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| Miliband the Mockney Cockney |
Apart from fluent mockney few of them have any experience of anything but politics.
Harriet Harman: Deputy Leader and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development
St Paul's private school. Having obtained a degree in Politics from York University, Harriet qualified as a Solicitor. Guardian Profile.
Yet few figures in modern politics have enjoyed greater privilege than Harman. Her father was a Harley Street surgeon, her uncle the Earl of Longford. She was educated at the exclusive St Paul's Girls' School, before going on to York University and legal training.
And like so many of the New Labour elite, she has never had a real job in the commercial world. Before she entered Parliament, she worked as the legal officer for the radical pressure group, the National Council for Civil Liberties. See Why does Harriet Harman hate marriage?
Ed Balls: Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Born 1967 in Norwich. The son of a zoology professor, Ed Balls was educated at a private all-boys school, Nottingham High, and Oxford University, where he gained a first class honours degree, before attending Harvard, in the US, as a Kennedy scholar. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12251435
(He dated the journalist Stephanie Flanders who was also a Kennedy Scholar )
Despite educating Ed at a private school "Ed’s father became a Labour activist and secretary of the campaign in Norfolk to abolish the 11-plus exam. "
Jim Murphy: Shadow defence secretary
Born in 1967, his family emigrated to South Africa in 1979. He went to secondary school at Milnerton High, a whites only school at the time, until 18 (1985). He was president of the Scottish NUS and has not had a proper job in his life, moving from an honorary directorship of the student's insurance company Endsleigh from 1994-6 to a succession of Labour Party posts.
Rachel Reeves MP Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Reeves is one of the worst mockney speakers in the Shadow Cabinet. She is hilarious, switching from a Dick Van Dyke mockney to her South East London/Oxbridge posh accent all the time. (She went to a girls school in Beckenham then to New College Oxford). If she was not such an "accent prat" her work record would be one of the most impressive in the Shadow cabinet:
"Reeves worked as an economist at the Bank of England and British Embassy in Washington, D.C. between 2000 and 2006.[10] Between 2006 and July 2009, she worked as a business planner and analyst for Halifax Bank of Scotland (now part of Lloyds Banking Group).[11] She was once interviewed for a job at Goldman Sachs but turned it down. She said the job could have made her "a lot richer"." (Wikipedia article on Reeves)
Mind you, 6 or 7 years of high flying work is not really the insight into the condition of ordinary folk that Labour needs - if she had run a small business for 15 years she would know about life but..
Maria Eagle Shadow Secretary of State for Transport
Went to Pembroke College Oxford and did have some proper jobs as a solicitor.
Andy Burnham MP Shadow Secretary of State for Health
Fitzwilliam College Cambridge. Never had a proper job since leaving university.
Ed Milliband Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party
Stephen Twigg Secretary of State for Education
Studied philosophy, politics and economics. Balliol College Oxford. Apart from a brief spell with Amnesty International has not had a proper job.
He became the youngest and first openly gay president of the National Union of Students in 1990[4] representing the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS). He was re-elected in 1991. On leaving the NUS he became a councillor in the London Borough of Islington, and was also Chief Whip, and briefly Deputy Leader. He worked for the UK section of Amnesty International and then for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. (Wikipedia)
Chuka Umunna MP Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Umunna was educated at the private school, St. Dunstan's College in Catford in south-east London. He obtained a 2:1 degree in English and French Law from the University of Manchester and then studied at the University of Burgundy in Dijon in France, and Nottingham Law School in Nottingham. In 2002-2008 he worked as a solicitor.
Hilary Benn MP Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
He attended Norland Place School, Westminster Under School (a private school), Holland Park School and University of Sussex where he graduated in Russian and East European Studies. Benn has an older brother, Stephen, a younger sister Melissa and a younger brother, Joshua. After leaving university he worked for the trades union, ASTMS, and has never had a proper job.
Really, anyone who would trust a bunch of Oxbridge graduates who speak mockney but who are really largely lawyers or professional politicians must be mad. No doubt they can fool the more stupid half of the population but its a con job, they don't know enough about the lives of ordinary people to do anything to help them, they will just make everything worse. Their instinctive support for the Public Sector rather than industry and commerce proves the point, they are still school kids who understand institutions but have no idea about reality.
Update: perhaps this article has had an effect, Labour politicians have largely returned to using their own accents in the 2015 General Election.
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For more about Labour don't miss:
Is Labour any more than the Public Sector Party?
The roots of New Labour
What is Socialism?
First published 27/12/12
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