Tkellem bil-Malti u Malta ghal Maltin
Published:
September 25, 2010 at 8:05pm
Ed sets trends for Joseph - note the pink tie and hear about the living wage
The Malta Labour Party identifies (wrongly) with Britain’s Labour Party because they both have the same name. So Maltastar is taking a personal interest in Ed Miliband’s election as Labour leader and has announced the news with excitement.
Yes, that will be the day, won’t it – when the son of Jewish immigrants is elected leader of the Partit Laburista. That will be the day for Malta, too, when the son or daughter of immigrants gets to be prime minister.
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Miliband’s father was not involved with explosives like Joey’s.
However he was a fervent disciple of the notorious Laski at the LSE. My grandfather often referred to Dom Mintoff as “laski”.
I am not sure whether I would rather have Ed than Joey.
That is not Ed! That’s his brother.
[Daphne – Yes, it’s Ed Miliband.]
Sorry! I mixed them up!
The election of Ed Miliband is in my view not very good news. My favourite was David Miliband.
This is a victory for the left – a victory for the union movement.
I think it will be the definitive end of Tony Blair’s New Labour (I understand Tony informally endorsed David Miliband), and I suspect it may radicalise Labour back to the left.
I am sure that David Miliband will bitterly regret not having challenged Gordon Brown for leadership back in 2008/2009 when the popularity of Brown’s government dropped significantly.
Daphne, as for your comment on “That will be the day for Malta, too, when the son or daughter of immigrants gets to be prime minister” – my view is that we still have to wait and see how this will turn out in the UK.
For the time being, Ed Miliband is the Leader of the Opposition. I hope he will not turn out to be another Neil Kinnock. You can leave the lights on for the time being.
I fail to understand the relevance of the fact that a leader has immigrant parents. The French President is also the son of immigrants and has Jewish roots.
The tie of Mr Miliband in the photo is not pink but violet or lilac.
[Daphne – My audience appears to include several pedants.]
Yes, mr ciccio. In backward, dictatorial Britain the unions have a say in the Labour leadership. Yet some people you might know here were scandalised when Alfred Sant named the GWU as Labour’s priviledged partner.
[Daphne – Similarly, people are ‘scandalised’ in Britain.]
Reference to Alfred Sant giving the GWU a privileged partner status (what was Alfred Sant’s obsession with partnerships?) is a small detail in a wider picture.
In the 70s and 80s, the GWU and the MLP had a statutory marriage, and the GWU had a place within the Labour cabinet of Ministers.
Therefore, in Malta, the Labour party had allowed the GWU to wield power not only on Labour, but also on the government. This is democratically not acceptable. Unions represent their members, not the majority of the electorate.
Therefore, Alfred Sant’s statement that the GWU would be a privileged partner was an echo from the 70’s and 80s and a possible return to the past.
This was even worse if you consider that by the time Alfred Sant made this statement, some time in 2005 if I am not mistaken, there were other important trade unions in the country.
And wasn’t it ironic that the party that preached against privileges was proposing new ones of its own?
In Britain, the Labour party made significant reforms in the 1990s to reduce the power of trade unions at the party conferences. Apparently, it has not made enough. Ask David Miliband, not me.
I found this article quite interesting.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2010/09/ed_miliband_0
I think Ed is like Alfred Sant, not what Joseph needs at the moment as a role model, and not what the UK need in the future. Would he be the youngest PM in the UK?
[Daphne – It’s a bit late for that already. Ed Miliband is 45.]
Wow, so Joseph Muscat will be the youngest PM in Europe of 2013. I am so Xited!
And the least mature. I feel depressed already.
George Borg Olivier, born in 1911, became Prime Minister of Malta at the age of 39 in 1950. Moreover, in 1939, when he was still 28 years old, he was one of three PN representatives elected to the Council of Government until 1945. In 1947, at the age of 36, he became Deputy Leader of the PN.
Labour MPs and members both voted for David. The affiliated bodies (read unions) voted for Ed in good numbers. He is already at the receiving end as a stooge of the unions. Will hear more on this.
Ed is 41. David is 45.
[Daphne – Same difference. David Cameron is 44. Neither Ed nor David (Miliband) were ever going to be the youngest prime minister, and for that matter, Cameron isn’t either. William Pitt the Younger set a record that is impossible to break. He became prime minister at 24.]
The difference a PM can make is not to the youngest, but the best.
That should be:
The difference a PM can make is not to be the youngest, but the best.
What Joseph Muscat needs now is a tan.
[Daphne – I was just thinking that: how ironic it is that the Labour Party despises dark people (though not Toni Abela) and admires Muscat because he is ‘gingeRRRR’, then along comes Ed Miliband in the land of ‘eeeee, qisu Ingliz’ and throws Labour’s petty racists into confusion.]
John F. Marks, one of the Malta Labour Party’s prominent figures, was the son of a Jewish immigrant.
If Ed Miliband is ever PM, he will be the second Jewish one. As is well-known, Benjamin Disraeli (though a baptised Anglican) was of Jewish descent.
His ancestors had migrated to Britain long before. They may have been Italian Sephardic Jews, according to some accounts.
@abc: in fact, Marks is a variant of Marx, a well-known Ashkenazi Jewish name.
@Anthony: I am not sure why you describe Laski as “notorious”. Perhaps your grandfather, in his time, was led to believe that the Left is all evil – just speculation on my part.
Laski’s legacy is not all that negative albeit not immune from criticism. He was a member of the Fabian Society for a long time in the period between the two world wars.
Fabians did not believe in revolutionary reform but in a gradual one. They had quite an influence on the UK Labour Party and Mintoff (in his early days) may have had some contact with them. I believe the society is still active today and is affiliated with the UK Labour Party.
Joseph Muscat has an interesting dilemma now – does he copy Ed Miliband which will inevitably shift his ideology further to the left (but hey, better some ideas than no ideas at all) or does he stick to his attempt to appear centrist but have to come up with ideas of his own?
we are going to govern the country in 3 years time and we show gonzi pn how we govern our country under labour under our beloved leader joseph muscat