Lib Dems ‘in denial’ – Miliband
By politics.co.uk staff
Ed Miliband has hit out at the Liberal Democrats for placing party gain ahead of spending cuts.
The shadow energy and climate change secretary, who is campaigning for the Labour leadership, was quoted by the Guardian tearing into Britain’s third party two months after it entered into a formal coalition with the Conservatives.
“At the moment, Liberal Democrats think they are turkeys voting for Christmas if they undermine the coalition,” Mr Miliband said.
“At some point, it shifts – and they ask: ‘Are we turkeys voting for Christmas by continuing to prop it up?'”
Mr Miliband was present in the ill-fated coalition negotiations between Labour and the Lib Dems, in which Lib Dems claimed Labour ministers refused to budge on the majority of their manifesto commitments.
As a result the Lib Dems are now committed to propping up the Tories until 2015, with the hope that electoral reform will justify the move. Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg announced earlier this week a referendum on moving to the alternative vote system will take place in May 2011.
Mr Miliband attacked the Lib Dems for making this bargain at the expense of ordinary British people.
“I don’t think people have any sense of the scale of public expenditure reductions there are going to be,” he added.
“Some Lib Dems want to walk around in total denial of the reality by pretending that a referendum on AV is a compensation for the most vicious ideological assault on the welfare state I have known.”
It emerged yesterday Mr Miliband’s campaign is being dwarfed in terms of donations by that of his brother, the shadow foreign secretary David Miliband.
Electoral Commission figures revealed in June David Miliband received £185,000, whereas Ed Miliband received £15,000.
Ed Balls received over £28,000 while Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott did not declare any donations at all.
Ed Miliband’s attempts to distance himself from the Labour party’s manifesto, which he wrote, have been more vigorous than those of his brother.
Today he fell into line behind the Conservatives’ liberal justice secretary Ken Clarke, who has announced plans to reduce the number of criminals sent to prison and an increase in rehabilitation efforts.
“I don’t think we should try to out-right the right on crime,” Mr Miliband said.
“A lot of what [Mr Clarke] is doing is motivated by budget cuts; but he is opening up an opportunity for us to redefine part of the debate about criminal justice.”
