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Call for Johnson …
By Andy | May 17, 2008
A bit late this, but if you didn’t see Question Time on Thursday, well nip over to the BBC iPlayer and take a look.
The programme, from Cardiff, was a bit of a classic. The Labour rep. was Alan Johnson, the Tory Alan Duncan, there was an old battle axe from Plaid, the usual trendy businessman and Cheri Booth’s half sister who’s a journalist I think.
The first question was on the 10p tax and you could fee the panel and audience working up for the kill. But Johnson completely took the sting out of the whole thing. By the time of the second question the evening had become very relaxed and you would never know that the government of the day was having a hard time.
Johnson’s style is easy and relaxed. He’s always perfectly courteous, never gets upset and explains things carefully and fully and is always with a good dose of gentle humour. The panel couldn’t land anything on him really and you could tell they had real respect for him. And the audience seemed to appreciate his style as well - they were listening.
A bit of a mater-class this. I hope Balls, Milliband Jnr, Harman et al were watching.
And of course (just for Alan Giles) the man’s no toff either!
Topics: Westminster Village |
May 18th, 2008 at 10:50 am
I was at the recording of question time in Cardiff on thursday and most of my friends did not like the way he came across. Personally I think he did very well.
http://samknight4labour.blogspot.com
May 18th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Sadly, Andy, I think Jockstrap is going to need more than Johnson to pull his chestnuts out of the fire.
Don’t be fooled by the ordinary bloke act: wasn’t it Johnson, when Minister for Work and Pensions who hit on the wheeze of having DWP “advisers” sitting in doctors waiting rooms to talk to the ill and disabled about their work options?
If this idiotic plan had gone ahead there would have been a loss of confidentiality in the doctor/patient relationship. Presumably the GPs receptionist would have had to tell the snooper who was, and who wasn’t disabled/unemployed?
Johnson is every bit the New Labour man, just as much as Prettyboy Purnell and Bimbo Blears, the poison dwarf - they are all cut from the same cloth: the same people who pledge undying love to Jock did exactly the same thing for Queen Tony, and, if Denis Skinner suddenly found himself PM they would all do a 180 degree turn and be just as supportive of him. They are all clinging on for grim death, just dreading 2010.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Interesting Sam - what was it that your friends didn’t like - the dynamics can seem different when you are live.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I think that Johnson did very well, too. He is a good communicator and his approach is disarming. Don’t agree with him of course, but if your opponent appears reasonable it makes it harder to pin him down.
Mind you, it was probably the most boring QT I have ever seen.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
It’s a good tactic that. Bore them to tears. I’ve used it a lot over the years. Never fails.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:07 am
“The next leader
Well its early to speculate and I’ve not given up on Brown just yet but I think it is important to discuss who might next take the reigns, whether its when we are in opposition or when we are still leading the country is yet to be known.
My hope would be David Miliband
David would be an excellent leader for our party and will surely be prime minister one day. ”
(From: http://samknight4labour.blogspot.com)
Oh yes?. I suspect as I have said elsewhere that having rejected the ghastly old waxworks of New Labour (Blair and Brown) the party would want another Neocon. When we lose the next election, the party needs to refocus on it’s natural supporter - not chase after the fickle “Middle Englander” with his/her pretentions to gentility and Daily mail values and lifestyle. Thoise Tories who “went Blair” don’t like Brown, and, whomever was leader, they feel it is time for a change.
And I find Miliband somewhat suspect as well as jejune, why, for example, does he and his dear wiofe go to America to but kids for adoption, when they could go through the adoption procedure in Britain/
And - I apologize for bringing this up, - when Howard led the Tories New Labour gave a nudge and a wink to the fact that he was Jewish - well, the same thing might happen to Minibrain?.
aND THIS MAN SEEMS A BIT D
May 19th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Sorry my machine has gremline. The above should have read:
“for example, does he and his dear wife go to America to buy kids for adoption, when they could go through the adoption procedure in Britain?”
I take it the blogger WAS joking though?
If you want a real laugh, why not go all the way and propose Bimbo Blears as new leader and P.M.?
Now THAT would be dumbing down with a vengence!
May 19th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Andy, I think they felt it was another government mouthpiece quoting history and just generally uncharismatic.
Alan,
firstly Johnson isn’t new labour in fact he made that perfectly clear. In the warm question(not aired) on the post offices he defended on keeping nationalised Post Offices and spoke as a trade unionist.
