Ed Miliband prepares for his most testing week yet

While the Tories bask in the glory of Abu Qatada’s deportation, the progress of James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill, and the general good atmosphere in the party, Labour is trying to work out what the best response to its terrible week is, and how to get to a situation where it is on top of the story, rather than jogging after it. The Independent on Sunday quotes one senior figure today as saying that Ed Miliband only has two weeks in which to resolve the Falkirk row, and his acolytes were out in force today to underline that the fightback is already under way. Michael Dugher has just appeared on Pienaar’s Politics to say that the ‘process of change, if anything, has got to accelerate and I think that’s what you will see in the days and weeks coming after this’. Those changes to the party’s relationship with the unions will be ‘very bold, ambitious’ and ‘big’, he told the programme.

The next two weeks are indeed dangerous for Miliband because anything other than a powerful response will allow the Tories to brand him permanently with the ‘weak leader’ line they’ve been focusing on over the past month. He has two problems: the first is that Tom Watson’s departure means that there are very few big bruisers working with him any more, save Ed Balls, who brings his own electoral problems of an economic, rather than trade unionist, order to the table. Thus his top team looks rather weak too. Watson’s abilities as a bruiser took him down the wrong avenue to resignation, but Miliband needs someone of a similar ilk. That the Tories are licking their lips about the long-term consequences of Watson going underlines that: they think Miliband will be left even more exposed in the long-run by Watson’s departure.

The second is that he needs to show that he personally has steel underneath that soft exterior. The Tories have stopped talking about Miliband’s brother because they realised it contradicted the ‘weak’ narrative. So he has a chance to show a bit of muscle without being considered Machiavellian. Some in his party want some ‘hug a husky’ (rather than hug a McCluskey) moments that are emblematic of the sort of party he is leading. Seizing ‘One Nation’ for his party was perhaps an early attempt at this, but the problem is that no-one understands what it means any more than they managed to digest the Big Society. Others hope that he will grow in confidence. One of his most rock-solid supporters recently told me, in the middle of a long conversation about Miliband’s attributes, that ‘arrogance is never, ever going to be a problem with Ed’. They said it so pointedly it suggested they feared the problem was quite the opposite: he wasn’t steely enough. The next two weeks will show us whether their fears are founded or not.