Might Miliband move Labour to the left?

In media short-hand Miliband is a Blairite. But after talking to a bunch of folk over the last few weeks, I suspect that he might actually be a more left-wing PM than Brown. The theory goes that Miliband is not an uber-Blairitie, some of them express a certain disappointment in him—they brought him up and they expected great things from him but he has yet to deliver, and the political opportunities for Labour are on the left now.

If Brown were to shift slightly more to the left, the commentariat would scream that he had ‘lurched to the left’. However, if Miliband were to do so his labelling as a Blairite by the press would mitigate against this criticism. Indeed, the politically savvy thing to do for any incoming Labour leader would be to be more populist, to draw dividing lines that force the Tories into defending people who are politically difficult to defend. Indeed, the game-changing popularity of George Osborne’s inheritance tax proposal shows that there is a lot of political mileage in redistribution from the super-rich to the mildly-rich. So, it would be a sensible move for any incoming Labour leader to start their premiership by increasing income tax on salaries over £200,000 a year to 45p in the pound and to make great play of using the revenue generated to raise the amount at which the 40 percent threshold kicks in.

It would be remiss to write a post about Miliband’s political philosophy without citing Daniel Finkelstein’s typically brilliant article about it. Back in July 2007, Danny described how Miliband would be categorised under the three tests proposed by Matthew Taylor, a former head of Blair’s policy unit:

How intense and driven are? How tribal are you? What are your beliefs? Use this scheme and you get the perfect description of Mr Miliband. He is Blair-Blair-Brown.

“[Miliband] has spent his entire political life working for Tony Blair and Mr Blair has changed him profoundly. I remember being very struck back in 1994 in those early days with Mr Blair, watching as Mr Miliband took on the leader’s project as his own, his convictions gradually blending with his boss’s. But with Mr Blair’s departure his situation has changed utterly and he will change with it. He is bound to.”