The missus and I actually to the time out to watch the entire thing on 4OD catch up last night, which is quite the break from the Friday night norm for us (and consequently why I have a much clearer head than usual
)
Of course, I well appreciate that there's little point in my saying anything about it at all; most of my detractors here have me on super-dooper-permo-ignore or whatever, but hey.
Regardless, for me, the salient points were thus:
1. Miliband openly admitted that the "banking crisis" as it is euphemistically known in certain circles ("the worst Depression the UK has suffered in 60 years" for the rest of us) was due to the previous Labour administration's failure regulate said [UK] banks. No caveats about the "global financial crisis"; nothing about something the Tories supposedly did fifteen or twenty years previously. Just a load of guff about how he (and Ed Balls lol) had "learned lessons" from what was, by candid admission, a terrible, terrible error of political judgement. Full stop.
So then, vindication no less. Let's have no more talk about anyone (or anything) else being
politically culpable; to those who watched this as I have, we've heard it from Miliband's own lips.
Personally, I applaud his candor and honesty; I doubt very much we'd have had the same from Messrs. Balls, Burnham, Flint
et al. But as much as I applaud this honesty, the only conclusion to draw regarding his party's governmental competency, judgement and unequivocal culpability is that it was both appalling and unavoidable, and this brings into sharp focus the judgement of those who would seriously vote for more of the same, all to be as meted out by the very same individuals in many cases.
2. Miliband's candor wasn't just limited to the 2008 Depression; we had more of the same regarding the worst UK foreign policy disaster since at least Suez that was Iraq, not to mention the underestimation of EU immigration by two orders of magnitude, and even his alluding to some pretty hopeless governmental spending programmes to boot (I assume these would include catastrophically bungled defence, IT, health and public transport contracts, PFI and all the rest)
To me, the only sensible conclusion that can possibly be drawn was that this Labour administration was inarguably a total disaster and very possibly the worst of all time in British history? Which is, of course, exactly what I have been saying for many years.
So what we appear to have, people, is a political leader whose offer to the British people goes something along the lines of '... yes, I know we nearly destroyed the entire British economy through our failure to regulate the banks; our foreign policy was just as bad, and we got it utterly, utterly wrong on a host of other issues too, ranging from disastrous levels of unforeseen immigration to governmental contracts wasting many billions of taxpayers money that could've been spent towards helping to relieve all the social deprivation, suffering, food banks and all the rest that our own admitted political incompetence caused, even by our own candid estimation - but we've honestly learned our lesson, it'll be so much better this time'...? "Turkeys voting for Christmas" doesn't even start to cover it, as I've said before (resulting in much consternation and gnashing of teeth).
I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Cameron's claim that only 1 in 50 of the 2 million private sector jobs his government has created since coming to power is a so-called "zero hours" contract (i.e. a tiny minority) went completely unchallenged by Miliband, which does rather shoot that particular oft-used to
ad nauseam fox that is wheeled out every time by Labour apologists and supporters, here as elsewhere.
To any fair-minded observer, Cameron's polished, unflustered performance had this by a country mile, then, which isn't bad going considering he was (gleefully) handed quite the most poisoned chalice (economic ruin) that any peacetime UK Prime Minister has ever had to deal with.
I'll sum up by saying to those here who still cling to the absurd notion that the only reason anyone would vote Tory is for selfish "I'm alright Jack" reasons and not, y'know, because the principal alternative is so rubbish, not least as evidenced by these very telling admissions that they themselves even make: This position is simply as untenable as it is ludicrous, irrational and purposely offensive.
Look, you're more than welcome to vote for anyone you see fit as far as I'm concerned, however poorly judged I may consider that to be, but don't you presume to accuse the rest of us as being somehow 'selfish' or even worse, when all we want to see is a competent government that can actually do the job that we all of us need it to do, and to do it well.