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Miliband attacked for 'neoliberal' services speech

Campaigners furious at Labour leader's call for public sector spending cuts

PUBLIC ownership campaigners condemned a “gobbledygook” speech by Labour leader Ed Miliband as a foolish leap toward neoliberal ideas yesterday.

Mr Miliband delivered a rambling speech calling for “people-powered” public services.

He attacked the “old-style, top-down central control” of public services, but failed to call for extension of public ownership to gas, electricity or the railways.

Mr Miliband insisted that the next Labour government would “have to cut spending” on the public sector — and would have to “do more with less.”

The Labour leader went to the headquarters of the liberal Guardian newspaper to deliver the Hugo Young lecture and attack “unaccountable power in the state and unresponsive public services”

Campaign for Public Ownership director Neil Clark described Mr Miliband’s speech as “depressing and outrageous.”

It was “a wake-up call to those on the left who think that the Labour Party is going to deliver, said Mr Clark.

“They are not committed to public ownership. They are just dancing to the neoliberal tune.”

He suggested that Mr Miliband should get in tune with public opinion and pledge an extension of public ownership amid rising anger over crippling rail fares and sky-high fuel bills.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths suggested that Mr Miliband should “sack all his advisers and policy wonks who are serving up such utter gobbledygook.”

Mr Griffiths accused him of “fiddling while people across Britain are burning with anger.”

Instead of Tory-style transfers of public services to private, charity or voluntary organistations, Mr Miliband should be demanding extensive public ownership and progressive taxation, said Mr Griffiths.

Mr Miliband’s Guardian lecture urged “a new culture of people-powered public services,” and called for “voice as well as choice” for patients, parents and all service users.

Parents should have a right to “call in” intervention if there was concern over standards in a particular school.

“Labour wants parents to be given the opportunity to set up parent-led academies,” he added.

Failed former cabinet minister David Blunkett has been asked by Mr Miliband to draw up recommendations for “decentralising decision-making over schools.”

Lord Adonis, an arch-Blairite and chair of the hard-right Progress faction, is working on Labour’s industrial strategy.

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