At some point it seems wise to suppose that Ed Miliband isn’t playing any devious or subtle long game and that, far from being baffling, his public pronouncements are probably a pretty reasonable guide to what he actually, truly believes. And he really doesn’t think that Labour made any significant errors while in office. Surpluses are for wimps; real men run deficits even in boom times. In this, as in so much else, Miliband rejects Tony Blair’s analysis and sides with his old mentor Gordon Brown. Fair enough.
Iain Martin finds this perplexing, not least from any electoral/political perspective and he’s right. Miliband’s views are touchingly old-fashioned. So much so, in fact, that perhaps he’s in the wrong parliament. He’d be quite at home at Holyrood. This is something David Aaronovitch mentioned on Twitter yesterday and the more I think about it the more I suspect he’s on to something: if Ed Miliband had his druthers, English politics would look a lot more like Scottish politics than it does now. Perhaps this isn’t how Miliband would choose to put it but the implicit logic behind so many of his statements suggest that he really would be more comfortable living in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
And since the Holyrood Edition of the Labour party hasn’t moved on from those days it stands to reason that Miliband would be happy in Edinburgh. Devolution, after all, was devised as a kind of political sanctuary park where Oldish Labour types could potter around free from the threat of Thatcherite poachers or other unwelcome examples of modern development. Such as Blairism.
This has proved the case. The Scottish Labour party at Holyrood has not troubled itself with any question of any significant size far less any problem that might require even the tiniest measure of fresh thinking. It is not a place for dreamers or advocates for reform. Personal care for the elderly? Not something to worry about. Education reform? Not needed and dangerously radical anyway. Health policy reform? Don’t you appreciate that the NHS is the wonder of the civilised world? Everything is fine, don’t you see, so there’s no need to worry about changing anything.
Above all, it’s a place reeking of the certainty that the Scots are somehow a more moral people than the English. Deep down that’s what John Smith believed. Now Miliband isn’t a Scot but I’d wager he thinks Labour people are more moral than Tory people and, like the other Brownites, I suspect he thinks that they’re a more moral bunch than those dangerously market-friendly Blairites.
So perhaps it is the case that while sensible people look at Scottish Labour and see complacency and failure, Ed Miliband sees a land gratifyingly untouched by the reforming zeal and squalid compromises of Blairism. Perhaps all this is so much baloney but if there’s anything to it then, as Iain Martin also suggests, Mr Miliband may one day find that he has quite a problem in southern England. Meanwhile, however, like Scottish Labour he can continue on his cosy way and never trouble himself with any too tough questions or bother to question any of his long-cherished, lovingly-preserved assumptions…
Comments