Whether or not Ed Miliband’s speech was a success depends on what sort of aim he had for it: heave Labour over the general election line using his party base, or reach out to wavering swing voters by arguing that Labour has the ability to govern in the challenging circumstances that it finds itself in after the 2015 election, that it has a vision for aspirational voters, and that it really understands why its working class voters deserted it in 2010.
Let’s address the second aim first. It was not a good speech. It did not have a sufficiently well-crafted message. It did not contain stories that were sufficiently compelling. Miliband had clearly poured more into memorising the words than working out whether they would captivate the hall. He has knocked it out of the park for the past two years running, but he did not have his eye in for this speech, the final one before the General Election. He came bounding onto the stage to music that would have been more fitting in a spinning class, but then failed to match the hype.
Yes, he got a standing ovation on the NHS and on standing up to the Daily Mail, but if a Labour conference did not applaud these two things, it would be a sign that its membership needed a visit to an NHS hospital pretty sharpish to have its signs of life checked. Otherwise Miliband failed to communicate an excitement about being Labour Prime Minister and what Labour could do in government, other than trying to plant in voters’ minds the idea of him being Prime Minister by saying ‘day one of me as Prime Minister’.
And yes, he tried to show that he was connecting with voters, that he wasn’t out of touch because he was meeting people the whole time: real people, who managed to confirm repeatedly that all the policies he was promising were entirely right. Gareth, Colin, Elizabeth, women in the park: they all wanted what Miliband was offering. Instead of showing that Miliband was connected, though, these Encounters with Ed showed that he was only hearing what he wanted to hear: not that voters are still worried that Labour cannot be trusted on the economy. If Gareth and co had mentioned that, it hasn’t made much difference with the Labour party, which has this week talked about the need for tough, unpopular decisions without announcing anything of the sort.
But does any of that matter? Probably not. It was a poor speech after a good run, but it probably hit enough spots to do the trick in terms of rousing the Labour base. It did worship the NHS, and it did bash the rich-loving Tories. These are both areas where Labour is strong and the Conservatives are weak. It was effective to talk about the big business and oligarchs the Tories would stand up for, and it was effective to talk about the difference between Labour’s Together and the Tories’ ‘you are on your own’. ‘If we are to run this country on the principle of Together, can the Tories be the answer?’ asked Miliband. ‘No!’ shouted the audience. Later he described Labour as ‘leadership that stands for the privileged few, or leadership that fights for you’. That was good.
This speech was probably just about enough, like this Labour conference has probably been just about enough. But goodness, the Labour party doesn’t seem that excited about governing, or indeed ready for the really gruelling slog that’ll come.
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