Saturday 24 July 2010

Cufflinks Unlink...

Wiki: A cufflink (also cuff link or cuff-link) is a decorative fastener worn by men or women to fasten the two sides of the cuff on a dress shirt or blouse.

I went to a Labour Leadership Questions and Answers meeting with Ed Miliband MP this morning.  Ed was very engaging, spoke very well on every topic put to him and probably won most of the audience over. He started with a short speech about his values and why he wants to lead the Labour Party. Then he took off his suit jacket....

He was wearing a dress shirt, fastened with cufflinks..  you may not see anything wrong with this.. he looked smart and had made an effort to impress.  What I saw, to my sadness, was a posh  boy who can never truly engage with the people Labour are supposed to represent.

Labour people are traditionally the lower and middle working classes, many of their voters do not own cufflinks or if they do, they would ve been given as a desperate Fathers Day present from children who have no idea how few chances Daddy will ever get to wear them.

I want a Leader who I can connect with, who I would want as a friend, a neighbour - someone I would enjoy a drink with but who can also command respect and trust.  I have found him. That man is Ed Balls. Passionate, fiery, watching him in action in the House of Commons brings to mind the British Bulldog. A quick search of Google images will show you all you need to know about Ed, he is a man of the people.. our people..Labour people.  If anyone can re-unite our Party and take back Parliament, "he the man"..



Our Labour Party needs to change, we all need to accept that and make the right choice for Leader. Until our Leadership can truly engage with us and re-light the Labour torch, there is little or no chance of us ever moving out of the Shadows..



              

13 comments:

  1. When he came to the Red House pub in Stoke-on-Trent South during the General Election Ed Miliband was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans (my 77 year old mum needed an extra blood pressure tablet when she got home!). I really hope this is tongue-in-cheek, as it's very patronising about Labour supporters and members otherwise.

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  2. Its a massively hard task to please everyone, my workmates are trade unionists, labour men mostly, but talk about immigration and you would think they were Oswald Mosleys Black Shirts,I have to bite my tongue.

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  3. Fendawg.. the main point of this post is about connection.. the Labour Party lost the election as they broke that connection. It is time to re-build our party from the ground up. Having the right Leader is essential. We need to work as a team, I dont want a President.. I want a Leader I am happy to approach, one who engages with the Mrs Duffy's. Its not so much about clothing but attitude, I am saddened that you cannot see that.

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  4. I like the article, it's well written. I'm not too sure I'd agree Balls is a man of the people though, he's the son of a Professor, went to a private school in Nottingham, then Oxbridge, and has not exactly had the career of a working person - his to date, prior to politics, has principally consisted of faffing about writing for the FT before gaining an equally faffy job 'advising' Brown. He's no Dennis Skinner...

    Personally I'd like to see Labour MPs who have worked real jobs before. Alan Johnson anyone?

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  5. Oh dear. I get the message about vests in summer, but I have to confess I have quite a collection of cufflinks, most of them bought by me. :(
    I agree that the Jedward twins aren't the answer, but haven't decided between Burnham and Balls quite yet.
    Abbott I won't even weaste text on.

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  6. I have removed the "vest in July" comment as it was detracting from my main point..

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  7. linc_09 I am with you on that, sadly none of them have lived as we have, with real jobs and struggle. As we are looking for a figure head, not a President thats ok.. We need to encourage more "ordinary" folk into running for Parliament and our Councils, people like you and I who know what its like to live in the real world.

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  8. I'm with you on that too. Good point.

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  9. Humphreycushion, sorry I didn't realise you had replied to my previous post; you say that your blog wasn't about clothes, but it quite patently was - unless I'm missing the point entirely, you seem to be arguing that because Ed Miliband was wearing a dress shirt and (Heaven forfend) cufflinks he's a "posh-boy who cannot connect to Labour's core voters". I still find that hugely offensive and patronising.

    My previous Labour MP, who retired in 2005, left school at 14 to work in a bakery, progressed to working in the North Staffs coalfield (where he became an NUM official), and then spent the best part of his working life as a bus driver (becoming a TGWU shop steward, and leading the only bus strike North Staffordshire has ever had). He served as Deputy Leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Chair of Social Services on Staffordshire County Council, before being elected to the European Parliament and the House of Commons in 1992, but he has never lost his working class roots, and his links to the community (in fact if he were to return now he'd get elected with a larger majority than the cretin who replaced him) - but, and this is my point, in 27 years of knowing him I have only twice seen him not wearing a collar and tie and a suit, once when he was interviewed on BBC Midlands Sunday lunchtime political spot (and apparently it took the Researcher 50 minutes to persuade him to remove his jacket), and the second time was when he agreed to be Father Christmas at our local children's hospice. His wife takes great pleasure in recounting the story of him being the only person to wear a suit at a concert by The Who at Wembley Arena.

    Just because Ed Balls decides to wear rolled-up shirt-sleeves does not make him any more approachable than Ed Miliband, who you criticise for wearing a dress shirt. Indeed our local newspaper published a letter during the General Election from a group of elderly residents complaining that our Labour MP had attended their lunch club in T-shirt and jeans, and that he wasn't (in their words) "properly attired".

    You say you want someone you could enjoy a drink with - that's precisely the reason male voters in the US gave for preferring George W Bush over both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, and look where that got them!

    Attire in a politician can be important; in April our local newspaper published a letter from 20 members of a local senior citizens lunch club complaining that our MP/candidate had attended their club in jeans and a T-shirt; in their eyes he was not properly dressed for a MP.

    Tim

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  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  11. I understand the point you are making and in many ways you are right, appearance does have a big role to play.

    Cameron avoided cufflinks during his campaign, he was always seen with his sleeves rolled up.

    Maybe this was to give the impression that he was one of "us", subconsciously telling us he doesn't mind rolling up his sleeves and working hard to make a difference.

    Appearance does have a role to play and losing the cufflinks as silly as it may seem can be quite endearing.

    Just my 2 cents worth...

    @lostandfragile

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  12. fendawg Removed one of your comments as it was a duplicate of the previous one.

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  13. Sorry about the duplicate; I got an error message, but obviously it had delivered first time :-(

    Tim

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