was ready to take risks to break away from the "something for nothing" culture which has taken root in Britain over the past three decades and created a "quiet crisis" where those who do the right thing no longer believe they will be rewarded for it. Read on and comment » | Tuesday, September 27, 2011
September 30, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Ed Miliband’s Labour Party will push for increases in taxation at a higher rate than that proposed by Gordon Brown at the last general election.The new leader said that he wanted to do “more” from taxation, adding that plans by Alistair Darling, the former chancellor, to cut the deficit over four years were only a “starting point”.
Mr Miliband, who joined in the traditional singing of the Red Flag at the close of Labour conference, has hit out his characterisation as “Red Ed” after he defeated his brother for the party leadership with the support of the trade unions.
But in a break from the New Labour era, when Tony Blair’s ministers shied away from advocating tax rises, he made clear that he was unafraid of being labelled left-wing. >>> Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent | Thursday, September 30, 2010
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