Ed Miliband may be stumbling – but don’t forget his huge headstart

Coming back to the office after a holiday is never a pleasant experience. There’s the clogged inbox, the reminders that you have left undone those things which you ought to have done, and the realisation that you won’t get another break for months. But even by these standards, Ed Miliband has had a difficult return to work. He’s been met by a cacophony of demands, many of them contradictory.

Miliband does have problems. He lacks the sort of policies that would show the voters what he’s about, his shadow cabinet are underperforming, and the Tories seem to have moved into disciplined election-fighting mode. But he can take comfort from a problem he doesn’t have: there is no left-wing alternative to Labour, no party cannibalising his vote. In a close election, this could be crucial — especially given that Ukip will take a bite out of the Tory vote.

This absence of a Ukip of the left means that Miliband can commit to matching the coalition’s spending plans without having to worry about voters going elsewhere. The gap in the market in British politics now is for a full-on anti-austerity party. No one looks like filling it. The Greens are shy of the limelight, Respect remains a sectional interest and efforts at left unity are at the People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front stage.

In some ways, Miliband is the author of his own good fortune. If his brother had won the leadership, an alternative leftist party might well have emerged. Ed has, to David’s audible annoyance, apologised for Labour’s support for the Iraq war. Given the divisions that Iraq created on the left, this was the pragmatic thing to do. He has also avoided the third-way habit of deliberately picking fights with those to the left of him.