Labour’s coming up on the rails

Even leaderless and without fresh ideas, Labour has surged in the polls. Think what the party might be able to do with someone – anyone – in charge

The Labour leadership contest has been easy to mock. It has set brother against brother, lasted for months and shown that the party has no heir to Blair. In private, Labour politicians are frank about the failings of their candidates. When I asked a senior backbencher about who he was endorsing, he replied, ‘The least worst one.’ Coalition ministers are gleeful about the weaknesses of the field. When I talked to one MP who is close to David Cameron about which of the Milibands he feared most, he laughed before dismissing them both with the jibe once deployed against William Hague — ‘weird, weird, weird’.

It is easy to dismiss Labour. Easy — but wrong. Not even the smuggest Tory MP could have failed to notice that last week the leaderless Labour party was neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the opinion polls. Its core vote did not disintegrate in the election, and instead held firm enough to deny Cameron a majority. His is not a two-term mandate. So the perceived failings of the Milibands might not actually matter much. The new jockey may not be Frankie Dettori, but the Labour horse has more life in it than many think.

Far from being, as it is usually described, the worst job in politics, leader of the opposition might well be the easiest one over the next few years. Whichever Miliband is declared the winner this weekend may be carried straight into 10 Downing Street on the strength of anti-government votes. The new Labour leader will be heading a party that is the sole repository of anti-government sentiment at a time when the government is making £80 billion of spending cuts and introducing £30 billion of tax rises.