This is the first sentence of Ed Miliband’s article in The Observer:
A defining test of this government will be whether their plans to cut the deficit and roll back the state will entrench privilege and inequality still further.
What does he mean “still further”? Is he saying that privilege and inequality were further entrenched during the past 13 years? (Or does he mean still further than in the past seven months?) Who writes this rubbish for him?
This is not an embittered Blairite point. The record on equality is genuinely the joint property of Blair and Brown (and therefore Ed Miliband). The trend 1997-2010 was broadly flat, and very different from the steep rise in inequality during the preceding Conservative years, as highly redistributive public policy offset strong forces in the global economy widening differentials.
As for “privilege”, what is he talking about? Droit de seigneur? Inheritance of peerages? The right to graze cattle on common land? I genuinely have no idea. Unless he is falling for the urban myth that social mobility declined under Labour, which is based on figures tracing, if anything, the effects of Thatcher’s government.
Which would be odd, as the rest of the article attacks the Coalition Government’s universities policy on the basis of a “deep and genuine commitment to social mobility”.
Plus, his ghostwriter should recall (a) that parameter is on The Banned List and (b) that “to map the route to” a fairer Britain is a dreadful cliché.
Eagle Eye 