Funny Baby Clothes - View Content

Welcome! Funny Baby Clothes - View Content

about tweets links home

Related Tags

Tags on Twitter

  #child
  #clothes
  #funny
  #toddler
  #child trends

What is a Tag?

A 'tag' is a descriptive keyword we use to index our content to help users find it quickly and efficiently!

[ home ] Baby Clothing that makes you laugh

[ back ]

The contest for the Labour leadership has been a r...
article loaded: Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:44:35 -0400

The contest for the Labour leadership has been a relatively dreary affair until now.

The candidates have dutifully set out their stalls on television and in newspapers. Determined to avoid a repeat of the bloodbath of the 1980s, they have been incredibly polite about eachother.

There were signs today, though, that the contest may at last be coming alive as the candidates gear up for the first hustings tomorrow. We have Ed Balls, the shadow schools secretary, to thank for that after he dealt with immigration in a more dramatic way than any of the other candidates.

Balls spoke out in two ways that will attract attention:

â€¢ In an interview on the BBC1 Politics Show programme, he said that Gordon Brown was guilty of "brushing" immigration under the carpet. He said that the former prime minister had shown how out of touch he was when he reacted angrily to Gillian Duffy on the election trail.

This is what Balls said under questioning from a panel that included our own Jackie Ashley:

I said to him that you should be talking about immigration in the last year and a half and that we were making a mistake by brushing it under the carpet.

To be honest, I think Gordon's answer to Mrs Duffy showed he'd not been having the conversation, because what she said was the kind of things being said by Labour supporters, and in some cases former Labour supporters over the last year and a half. [This] was: 'Look, we're not racist, and we support our EU membership and we know that immigration's important for the NHS, but look what it's doing to my community, to my child's job prospects, to our housing queues'.

It is quite something for Balls to single out Brown who was his mentor and patron. But, in the end, that probably makes it easier for Balls who said today that he still speaks regularly to Brown.

â€¢ In an article for the Observer, Balls set out a position on immigration that makes him more eurosceptic than the Tories. He said it was time to rethink a directive that enshrines the free movement of people:

Europe's leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive, not to undermine the union, but to make it economically and politically sustainable.

The free movement of people was one of the four founding pillars in the founding Treaty of Rome in 1957. As a treaty instrument, it would require the agreement of all 27 EU member states to amend the rules on free movement. David Cameron backed away from pressing for treaty change in the coalition agreement when he abandoned plans to repatriate social and employment laws.