What Ed Miliband Should Say At Labour Conference, But Won’t

It is now beyond question that Ed Miliband is moving his party to the left, or redefining the centre ground if you prefer, or drawing a line under the New Labour era. Or whatever.










The latest symbolic move has been to back Palestinian statehood in advance of a vote at the UN. This is a peculiar decision that makes no real sense before knowing what the Palestinians are putting on the table, except to send a strong message to the party faithful that Ed Miliband is shifting policy on the Middle East. This line on Israel/Palestine is one that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would never have countenanced and that is the whole point.

Ed Miliband is determined to ditch the legacy of the Blair-Brown era (which is odd considering that he is its creature) and I can’t help thinking this is a terrible strategic error.

The opposition is hamstrung by the fact that it still hasn’t found the right language to take on the government. Miliband has squeezed himself into a tiny ideological sliver, where he can’t move any further to the left for fear of inviting ridicule, but can’t entirely embrace the achievements of the Blair-Brown years either.

In welfare to work, education and health, the Cameroons are engaged in implementing the Blairite reform agenda. The logic of Ed Miliband in the new post-New Labour era should make it possible to oppose this from the Left. But there are still too many Blairites around him to quite pull this off. With Liam Byrne in charge of the policy review it will be impossible to dump the New Labour policy agenda in its entirety.

Instead of trying to persuade people that Cameron is a Thatcherite in disguise, Labour should concentrate on questioning the Tories’ competence in government. Ed Miliband’s conference speech should recognise that all the most adventurous ideas of the new government are stolen from New Labour and give them a cautious welcome. He should then say that the job of opposition is to forensically examine the government’s record on delivery and stand back.

He won’t do this, of course, because to embrace the Blairite legacy would mean immediate death within the party.

Cameron Demands Stronger UN Action

David Cameron has urged the United Nations to be more ready to take action against oppressive regimes.













In a strong defence of interventionism, the Prime Minister said the Arab Spring uprisings and conflict in Libya demonstrated that the UN needed "a new way of working".

"To fail to act is to fail those who need our help," he told world leaders at the United Nations general assembly in New York.

Mr Cameron said the popular uprisings in north Africa and the Middle East had provided "a massive opportunity to spread peace, prosperity, democracy and vitally security" - but only if nations seized it.

"The UN has to show that we can be not just united in condemnation, but united in action, acting in a way that lives up to the UN's founding principles and meets the needs of the people," he said. "You can sign every human rights declaration in the world, but if you stand by and watch people being slaughtered in their own country, when you could act, then what are those signatures really worth?"

The Prime Minister said the international community needed to use a combination of military action or "hard power" and "soft power" like diplomacy and financial aid. He argued that the people of the Arab world had made clear their aspirations for greater freedom, more accountable governments and an end to corruption.

"As people in North Africa and the Middle East stand up and give voice to their hopes for more open and democratic societies, we have an opportunity - and I would say a responsibility - to help them," he said.

Mr Cameron said: "Here at the UN, we have a responsibility to stand up against regimes that persecute their people."

Asked by Channel 4 News whether he was blocking progress towards a Palestinian state, Mr Cameron said: "I am campaigning for Palestinian statehood. I want to help make it happen."

But he added: "We will only support measures and processes if they actually help to get these talks back on track. I'm a practical person, I don't believe in lofty declarations. I believe in rolling up sleeves to get things done."

U.N. Scientific Report Slams Shell for Nigeria Oil Pollution

It clings to the vegetation, coats the waterways and in some parts just gushes brazenly into the swamp.



This is the legacy of more than 50 years of oil drilling in Nigeria.

A U.N. report released on Thursday is placing the blame for this ecological disaster on Royal Dutch Shell and the Nigerian government.

The report calls for the world's largest ever oil clean-up operation, with an initial price tag of one billion dollars.

Audrey Gaughran of Amnesty International says the report is welcome news and that the scientific findings confirm what many locals have suspected for a long time.

[Audrey Gaughran, Global Thematic Programme, Amnesty International]:

''So this exposure of Shell's failure to clean up is extremely serious, because Shell's often maintained that it operates to best international standards; that is totally debunked by this report.''

Another finding of the report is that area's groundwater and not just its lakes and streams are completely polluted.

[Audrey Gaughran, Global Thematic Programme, Amnesty International]

"The human impact is that people are drinking polluted water, growing crops on polluted land, breathing polluted air, their health is at risk. They're trying to fish in polluted water - if they can find fish - which becomes increasingly difficult. So, the cumulative impact of this - and this has been going on for 50 years in the Delta - this is incredibly serious, and hopefully this U.N. report, because it's science-based and peer reviewed science, will move the debate forward and move us towards actually dealing with the problem in the Delta."

Environmental experts predict it could take up to 30 years to clean up pollution in the Niger Delta.