How many times did Ed Miliband declare something like: ‘I have to be honest’ or ‘I’ll be honest with you’?
Was he trying to impress us with his new whiter than white political culture?
Not one word a politician says, especially in a keynote speech as newly-elected Labour Party leader, is not carefully prepared and coded.
He is honest Ed, Britain’s new John Kennedy.
I remember Jack Kennedy; Ed Miliband is no Jack Kennedy.
Did you hear the Kennedy-like:
‘Let the message go out, a new generation has taken charge of Labour’
Compare to the infinitely more elgant and eloquent:
‘Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation’
Having told us about his Jewish refugee parents and his first generation immigrant credentials, he then went on to slag off Israel, as they say in these parts.
A passing reference to the fight against terrorism, and then the gratuitous and left-pleasing attack on Israel’s maritime blockade and its ‘attack’ on the Mavi Marmara.
No mention of Hamas.
No mention of Israel’s security.
No mention of the orchestrated international delegitimisation and demonisation of Israel.
No mention of the Palestinians refusal to recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
No mention of Iran.
Indeed, no mention of any other conflict in the world where thousands, if not millions have died. Only Israel get’s the Miliband as-a-Jew treatment.
‘Look’, he says, ‘I’ve told you my family fled persecution in Nazi Europe to find a haven in Britain. I told you that I am grateful to Britain for accepting Jews’.
Now that gives him the right to tell you that Israel, the country abandoned by the very Britain he is lauding, the country that tried to prevent Jews from entering Palestine as they fled from the same Nazis that his parents fled from, must abandon its own defence to satisfy his and his party’s and, it appears, the other main parties’ distorted vision of the Middle East and, no doubt, keep a few Arab states ‘onside’.
Like Cameron and Clegg he just wants, or feels it is politically advisable to say he wants Israel to end the blockade and allow Hamas, et alia, to rain their missiles and send in their suicide bombers.
Britain’s political class has abandoned all reason and logic when it comes to Israel. In that, they are like much of the rest of the world. They can’t force the Palestinians to make peace so they have to pressurise and demonise the Israelis to make suicidal concessions in return for what? Sweet FA.
And to really underline Ed’s shift to the Left, he endorsed none other than Ken Livingstone as the next Mayor of London. I don’t think I have to spell out Ken Livingstone’s anti-Israel credentials or his love of sheikhs who endorse suicide bombings.
So if Israel is looking for true friends in the UK political classes, Ed has declared himself yet another of the self-righteous who, when it comes to Israel, abandon truth for politicking. Another of the purblind who will spout ad nauseam how they support Israel’s right to exist and then demonstrate that they have no idea what that means or entails.
Oh, for a real Jack Kennedy.
It’s at times like this that you realise that Tony Blair, warts and all, was head and shoulders above the lot we have now.