10/06/2011 Newsnight

Project Volvo was the name they gave Gordon Brown, David Cameron

was supposed to be the sports car, how will Ed Miliband define his

leadership, and where is he actually going?

More and more people are asking, in what direction is Ed Miliband

driving his party? Does anybody know? Does he even know?

The old infighting of new resurface, with the finger pointing Ed Balls,

what kind of team is this. We have a guru flown in to share

what he learned with Obama, and find out if Miliband is the right

man for the job. The outgoing senator reads NATO's

obituary. Future leaders may not consider America's investment in

NATO worth the cost. Thugs attacks demonstrator, we will

have the latest on state repression inside Syria. In the postmodern

scoop of the decade, Sarah Palin's entire e-mail records released to

the press, all 24,000 pages. We are joined from Alaska by one of the

poor hacks wading through T You don't have to have a car

attached to your name but it seems to go with the territory. Gordon

Brown was nicknamed Project Volvo, David Cameron was seen as the BMW.

After another week with Ed Miliband struggling to find his voice for

the leadership of Labour, maybe the car seems less relevant than the

entire direction of travel. Tonight, as revelations laid bare the part

Miliband's Shadow Chancellor played in the infighting of the Blair-

Brown years, we ask where Labour is heading, does Ed have plan, could

it involve something that sounds similar to the Tory's Big Brother

society. It must have been a relief for Ed Miliband to return to his

Doncaster constituency today. He's not had a good week.

What's with the IMF backing the Government's economic policy. His

own poor showing at Question Time, and today, the Telegraph reopening

old Labour sores, by publishing papers once kept by Ed Balls, which

show the effort that is the Brownites made to oust Tony Blair.

I think what you are seeing is an overhyped version of ancient

history, the era of Blair and Brown is over, we are a party looking

outwards to the country, not looking inwards and talking to

ourselves, that is the way it will be under my leadership. Today the

cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, started an inquiry

whether the papers were leaked from the education department, where Ed

Balls thinks he last had them when he was schools secretary.

The documents show how in July 2005, while London was reeling from

terrorist bombs and attempted attack, Brown and his allies were

planning, plotting maybe, how he could replace Mr Blair. But Ed

Balls today denied any plot. The allegation that there was a

plot, that there was nastiness, that brutality, it is not true, it

is not justified either by a reading of the documents which I

saw last night, or by what was happening at the time.

Indeed many Labour supporters fear pick and mix, just about sums it up,

that Mr Miliband's party lacks distinctiveness, coherence and

impact. Where better to discuss whether Labour's got the right

ticket, than the London Transport Museum. Increasingly people both

within and outside the Labour Party are asking, in what direction is Ed

Miliband taking his party? Has he ditched new Labour. Is he

now Red Ed taking his party to the left, or has he embarked on some

other journey all together. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron, in

their first few months as leader of the opposition, made bold

pronouncements, giving us some idea of their ultimate destinations. In

Blair's case, the ditching of Clause IV, with David Cameron, it

was those pictures with huskies and the famous "hug a hoodie" speech.

