Scrambled egg-heads
NoT long ago, Ed Miliband said Parliament was ‘too middle class’ and he wanted to see greater diversity on the green benches and a Parliament that reflects the people.
This week’s re-shuffle by the labour leader shows that far from creating ‘the party of work’ he likes to portray, labour continues to be the party of political advisers, wonks and thinkt a nk e ggheads who c a me to prominence under New labour.
look at the people he promoted: andy Sawford, former head of a local government think-tank and son of an MP; lucy Powell, former parliamentary aide and director of a pro-Europe think tank; luciana Berger, a former lobbyist; alison McGovern, a former parliamentary researcher; Emma Reynolds, who had a l obbying business in Brussels and was a former political adviser; and Stella Creasy, who has aristocratic relations and was also a lobbyist.
It all shows that far from labour having strong links with working-class communities and an understanding of the real world, a political conveyer belt of cosseted researchers and lobbyists continues to be the party’s main source of recruitment.
If Ed Miliband wants to make one Nation mean something, isn’t it time he started casting his net for political talent out into the real world?
RoD SIKES, Bury, Lancs. looKING at the three women who gained promotion in the parliamentary re-shuffle (Mail), I fervently hope that before Esther McVey takes up her post as Iain Duncan Smith’s number two, she makes good her promise to find alternative employment for those who worked at the Remploy factories whose closure she championed.
I suppose it will fall on whoever takes over her mantle at the Department of Work & Pensions to explain why all those people who were working, earning and paying their way were found to be unemployable and consigned to the scrapheap to spend the rest of their working years on benefits.
life is hard enough for those with physical and mental disabilities. To have the rug pulled from under you when you had been able to work and be a useful member of society is doubly tragic.
Mrs MARY HARTLEY, Sheffield.