Ed Miliband must cease ‘Hampstead Heath’ politics to win election – MP
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Version 0 of 1. Ed Miliband needs to stop practicing “Hampstead Heath” politics geared towards the north London metropolitan elite if he is to win next year’s general election, according to one of the most high-profile Labour politicians. Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, who this weekend fuelled rumours of the first Labour-Ukip defection after being photographed having a pint with the Ukip leader Nigel Farage, suggested Miliband must “radically” change his approach in order to win outright in May. Complaining that his leader had a “35% strategy” aimed at scraping by with just enough of the vote to become the senior party in a ruling coalition, Danzcuk said Miliband should listen to working-class MPs such as himself rather than ignoring them in favour of what he described as sycophants who cut their teeth as special advisers. In an interview with the Guardian, Danczuk saidMiliband needed to surround himself with “real people”. Danczuk proposed “a more collegiate form of politics. Whatever people might think about Tony Blair, he had Alan Milburn, Mo Mowlam, Hazel Blears, John Prescott, David Blunkett, in among some intellectuals. That makes better policy. If you just have a load of ex-special advisers forming policies you’re not going to have very good policies, are you?” Along with Miliband himself, most key figures in the shadow cabinet worked as special advisers or political assistants before being elected, including Ed Balls (shadow chancellor), Yvette Cooper (shadow home secretary) and Douglas Alexander (shadow foreign secretary). Danczuk, who left school aged 16 to work in a factory near Burnley, said Labour needed “four or five” strong messages on welfare, immigration and to “celebrate work” over benefits. The party also needed to be more ambitious, he said: “Why do we have a 35% strategy? It comes from the leadership. They set the tone, the direction of travel and the targets and all the rest of it. So you can have a Hampstead Heath view of the world and become prime minister and retain Hampstead Heath politics on 35% of the vote. But if you want 40-45% of the vote you will not get it based on Hampstead Heath politics.” The MP said the party whips had largely stopped trying to discipline him in the past six months or so, but the 48-year-old insisted he aimed to be constructively critical. “I don’t think I’m a critic of the party at all. It’s a misconception.” Asked if the party had simply given up trying to make him toe the line, Danzcuk said: “I think they have, actually. They should try to engage with me. I think it’s a flaw. I think that’s poor leadership. Because if I were them, in terms of politics, being smart doing politics, if I were them I would have me inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in.” Danczuk denies being tempted to join Ukip, saying he has contacts across the political divide. “I’m solidly Labour,” he insisted on Monday. But, he said: “I have some admiration for how Ukip does politics. They have a straight approach. They have quite an emotional conversation with the electorate. There’s less pressure on candidates to be on message.” Ukip said on Monday it planned to contest Rochdale, which Danczuk holds with a majority of 889. It was Danczuk who was first to warn that Labour was at risk of losing to Ukip in Heywood and Middleton, his neighbouring constituency, during autumn’s byelection. Labour held the seat but with a majority reduced from 5,971 to 617. “They are not bad at campaigning you know,” says Danczuk of Ukip. “We saw this at Heywood and Middleton. Their ground operation is not bad and will only improve over time.” His wife’s brother told reporters he was voting Ukip in the byelection, and Danczuk says he suspects his father may have plumped for Farage’s party in the European elections. He criticised Labour for continuing to try to “spin” bad news, such as the near defeat in Heywood and Middleton. “They just can’t resist. It’s a late 1990s solution to a 2014 problem. That spinning, that remaining on message. Slogans. Holding the line. It doesn’t work. We should stop doing it … We’re not in the late 1990s when you get a message on your pager which tells you ‘the line to take on this is X’. Social media demands you have an answer.” Danczuk said the Labour leadership needs to shake off what he calls “a conservative with a small ‘c’ view of how you do politics”, which doesn’t fit in the current climate: “So this conservative view is that mining communities vote Labour, trade unions sponsor the Labour party, the trade unions dictate who is on the shortlist for Heywood and Middleton … The jigsaw that marks all of this has been thrown in the air – the leadership is trying to do politics as if it’s all joined together still, but it isn’t.” Last month Danzuk was named “campaigning MP of the year” for his work exposing child sexual exploitation and historic child abuse involving his predecessor, Cyril Smith. The judging panel included Peter Kellner, president of pollsters YouGov, and the BBC’s Today programme presenter Justin Webb. Yet despite rising to become one of Labour’s most recognisable backbenchers, Danczuk is viewed as a nuisance by many of his parliamentary colleagues. He claims to never have been approached by Cooper, the shadow home secretary, to discuss historic sex abuse despite his obvious expertise in the subject. Theresa May, the home secretary, had personally called him twice on the matter, he said. Asked why he was willing to speak out , Danczuk said: “One thing, and I don’t know whether this is it, but I don’t have a fear of not being a politician. So if I stop being a politician tomorrow it wouldn’t be the end of the world to me. In some way it would be a relief – the workload, the fact I don’t see loads of my family.” He added: “Some MPs want to remain being an MP. They think: ‘I’ll get to remain a shadow minister if I don’t do anything wrong.’ There’s a lot of that. Also, I’m convinced I’m right. I’m trying to make a positive contribution. I want to get a Labour government elected.” Both Danczuk and his wife, Karen, a local Labour councillor in Rochdale, have been criticised for seeking the limelight - she was criticised by Janet Street Porter on ITV show Loose Women for continually Tweeting “cleavage selfies”. After appearing in the tabloids, Karen changed her Twitter profile to read: “The Uk’s only councillor to make European and International headlines.” Yet Danczuk insists Karen is simply “doing what a lot of young women do” in her revealing Tweets: on Sunday night she posted a picture of herself, wet and apparently naked, subtitled: “A very long overdue & well deserved bath!! KD #heaven #candles #fizz #happysunday.” Danczuk says he lets her do what she wants - “this isn’t the 1950s”. But he said: “She’s had a working class upbringing. Twenty-odd-year-old women, 30-year-old women, if they do Twitter, they take selfies of themselves before they go out on a Friday night. It’s not uncommon. That’s all she’s doing.” He added: “I’m an ordinary person who genuinely believes in the power of politics and what it can achieve...That’s all that’s going on here. There’s no grand plan... I’m just an ordinary chap who’s married to an - she won’t appreciate me calling her ordinary and I think she’s beautiful and gorgeous and all the rest of it – ordinary working class woman and we do working class things.” |