Labour blogger, Dan Hodges, worries Ed Miliband has made no such

symbolic gesture. He's just leaving people rather confused. The problem

is there are several Ed Milibands floating around. The one standing

around at the Labour Party Conference, and then the Ed

Miliband saying Ken Clarke should resign on the film sensorsing, that

is confusing for the public, he has to explain who he is. People see

all the different Ed Milibands floating around, all they know,

indeed all of them, have slightly strange voices and look slightly

strange and indeed, stab their brother in the back, and he has to

explain to the country who he is, before he can start to explain

where he's going. Many of those who backed David

Miliband fear the younger brother has been too ready to abandon Tony

Blair, new Labour and all that. Though, this Blairite says that is

not so. I don't think he has ditched new Labour, he talks

constantly about the squeezed middle, those people who are

feeling very, very under pressure because of the recession, but also

because of things like the VAT rise, which the Tories introduced. He is

the one who is trying to put himself on the side of those

majority of people who have really lost out over the last few years,

not the rich, who are gaining from big bonuss in the city, and not

those who - bonuses in the city, and not those who are unemployed

and on benefit, but those in work and struggling. Some of those

advising Ed Miliband want him to follow Barack Obama's lead, and

encourage organisation among small communities. Labour's biggest

community champion, perhaps, is Morris Glassman, guru of so-called

Blue Labour, and a not wholly hostile response to David Cameron's

Big Brother society. When Barcelona beat Manchester United in the

European Cup Final, what you saw was two different models of

globalisation, Manchester United, very new Labour, very financed base,

very corporate, where you have the glaze glaze family, who own it,

where the family are entirely he is stranged from the company. All the

love that Manchester United fans feel for their club, can only be

expressed through money. What we say in Blue Labour, there is more

than just the price, Barcelona is owned by the fans, they elect the

President, they are actively involved in the governance of the

club, they have an institute in the club that actually promotes virtue

and excellence, with the training of the players. This is something

that all Manchester United fans can relate to, there is great

traditions in the club, and Barcelona did it, the incredible

thing is they are more successful globally. The danger is, if

Miliband doesn't come up with something more forceful,

distinctive and appealing, he may not last. How long has he got to

prove himself? I think he has until next year. We have got the

elections in London, I think, people will be looking for success

in those elections. If he's not cutting through there and seeing

significant and steady opinion poll leads there, then I think he has a

political problem. It depends on Ken Livingston, really? It does.

Before that, Miliband's direction should become much clearer, we're

assured, this autumn, once he gets results from the big reviews he has

set up on Labour policy and organisation.

Tomorrow's Guardian offers an insight as to what David Miliband

might have said as leader in place of his brother. This time is

excruciating from Ed Miliband, what are you drawing from it? It is the

speech that David Miliband would have given at the Labour conference

if he was elected leader. My question is has this been pumped

out by an ally of David Miliband in order to take the deficit more

seriously, or alternatively, the Guardian's attempt to have their

own leak, to trump the Ed Balls leak, of his stuff, in the

Telegraph, yesterday and some more of it tomorrow. The interesting

thing about what David Miliband would have said is that he would

have announced that Alistair Darling, he would be appointed to

head a new Labour commission to draw up new rules on public

spending, he would have told the conference that it should have been

Labour that set up the office of bugetry responsibility, rather than

the current coalition. He would have argued that the deficit is the

biggest argument in politics, the biggest danger for us, George

Osborne says we're in denial about the deficit because he wants us to

be, so let's not be, it is a test. The party will only be trusted,

David Miliband would have told the conference, when we show in word

and deed that the alternative to mean Government is lean Government.

Nordz Labour should have faced the deficit issue head - in other words,

Labour should have faced the deficit issue head-on. A key ally

of Ed Miliband, conducting an internal review of the party, Arnie

Graf who worked with Obama in the past, and Elizabeth Truss, a

political strategist. We want to look at the future of Labour, that

is why we are here? I hope so. all this talk of a new generation,

as we have seen, we are rather back in the past, we have loads of

Labour supporters looking at what David Miliband might have said if

he were Labour leader instead of his brother. We have some looking

ahead to see what Ed Balls might do to Ed Miliband. It is not great

place for the Labour Party to be? No, the Westminster village, of

which you are part, is stuck in the past, looking at documents that

have been leaked five, six years old, and more. That's all the past.

What Ed Miliband is doing, and what I'm doing in the refounding Labour

project, which he is leading s to look to the future, to make sure we

have a Labour Party able to cope with the politics of today, which

are very, very different from even five or six years ago, with the new

social media, with people not joining parties any more, to the

same extent, any political party, with people relating to politics in

an entirely different way. The need to reach out of our party

structures and organise in the community, and where we have done

that, like in Edgbaston, in Oxford East and other constituencies, we

resisted the national swing, which should have swept the seats aside,

like more than 100 Labour MPs were swept away by the national swing.

