Old Labour, New Danger

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[/audioplayer]A cruel new joke is doing the rounds about Ed Miliband: that the Labour leader is like a plastic bag stuck in a tree. No one is sure how he got up there, but no one can be bothered to take him down. It’s one of many unfair gags, made on the premise that he is a laughing stock and, ergo, doomed in next year’s general election. Many a Tory comforts himself with the idea that Miliband is just too implausible, too weak, too trivial a figure to make it to 10 Downing Street.

Yet anyone wishing to dismiss him has to face some uncomfortable questions. Why, if he is such a joke, has Labour led in the opinion polls for three years solidly? And why has he been the bookmakers’ favourite to win the next general election for even longer? Foreign diplomats are wiring messages back home with the same message: the next British election may be a close-run thing, but Miliband does look as if he has the advantage. Not because he is a great politician, but simply due to the exigencies of the Westminster electoral system. The Liberal Democrat party has split, half of its voters have defected to Labour, so all he needs to do is limp to the finish line.

And once he gets there, we should not think that Miliband’s government would be a wishy-washy, Blair-lite government. His agenda is clear, radical, populist and (most worryingly of all) popular. His speeches are intellectually coherent, and clearly address the new problems of inequality. A wave of left-wing populism swept François Hollande to power in France and Bill de Blasio to power in New York, and Miliband believes that the same can be done here.