I think I’m about the only journalist to have watched Ed Miliband’s speech and think it wasn’t awful. Here in Manchester, the consensus seems to be that this was as bad as a speech could be. And, admittedly, even I was tweeting rude things about it all of the way through (since when does anyone need a 10-year plan? Britain won a world war in six years).
You may not like the politics but his speech was intellectually coherent, even pugnacious in parts. Sure, it was about an hour too long and had some worrying lacunas. His decision not to mention the economy was wise because he has nothing to say. There was no mention of ‘one nation’ because he has evidently decided not to be a ‘one nation’ leader – he wants to be divisive, and beat up the rich. Hedge funds are apparently being singled out for punishment: why? Doesn’t he know that they played no role in the crash? It doesn’t matter: they seem to be prosperous, and that’s frowned upon under Red Ed. He doesn’t seem to mind posing as the enemy of success, and hawking the politics of grudge.
His speech would never have made it past a New Labour censor, but New Labour was a genuinely one-nation party. Miliband only wants the 35 per cent of the electorate needed to take him to Downing St, and he needs them to turn up to vote.
I was watching the speech in the new Guido tent – containing a good crowd who break into laughter at all the right places. Like, for example, when Miliband tried his ‘I met a woman’ spiel. He had met quite a few of them in the first fifteen minutes of this epic speech. But in his defence (and I suspect he’ll need some defence) he’s right to say that it’s shocking 45 per cent of Scots voted to break up the country because many thought they had nothing to lose. ‘That is not the referendum question, that’s the general election question,” he said – and I wholly agree. Shame he was not able to offer any answers.
He met two more women: ‘I was working on my speech, I wasn’t getting anywhere so I went to the park. And I met two young women.’ This time, even the hall broke into laughter, which seemed to baffle him: ‘it’s not that funny,’ he said – little realising that the joke was on him. But he struggled on, to preach his gospel of left-wing populism: ‘The deck is packed, the game is rigged in favour of those who have too much power.’
And so on it went. For 65 minutes, but it felt like 90. But if you were to edit the best five minutes of this speech, it would have been a coherent expression of left-wing populism. In this speech Miliband made his pitch to run Britain as Hollande runs France – and we all know how that is working out.
Here’s a podcast special on Miliband’s speech, with James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and myself:
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