Labour Toffs Masquerading as Comrades

With the Conference season now in full swing this week saw the Labour Party gathering in Manchester for their annual shindig. I apologise for not giving my thoughts on the Lib Dem conference but I do find it hard to get excited by a conference which resembles a village fete.

Ed Milliband's speech did win some praise and has been widely accepted as his best so far, albeit from a low base considering the nasal tone and the weird facial expressions that we have become used to during Prime Minister's Question Time. 

At least during this speech we did not have to endure the questionable hand gestures from Ed Balls behind him when trying to portray flat lining of the economy which do look remarkably look like Nazi salutes! Still, I suppose he has form on this.

During his speech we had to endure the appalling lie of "Next April, David Cameron will be writing a cheque to each and every millionaire in Britain for £40,000." based on distorted statistics as highlighted by City AM editor Allister Heath.

A day after he made his audacious attempt to claim the ‘One Nation’ philosophy from the Conservatives, Ed Miliband was back making left-wing class war attacks. Despite his earlier claims that Labour would unite the rich and poor, he pledged to speak at a trade union march against austerity measures.

Mr Miliband won cheers from the union barons who bankroll his party when asked whether he would join the TUC’s march on October 20. ‘Yes, I’ll be there,’ he said. His willingness to join the protest raises questions about the authenticity of Mr Miliband’s pitch for the ‘One Nation’ mantle.

In fact the whole conference was a class warfare attack. I still believe that the public do not give a toss about the background of their elected representatives just as long as they are competent. It still amazes me of the hypocrisy of the Labour Party they’re just as rich as their Conservative counterparts in Parliament.

Tony Blair reportedly earned £20million last year from advising foreign governments and multi-national corporations, taking his net worth above £80million, and Gordon Brown now charges £70,000 for an after dinner speech.

Harriet Harman, the former deputy leader, is the first cousin of the Earl of Longford, making her every bit as posh as the Prime Minister, and Shaun Woodward, the ex-Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, once boasted that he was so rich even his butler had a butler. Power to the people, eh Shaun?

Still, at least these committed socialists have no wish to pass on their status to their children. Not like those beastly Tories who insist on sending their sons and daughters to England’s finest public schools.
When it comes to education, all good Labour politicians send their kids to the nearest, bog standard comprehensive, right?

Er, no. Blair moved heaven and earth to get his sons into the London Oratory, probably the best faith school in the country, and his two Labour predecessors at No10, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, both educated their children privately.

Ruth Kelly, Labour’s Education Secretary from 2004 to 2006, sent her son to a fee-paying preparatory school, and Diane Abbott, the Shadow Minister for Public Health, packed her boy off to the exclusive City Of London School.

Ever so ’umble? I don’t think so.

Presumably, though, once the children of these tribunes leave their exclusive education behind they have to start at the bottom, just like everyone else? Wrong again. Last week brought the news that Euan Blair, the ex-Prime Minister’s eldest son, is circling the safe Labour seat of Coventry North West, while Will Straw, son of Jack Straw, is hoping to become the candidate in Rossendale and Darwen.

Not for them the salt mines of local government before launching a parliamentary career. In case you’re in any doubt that Labour is the true party of inherited privilege, I give you the Wedgwood Benn dynasty. Tony Benn, that old socialist warhorse, was the son of Viscount Stansgate, a Labour Secretary of State, and his son, Hilary Benn, went on to serve in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Cabinet.

The latest addition to this fine, aristocratic line is Emily Benn, Tony’s granddaughter, who was selected to stand as the Labour candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham in 2007. To cap it all, this was when she was 17, before she was old enough to vote!

No doubt in future the Benn clan will just put their children down for Labour constituencies at birth in much the same way that so called toffs do for Eton.

To top it all off poor Joan al-Assam, a teenage girl who came to Britain as a refugee, was heckled while describing the lessons and activities at Paddington Academy, a semi-independent state school in north-west London.

If this had happened at a Tory conference the Great One Nation of Labour hypocrites would be bellowing in outrage all over the BBC and demanding resignations and taxpayer funded inquiries. Despite what they want you to believe from this conference it is still evidently clear that as a party Labour don't like aspiration, don't like striving and detest success.