All that have is energy for future, and policies that are coming

through, Ed Miliband is already commanding that agenda on the

squeezed middle and a couple of other issues. He couldn't define

the squeezed middle, it ended up being 90% of the population? I it

can tell us what it is, it is not the rich at the top or the poor on

benefit, it is great many hard working people hit by high tuition

fee, VAT increase, rises in electricity bills, rises in

unemployment, and those job security, insecurity is rife, and

there are attack ones the health service with the back door

privatisation and attacks on the schools system. We know that Ed

Miliband had enormous difficulty defining what that was. We have had

two dozen policy revue, including to quote "X factor for the many not

the view", we have follows showing he has dipped consistently below

his own party. Unable to capitalise on the Tory u-turns because he's

accused of them himself. He's losing a message here. The latest

polls show our lead over the Tories increasing. Ed Miliband is at the

beginning of his leadership, he's relatively unknown, he's

establishing himself, as he does so he will win more and more

popularity. 5,000 new members have joined the Labour Party in the - 6

5,000 new members have joined the Labour Party under his leadership.

We are gaining members while most are losing them. By this reform

programme, that is energiseing the grassroots of the party, there is a

world of difference from the Westminster village and gossip

around old memos and so forth. And to the Labour Party who is looking

to fight this very right-wing Tory Government. You have been flown in

by Ed Miliband and the team. If things are as good as Peter Hain

says, why are they turning to you, why do they need you? I think what

Ed said to me is that what he's trying to do is build a politics

that's from the bottom up. That politics has been essentially

practised by all parties, more from the top down. He was impressed that

our organisation in Baltimore, I work for the Industrial Areas

Foundation, the organisation is called Build, they had developed

the living wage concept and got the first living wage law passed in

Baltimore. That came not from a policy think-tank, but me and my

colleagues, and leaders doing hundreds and hundreds of individual

meetings with low-wage workers who are saying they can't live on a

minimum wage, they need a wage that they can live on. We came up with

the concept of living wage, which Ed supports. In terms of how that

translates here today, I know you spent the day with Ed Miliband, you

are in done caster, you know the UK pretty well know, with what has

been your clearest, your most fundamental message for him as

leader now? I travelled 14 cities in the UK and in 17 days. I met

with over 510 people, both in the voluntary sector and connected to

Labour. What I would say to Ed is there is ener gee in the party

locally, that is - ener gee in the party locally that is ready to go

out and get it. What I found most in this country is people are

anxious, they are anxious about the next generation. They are anxious,

will there children be able to go to school. They are anxious about

their own employment, but they are very anxious about the future of

their children. Let's just turn to Elizabeth Truss, this talk of

harnessing the potential of the volume steer must sound very

familiar to you. - volunteer, must sound very familiar to you, it is

The Big Idea society by another name? There is some of the same

elements, there is a rejection of the top-down state. The idea that

the Government can do everything, that all you have to do is pour in

more money, then you will be successful. What I think about the

Labour project so far is it does seem to be an element of talking to

themselves. What we saw in the AV referendum is a small group of

people in the centre of London, in Oxford and Cambridge, voting yes to

AV, the so-called progressive majority, somewhere like Doncaster

voting 75% against. There is a sense in which Labour has got out-

of-touch with its own supporters, and with the aspirations of

ordinary people in Britain. Particularly on issues like

education, which has just been talked about. There has been a

failure to back policies like academies, and the English

baccalaureate, that will raise performance in schools and bring

people in the next generation forward. So essentially wasting

your time on the wrong projectss that don't connect with people's

real needs? What we are doing is making sure under Ed Miliband that

Labour is really in touch with people. It is only a year since we

got our second worst result. Since universal sufferage, it was a

terrible result in the last general election. We have already bounced

back, far more securely than in any comparable period, 1983 I think

back to. We were flat on our backs in 1983. We have a growing

confidence in the Labour Party, and a real determination to fight a

Government that was never having a mandate, as the Archbishop said,

the Archbishop of Canterbury said, for these kind of right-wing

policies, which are deeply unpopular which are causing great

insecurity and are damaging the economy as well, and causing

unemployment to rise, and actually causing the deficit to rise as well.

