Nick Anti-Socialist (GOB Chief Political Correspondent): I’m
talking today with the leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, the Right
Honourable Ed Miliband MP. Welcome Mr. Miliband.
Ed Miliband: Thanks
Nick it’s great to be here in lovely Loughborough on this sunny morning.
Nick: You want to
expand welfare spending, disadvantaging hard-working families and ruining their
lives why is that?
Ed: Listen Nick I’m all
about expanding-cutting welfare spending: that will be my focus if I become
Prime Minister in the next parliament. I want to reward hard-working families
up and down the country by lowering-raising their taxes and cutting-expanding public services. This is my plan and I intend to deliver it, if elected, as part of my
‘One Nation Building Hard-working Britain First’ campaign.
Nick: So you want to
simultaneously cut and expand welfare spending, lower and raise taxes and
reduce and enlarge the provision of services like healthcare and education.
This approach sounds very similar to that espoused by the Conservative party why should
anyone believe you’d do it better, you’re not the most convincing potential Prime
Minister are you?
Ed M: My answer to that
question is no and yes. I believe that new-old Labour provides all of the
answers to the problems of 21st century Britain but we might not be
able to deliver them due to the short-term political need to please a small
number of oligopolistic press barons who don’t like paying taxes. My Britain
will be one where everyone gets rich and no-one is poor. It will be a Pareto
optimal Britain wherein everyone has just the right amount of stuff to fulfil
their marginal utility requirements.
Nick: Ummm....yeah. So
will I have to pay more tax? Let’s be honest you’re going to raise my taxes aren’t
you and more importantly you’re going to raise my editor’s taxes as well?
Ed: Listen Nick, I
love-hate the rich and welcome-despise all forms of legal tax avoidance. We
will-won’t raise taxes for the rich-poor but this will be offset-accompanied by
corresponding tax breaks-rises leading to a net gain-loss for all concerned.
Did you know I really like animals?
Nick: So you’re
intending to raise taxes on people who are just rich enough to notice if their
tax bill goes up and just politically engaged enough to notice the colour of
the ties of the people doing it: do you intend to change the colour of your
tie?
Ed: I tend to wear a
yellow-blue-red tie/no-tie, it’s not important what is important is this
growing class of people I call the poor-rich. They are rich but they don’t feel
like they’re rich enough, they want their children to attend a Russell group
university, live in two or three homes in leafy villages with easy access to motorways,
airports and high-speed rail networks but away from noise or pollution. They
want high quality local public services but don’t want to see poor people when
they use them. They want easy access to a choice of golf courses, five or six
foreign holidays a year and a local Waitrose that delivers on Saturday morning
at no extra charge. These are the people of Ed Miliband’s Britain: occasionally-working
families who tend to ignore the problems of others and work from home at least
twice a week. Have I mentioned that I think cancer is terrible and I like
watching US political dramas on Netflix?
Nick: Do you hate
immigrants Mr. Miliband?
Ed: I do hate
immigrants but not as much as some other people who are frankly a bit racist. I think it's OK to be a bit racist as long as you don't say anything too racist in public. I’m
the son of immigrants but they were the old-style good immigrants who fled fascism and attempted to fundamentally change the social outlook of Britain, not like
these new ones who flee violence and economic hardship in their homelands.
Nick: Your Dad was a
mad, raving socialist wasn’t he?
Ed: My Dad love-hated
Britain and I embrace-despise everything he stood for.
Nick: You’re not as
good-looking as your brother are you? He’d be a much better, nicer Prime
Minister than you, wouldn’t he? He wouldn't have tried to raise my taxes. How did you feel when you metaphorically
stabbed him in the front at the leadership election?
Ed: I have the utmost
dis-respect for my brother. When we were kids he used to steal my political
encyclopaedias and cut out the sections on Marxist economic theory and eat
them: I’ve always wondered how my view of political history might have been
changed if he hadn’t done that.
Nick: Mr. Miliband, I think you
are a most unlikely candidate for Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland and I think all of the viewers will value my sincerely held government-oriented point of view. I’ve been Nick Anti-Socialist for GOB TV; now back
to Martha in the GOB News Centre for a story about the Queen’s dogs.
