Labour under Ed Miliband.

Okay Ladies and Gentlemen, here it is at long last. The results of the poll dictated to me that you wanted to read my waffle about the Labour party under their new (ish) leader, Ed Miliband.

Although this man was not my particular choice to win the internal leadership battle, he won, and by the looks of things, he's going to be Prime Minister after the next general election.

Publicly, David Miliband was the better candidate to lead the party, and my personal choice, but as is the case with the Labour party and its heavy Union support, Ed was the favourite for them, and consequently won the leadership battle. 

Ed doesn't really have the charisma or looks that can match that of Cameron. He does have that air of nerd about him; with his nasal voice and that worried scowl on his face when in an uneasy situation. To be honest, his older brother, David doesn't really have all that much going for him when it comes to looks either. However, I am a firmly oppose this new era of politics that were started by JFK - a politics all about how the lead candidates presented themselves and how they spoke, not a politics necessarily about the values, actual policies and parties behind their leader. Which the British found out to their own peril in the 2010 elections, where 36.1% of Britain decided to ignore everything history had taught them about a Conservative government, not even bother to do any degree of research into the blue manifesto and subsequently vote for the man with the nice hair and pleasing face.

Whoops, swerved out of my lane there, back to Labour under Ed Miliband.

Ever since the dawn of democracy, the opposition party's sole job is to basically tell the current government that they are wrong, and to try and convince the public that they can do the job better. Every now and then however, on the rare occasions where the nation is united about certain things normally regarding ridiculous EU regulations, the government and opposition parties will agree in opinion - and that's when you know that we mean business. Take note, Brussels, if ever you dare attempt to pass something upon our great nation that both Tories and Labourists both hate so much that we would unite with one another to fight it, beware.

The first job that Ed undertook once he took the crown of Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition Leader was to reshuffle the Shadow Cabinet. The Shadow Cabinet is basically Ed Miliband's fantasy government (like fantasy football, only infinitely more enthralling). He was in a difficult place. He had so much proven talent to pick from, such as ex-Foreign Secretary David Miliband. But he was his brother, and he didn't want to risk turning the Labour party into a domestic every time they didn't agree. He also had to make a decision between Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, the husband and wife, for the same reasons. As a result of this, he made Yvette Shadow Secretary of state and controversially, Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, despite openly admitting that he really had no idea what on Earth the economy actually was. In the end, thankfully, Alan resigned because his wife was having scandalous steamy romps elsewhere (did you like my attempt to make that sound tabloidy?). This left a rather important hole to be filled, and who better than with Ed Balls, former Education Minister. Quite the promotion for him there. It's better than having George Osbourne. Alan Johnson was better than George Osbourne. You can't grow a tree without water; you can't grow an economy without money. No brainer really? Apparently not for wor Georgie.

Rather annoyingly, Ed and the gang still haven't seemed to have put together a viable set of policies to go in line with the new path that they are going down by scrapping the 'New' out of the title and being known as the plain old Labour party again. However, I severely doubt that this will affect their chances of winning the next general election in 3 years time because the public are going to respond to the Tories pig headedness and ham fisted approach to everything by voting in the only way they know to get rid of them; Labour. Let's face it, Liberal Democrat are hardly in for a chance after the spectacular show they put on over the last few months and the 'Other' parties may earn a few extra votes, but Labour is still the only viable opposition vote to take. Even if the voters are blind to the red manifesto and ignore all the good things they've done for this country. But it's still a step in the righ- I mean, left direction. The correct direction. A vote for normalcy- I mean, er...normality.


As a footnote, I decided at the weekend that I was going to quit smoking. I'm going to do this totally Cold Turkey, that means no patched, no nothing. It's personal between me and the fags; using patches would be like Cameron asking Obama to back him up in an argument with Sarkozy.
It's day 3 so far, and it's absolute hell. I have a 3 hour long craving last night that kept me up until about 2am. I know it's amazingly beneficial to me, but it is so tempting to give in.