Let's naut to Arnie Graf, what do you think - let's put that to Arnie

Graf what do you think a centre left party should be offering in

2011. You worked with Obama as a young man in the past, do you see

the same messages and the same elements applying here now?

actually, I don't think Obama's running his presidency as a left of

centre person. My interest in and the reason I responded to Ed

Miliband, and I believe he is an authentic centre to left person,

that's the reason I took an unpaid leave of absence to come here. I

hear him talking about income and equality, where the 5% or the 2%

make a huge amount of money, and the rest don't. I hear him talking

about responsibility and reciprocity, I hear him talking

about, today in Doncaster, and I believe him when he says he's

looking for real citizenship. That is a citizen is not a person

treated like a customer, as the market does, or as a client, that

often time the state does. That is interesting. What is the vision

here, is it this phrase we're now getting used to, Blue Labour, the

idea of the actism, the community, is that where - activism, the

community, is that where you are going now? What Ed Miliband is

determined to do is not rush into policies in a situation that may be

totally different from what it is in three-and-a-half years time in

the run up to a general election. So, yes, the Blue Labour critique

is something he's interested in and listening to, it is stressing the

importance of community, the fact that people are feeling very

insecure when their local post offices close, their pubs close,

their way of life seems to be swept aside in a materialist free market

frenzy that this Government is encouraging. It doesn't mean to say

Blue Labour is our masthead, it is just part of a debate. You have Red

Toryism, is Philip Blonde suggesting anything so different

for you? If I could make a point about the way Labour are

approaching t they are bringing in academics and people from outside.

Ed Miliband himself is the son of an academic, there seems to be a

very narrow group of people in the Labour Party than there was

previously were they had broader representation from working people

who had got into the Labour Party. Now it does seem to be very

academically focused, it is focused on thinking about these ideas,

rather than actually talking to people, the real people in Britain,

who represent these aspirations. I think when the Conservative Party

really started to get a grip and get out of opposition, it was when

we went out and listened to what real people were saying, rather

than having these senior common room discussions about political

philosophy. I think you know, Ed Miliband is in danger of coming

across like, that rather than coming across as someone who can

talk human, which was always meant to be his advantage over his

brother. Too much ideology, and less

practical hands-on understanding? No, I don't agree. I mean I think

that what I have seen out in the country, I visited, I counted it up,

511 people, in 14 cities in 17 days, I immersed myself in the country.

Whether it was Scotland or Wales or all over the country. I find in

Labour a lot of activism, it is not the kind of activism and work that

gets picked up by the national media, but I was on council estates,

where there is a wonderful councillor, Labour councillor, gene

Hutchins, who for four years, worked with the people in thes

state, to clean up the gang activity, she did it, even though

her life has been threatened numerous times, there is security

cameras on her home. When I was on the estate she had two policemen

working with her. These are the individual stories of courage, can

they be knitted together under the personality and leadership of

somebody like Ed Miliband? Absolutely, I don't think he would

send me out in a blank slate, completely trusting that I would go

out and talk with people, no particular agenda, to get a pulse,

to get a feel, and you know, all I would say, back to the Conservative

Party is if you cut the police the way you are requiring it to, and

you call it The Big Idea society, if you eadvise rate the state, you

are going to - eviseate about people without the police. To the

Robert Gates said NATO declared the real possibility of a dim and

dismal future. He said Americans would be less

willing to support an organisation, whose partners, Europe, were

unhappy to donate their resources to the organisation.

Has it galvanised other countries in NATO to contribute to

organisations. Which way will this go? This wasn't a take this job and

shove it speech, it wasn't even a take this western alliance and

shove it. It was him saying, frankly there are plenty of people

in Washington who have concluded it's time to take the western

alliance and shove it. The bugetry context is overwhelming, there are

plans to cut $400 billion out of the US defence budget over the next

few years. He was saying effectively to the rest of NATO,

the free ride is over, this is a turning point in history, here's

the flavour. The blunt reality is there will be dwindling appetite

and patience in the United States Congress and in the American body

politic writ large, to spend increasingly precious funds on

behalf of naits that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary

resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable

partners in their own defence. So the message was, in a long line

of American defence secretaries, who have warned NATO about this

issue of burden sharing who does what, how much of the burden is

carried, but in a completely different sort of context, a par

dime shift, if you like, - pardigm shift, if you like, that these

bugetry realities make it a different game. He singled out

Libya, symptomatic of the failings? The point he was making about Libya

and Afghanistan, this is not a devisive war, it is something the

whole alliance has agreed is a good and proper thing to do, to support

the opponents of Colonel Gaddafi, and yet look at who actually

delivers what towards that end? So, for example, 28 countries in NATO,

how many of them are actually involved in the operations to

secure the no-fly zone and whittle down Colonel Gaddafi's forces. The

number involved in the operation as a whole is only half the alliance,

14, some of those like Greece, it is basically providing facilities

who are actually flying the combat sort at thiss, bombing - sorties,

bombing Colonel Gaddafi's forces, eight of those, even the capability

of some of those is very small, like Norway, just a few aircraft.

