Ed Miliband the consumer champion, the saviour of the squeezed classes. That, more or less, is how the Labour leader has always sought to sell himself — but this morning the sales pitch goes into overdrive. He has an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which he attacks ‘Rip-off Britain’. Not the TV show, mind, but those companies that hammer their customers with extra costs and hidden charges. Excessive savings fees, car-parking charges, airline levies, bank charges, consumer helpline costs and energy bills; all these should come to an end, says Miliband. And he has a few measures for achieving that.
What strikes me, when reading the interview, is how this fits into a trend of politicians leaning on businesses to make them curb certain excesses. Miliband may, to be fair, be breaking some relatively new ground here, but there were also similiar themes in Nick Clegg’s speech on Monday. And David Cameron has long spoken out, in Opposition and in government, about bank charges, energy bills and all that.
And ‘leaning’ is the word. What typifies this political battleground is the use of threats, rather than hard legislation, and a reliance on transparency. And so we’ll hear a politician say, ‘Golly gosh, people, those fees you charge just aren’t on. If you don’t lower them, then we’ll have to start raising taxes and busting knee-caps.’ Or, ‘You really do need to be clearer about what you’re charging.’ There are examples of both approaches in Miliband’s interview.
As we’ve seen with, say, energy bills, this sort of political pressure doesn’t always have the desired effect. But I doubt the various party strategists will much mind. What this leaning achieves, if nothing else, is to suggest that their man is on the side of the little man. And, what’s more, it’s also basically free. No-one is going to ask of transparency, how much does it cost? And that’s a particular boon for Labour at the moment, given their difficult line on the public finances.
So will this work for Ed Miliband? Erm, probably not. The Sun covers his television appearance yesterday by focussing on a small slip-up: he said ‘pinch of sugar’ rather than ‘pinch of salt’. When you’re on a losing streak, it seems, it’s hard to start winning again.
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