I mentioned Miliband would be a good leader because he will unite both sides of the party certainly the wide range of labour supporters i have spoken to believe this.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:27 am
“I mentioned Miliband would be a good leader because he will unite both sides of the party”
If you believe this you are, with all due respect, seriously deluded. I don’t think the pro-Israel, pro neoliberal stance adopted by Minibrain would go down well with the left of the party.
He has no real experience: self importance and arch gravitas does not automatically make you a great politician. HE is yet another of those bloodlesss characterless clones that have come up via Oxbridge and politics who has no real experience of the real world. Even in his private life - the rest of us, if we want to adopt kids, would have to go through the vigorous screening process. he and his wife run off to the States to pay for kids.
As for Johnson: If he is “old” Labour, it is very odd that he agrees with every policy first of Blair and now Brown, who are very firmly on the right I didn’t hear Johnson critisise the Iraq war, for example - and, as I explained, he was the Purnell prototype - trying to force the sick and disabled into work by suggesting that GPs patients should be targetted and picked on while they wait to see their GP. Johnson Old Labour? Get real, man!.
The problemn with New Labourites, and the public see this now which is why we are on the skids, is that people like Johnson don’t even understand the word principle: Apart from Robin Cook, Clare Short and John Hutton the latter quickly reinstated) nobody in this crypto-Tory administratiion has ever resigned on a matter of principle (we had that silly woman the other week who was “thinking” of doing so, but she quickly changed her mind), and you would wait for a long time for former union leader - poacher turned gamekeeper - Johnson to show any backbone.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Sorry John DENHAM: Not Hutton - a very bad slip. Huton would endorse slaughter of the firstborn if there was a bit of money and promotion in it.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Ok, you need to read carefully at what I am saying.
I have spoken to many people in the party both left right old new and floating voters ALL of them without exception thinks he would be a very good leader for Labour.
now you may think this and that but this is me going out and speaking to people.
Now read carefully at what i said about Johnson. I said he is not new labour and he is not. But nor did I say he was old labour. He rids of the shackles of this awful pigeon holing (the mixed metaphor was too tempting)
The splits within our party is not as simple as new and old labour its far more complicated than that with many factors and cannot be reduced to Iraq War = new labour = no principles.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I wonder how many people you spoke to, Sam?. Especially to those on the left, because I know several people on the left who can’t stand Minibrain any more than I can. Perhaps, as so many New Labourites are so media savvy they think he looks “pretty” (just as some Tories think Cameron is attractive), which seems a very facile and shallow way of looking at things.
A politician can look like the back of a bus, but if he is honest and competent he will be far better for the party and the country than some allegedly good looking pin-up figure. If in 1945 politics had been a beauty show we wouldn’t have had Atlee, or Bevan and look what they achieved.
What qualities do you consider Milliband to have? What has he ever done in the real world to earn respect?. I guess the Americans would like him, because he can brown-nose Republican’s just like Blair did.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:44 am
Well the people I have spoken to include workers in an MPs office, My local Labour Students and debating society (the labour followers and floating voters)
albeit this only adds up to about 30 people but still 100% of 30 is a consensus and all of which vary from the near communist to the closet Tory. Many of the blogs I read also have great praise of him.
Now as to the question of why deserves to have this praise. Well I’m quite late on the political scene but He did an excellent job in Environment and Rural Affairs and has been pitch perfect in FCO.
I have judged him not only on that but on his diplomacy. He reasons everything perfectly with intelligent debate. I think he is much more of a man than the ‘pin up’ you describe. He has charisma, yes, but he also has the intelligence.
Yes OK he is as you wish to insist ‘new labour’ and I disliked Tony Blair as much as the next man but we have to recognise what New Labour truely was made for. Recognising the economic changes made in the 80’s. Our old style economics would not of worked today and we certainly wouldn’t be able to boast our economic growth that we have today without new labour.
What I am trying to say is he is a man of substance and charisma, acceptable to many lefties like myself and others but also to the ‘new’ labour fractions, the core voters and the floating voters.
He’s not going to to achieve 100% consensus throughout all party members but I can’t think of anybody else who can come even close to Miliband.
Perhaps you would like to suggest your own choices and reasonings?
May 21st, 2008 at 5:49 am
“Well the people I have spoken to include workers in an MPs office, My local Labour Students and debating society (the labour followers and floating voters)”
Oh well, a very widespread and comprehensive group!. Nobody working in our diminishing manufacturing industries? Or elderly people facing Post Office closures? Or the very poor or disablewd who face being pursecuted by the Purnell/Freud amateur “welfare reforms”?