He's saying everything has been whittled down to such a point, this

is the limit of what NATO can provide. Even those countries that

have the political will and capability, like the UK, and the

advanced weapons to use, in a precision way to take out targets

like Colonel Gaddafi's force, if he look at, for example, a weapon like

the Brimstone missile, which the RAF has been using, after a few

weeks of that, we can see one of those knocking out a Libyan tank a

few weeks ago. After a few weeks of that the UK was running out of the

missiles. Even the countries on the American good guy list haven't

invested enough historically. He was saying, there is a generational

shift going on in politics in Washington, and this simply won't

wash any more. Future US political leaders, those

form whom the Cold War was not the formative experience it was for me.

May not consider the return on American investment in NATO worth

the cost. What I have sketched out is the real possibility for a dim,

if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance. Such a

future is possible, but it is not inevitable. If this is the rattling

of a tin, cough up for NATO will suffer. How many of the member

states will listen and commit more? Just as you were talking about the

retreat of Big Brother society, and big Government in the UK. It is

accepting that in situations like Syria, 25 people apparently killed

by Mr Al-Assad's security forces there. Tanks moving into the town

of Al-Shughour, reports unconfirmed of attack helicopters being used

against crowds in one place. But things like this will become more

and more common place, the political will isn't there, the UK-

US UN resolution supposed to be voted on today has stalled, lack of

will, the military capability isn't there, crucially the international

community will be reduced to hand wringing and phrases from the side

Journalists collected 75,000 pages of Sarah Palin's u mails. The boxes

were released only after much resistance from officials. It shows

her e-mail account at the time of the election, and when she was

picked to be John McCain's running mate. The interest is huge, but

does any of it shed new light on Palin. One of the poor hacks whose

job it is to trail through the papers is with us now.

Good of you to join us, has it been worth it so far? You have to say it

is pretty early doors. We have six enormous boxes. I felt most of this

morning like a furniture removal guy, carrying these boxes round,

which is the new version of multitasking. They are 2 4,000

pages of the documents, we have started to plough our way through

them, we are at the very beginning, so far a lot of smoke and not yet

the smoking gun. We are waiting to find that key bit of information

that we didn't know yet about Sarah Palin. How do you do that, 24,000

pages. Presumably there is the kind of round-Robin e-mail joke taking

up half of it? There is a lot of pad anything there. Quite a lot of

it is actually deeply dull. There have been some interesting things

coming out so far. We are doing it scatter gun at the moment,

hopefully we will enlist read Tories help us. It is very Alaskan

this, they had digital e-mails, they had to print them out on paper

and hand them on the paper, saying they didn't have the technology to

give us discs. Now we have been busy scanning them back in again

into digital form. By the end of today and early tomorrow, we should

have them all up on the website, we are going to ask our readers to

help us find the very best bits. What are your top favourites so far.

Talk us through what you have found that caught your fancy? You have to

say so far it has been quite Alaskan. My favourite document so

far is this one, in which Sarah Palin is invited to join a public

education campaign about bears in Alaska, teaching people about the

safety around bears. So that's one thing. She also got very worried

about tanning. She bought a tanning bed for the governor's mansion, she

was very distressed when the local paper found out about it, she

wanted to know how they got the information and what were the staff

going to do about it. Quite Sarah Palinesque, some of it, she talks

about asking God for guidance on how to push through the budget,

which is slightly worrying, and she is very Palinesque language, she

talks about "unflipping believable" and "bs", which I'm sure you know

what that is. Let me just quickly run you through

That's it for tonight. We leave you with a tribute to the wisdom of

baseball legend and fill loss fear Yogey Bear, who said it ain't over

# So many tears I've cried # So much pain inside

# Baby it ain't # Over till