In the news bulletin after Ed Miliband’s interview on the Andrew Marr show, the headline was about Miliband saying he does listen to criticism of his leadership. It rather summed up Miliband’s problem at the moment: he can’t get beyond all the chatter about his leadership.
In terms of the substance, Miliband’s explanation of Labour’s new economic position showed just how difficult it is going to be to explain it to the public. Miliband argued, as Balls did on Saturday, that the cuts are currently going ‘too far, too fast’ but that he can’t promise to reverse them. As one Tory said to me yesterday, Labour is saying that the cuts are the problem but we might have to adopt them.
But I think Miliband’s bigger problem is that he needs to put meat on the bone of his talk about reshaping the economy. At the moment, there’s nothing between lofty talk about a fairer, more long term economy and micro-policies about energy tariffs and the like. He also needs to be prepared to put more distance between himself and the last Labour government. As long as he continues to declare ‘I’m proud of what we did’ whenever asked about the deficits Labour ran then he is going to find it hard to get the public to listen to what he says about the economy.
One thing, though, is striking: Miliband’s confidence remains in place. He didn’t let Marr dictate terms to him. He doesn’t appear to be a leader who’ll walk away from the job.
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