by Sunny Hundal

After a long string of ‘Ed Miliband is just going for the core vote’ whisperings against him, the big hitters came out. There was Alan Johnson, there was Jack Straw, Peter Mandelson and then Tony Blair.

And now it’s David Blunkett’s turn today:

In an interview with the Guardian Blunkett also criticised the 2010 Labour election manifesto for which Miliband junior had responsibility, saying it looked as if it had been written on Sunday morning and was “deeply uninspiring … it is a bit rich for those that were in what they amusingly call the Brown bunker to claim it was nothing to do with them, and it would be nice if we suddenly became radicals”.



He then goes on to say that disillusionment with Labour in the last election had little to do with Iraq, civil liberties or graduate fees. I’m sure that will come as a surprise to all those new Labour members who hoped the party would finally put its authoritarianism and stupid foreign adventures past them.

I know hardly anyone takes David Blunkett seriously any more, but take his central contention that the last election manifesto was “deeply uninspiring”.

First, why he didn’t say it then? It’s very convenient now isn’t it?

Secondly, let me quote you David Miliband himself:

I’m campaigning on the manifesto that we actually stood on. And the manifesto that we stood on said that we had a defense review in 2006… [interrupted by audience]. I’m sorry but I’m not the kind of person who is going to stand on the manifesto in May and in June tell you I want to tippex out bits of it. I think that’s very important.

Yes – the same manifesto that Blunkett is now trying to trash Ed Miliband over.

Thirdly, this is political suicide. Blunkett’s view that Labour did nothing wrong over civil liberties was recently echoed by Alan Johnson when he was trashing Ed. Do these people not realise Labour can’t win power without either attracting Libdems into a coalition or winning over significant numbers of Libdem voters?

And lastly – how does a scorched-earth campaign against a leading candidate going to help bring Labour unity after a leader is elected? Not a single high-profile Ed Miliband supporter has attacked David like this.

This swift-boating of Ed Miliband has to stop; it’s getting pretty disgusting.

PS – Yes, I know he’s voting for Andy Burnham as #1 but that’s become irrelevant. He wants ppl to vote for DM as #2 and wants to stop Ed.