But then:
“Well I’m quite late on the political scene ”
And yet you feel competent and conceited enough to venture your opinions in a blog?
As for who would get the job: I suspect, though I dislike the slippery way he tries to twist in the wind to be all things to all men, if Brown were to resign, or be kicked out, or commit suicide the only person that would get the grudging support of the majority of the PLP would be Jack Straw. Possibly also Hilary Benn, because of the name, though I don’t think there is much else Tony and Hilary has in common - in the same way “Labour” is the only connection between “Old” and “New”: New Labour and people like Blair, Miliband, Purnerll and Hutton would have been at home in a Thatcher government.
What annoys me about NL is the hypocrisy they show: Many of the Blair/Brown policies go further than Thatcher/Major ever did, and we all know, don’t we, that if the NL policies had been instituted by the Tories, all the Blair camp and the PLP would have been apoplectic about them, yet now we have supine backbenchers that put up with almost everything.
As for Miliband being a man of substance: well, if you say so, but I don’t see much evidence except some rather camp self-importance. “A prat on a gap year” was how veteran Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews described him, and I think that is a very fair description.
Unlike you, I have been a keen Labour supporter since 1969 and until recently I voted for Labour, despite Blair. But I would never vote for Brown because he is a coward and a bully: effette as he was, Blair was never frightend of expressing his opinion: we now know that, though he pretended, or let his crawler-in-chief Balls imply that he didn’t agree with some policy, we can now see that Brown was just as gung-ho as Blair was: for example, he dismissed Freud in March 2007 yet in March this year allowed the inexperienced little fool Purnell implement Freud in full, without even bothering to run a pilot: dismantling and privatising the Welfare State is a very large measure and I suspect will be a very large and dangerous mistake. We all know how Brown held back from the EU signing ceremony, then crawled off after everyone else had gone to sign it alone - with a very sickly smirk on his face as he did so. How could anyone have any respect for this gutless little worm?. But people like your pal Milliband connive at every twist and turn in Brown’s passage to defeat and obscurity. All Miliband (and Balls, Hutton, Purnell, Burnham and all the other little creeps) is a younger version of these conmen Blair and Brown, who treat the party with contempt, ignore Conference, and feel they actually own the party. I just hope they don’t destroy the party: it was there long before they were born, and should be there long after these little pygmies are six foot under providing food for the worms.
“Charisma”? Miliband has as much cvharisma as a glass of dirty water, and if you will allow me to say so, either you are very young or very naive to believe the stuff you have written, which sounds, with all due respect, mor e like a young girl drooling over some pop singer.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:56 am
Well you were the one saying Miliband was a ‘pin up’ and a man without substance so don’t attack me on saying he has charisma.
I don’t really like the way this has become a more of a personal attack, you asked me to state my reasons and I have. You disagree and thats fine, your entitled to do so.
I am late on the political scene because I am young. I’m sorry I wasn’t born in the 60’s to experience the 68/69 and Thatchers 80’s but I don’t think this makes my views any less valid. I am heavily involved within the party.
I was saying from my point of view Miliband would be a good leader and people I have spoken from left and right like him. 30+ people is still a fair enough basis for me to write that he in my opinion he would unite the left and right and does not undermine the blog post at all. In fact its probably a better widespread of people than the people you have spoken to but tell me if I’m wrong.
All my opinion based upon people I have spoken. I really don’t see your problem with me saying it.
One thing though is you still haven’t answered who do you think would be better at uniting the party?
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
Forgive me, Sam but I DID answer the question. I said that, whatever my personal views about them either Straw or Hilary Benn could probably unite Left and Right - Straw because he twists in the wind, and Benn because many on the Left would probably think of Tony Benn and believe that he would be a chip off the old block - in the same way Old Labour supporters imagined or believed Blair would be more “Labour” after he was elected, and the way, even people like me believed Brown would take Labour in a different direction: we were wrong Blair and Brown are Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
And, forgive me, but you cannot possibly construe that Miliband would unite Left and Right on the basis of a survey of 30 students, party workers and MP office staff. Go out and find yourself some ordinary voters with no vested interests.
The real Miliband will be on show in the next week as he visits the States - grovelling to Condalkeesa Rice today, I believe: Miliband is too pro-American, Pro-Israel to go down well with the real left.