‘I see myself as a Cameron figure’

James Forsyth meets Ed, the ‘normal’ Miliband, who says that the conventional political wisdom about Middle England is all wrong

When you walk into Ed Miliband’s office in the House of Commons, the first thing you’re struck by is that he has not had time to unpack since Labour lost power. It is bare except for a couple of generic-looking paintings. When I ask him what they are of, he stares at them quizzically for a second before an aide reminds him that they were left there by the previous occupant.

But the second thing that hits you is that Ed is normal, surprisingly so. As we exchange pleasantries, he doesn’t engage in any of the psychological tricks so beloved of some politicians; there’s no attempt to establish alpha-male status. He even sits himself in the low window seat in an attempt to minimise his height advantage.

Despite Ed’s relaxed nature, he has become the polarising candidate in this contest. To his supporters, Ed is the real deal, a conviction politician unembarrassed by his left-wing views — the perfect antidote to the poll-driven politicians the electorate has such contempt for. But to his critics, he’s a panderer, a man telling the Labour membership just what they want to hear.

Ed is certainly left-wing. He tells me, with a real sense of outrage, about meeting care-workers in Durham who are being paid the minimum wage for working in an old people’s home. ‘Now maybe a free market person says, you know, that’s what the market will bear for that sort of work, that’s life. Well I just don’t agree with that.’

But Ed doesn’t think his politics make him the comfort-zone candidate, a Labour William Hague. Rather, he thinks he is to Labour what David Cameron was to the Tories in 2005: ‘I think that Cameron was more willing than Davis to say look, we’ve got to change in order to win the next election.