James Forsyth James Forsyth

Politics: From Red Ed to Steady Eddie

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are locked in a political duel, and only one of them can survive.

issue 08 January 2011

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are locked in a political duel, and only one of them can survive.

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are locked in a political duel, and only one of them can survive. In the new politics, what helps Clegg hurts Miliband and vice versa. This unusual dynamic makes next week’s by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth especially important: it is, in effect, the first electoral clash between the two men. The result will determine which leader spends the first part of the year fending off questions about their future.

It is coalition politics that has created this clash between Miliband and Clegg. During the Labour leadership contest, Miliband declared that he couldn’t imagine doing a deal with the Lib Dems after the next election if Clegg were still their leader. Certainly, it is nigh-on impossible to imagine Clegg moving from being Cameron’s deputy to Miliband’s. This means that a Clegg-led Lib Dem party will, whatever is said publicly, always side with the Tories in the event of a hung parliament. So Miliband, to make it to No. 10, must first slay Clegg either by taking his party’s seats or by encouraging the Lib Dems to depose him.

At first glance, Miliband and Clegg appear unlikely enemies. Both are forty-something Oxbridge graduates who have spent their whole professional lives around politics. Neither of them are particularly tribal politicians. They both did graduate work in the United States, are married to successful lawyers and interested in green politics. But there are character differences between them, differences that could prove crucial in their struggle.

The Labour leader’s heroes include Geoffrey Boycott, the cussed Yorkshire and England opening batsmen; he celebrated the end of his GCSEs by going to watch Boycott’s final first-class innings at Lord’s. Boycott is an appropriate choice of hero — there is something of Boycott in Miliband’s confidence in his own method and pace. Like a dour opening batsman, he refuses to be deterred from his approach by the criticism of others.

During the Labour leadership contest, nearly everyone was of the view that Miliband minor needed to articulate the differences between him and his brother more clearly. He listened politely to these entreaties but stuck to his plan to woo the union vote and scoop up second preferences in the other sections of the electoral college, saying confidently that it would work. And it did.

The same thing has happened to Miliband during his first few months as leader. Having won, he needed to expand his staff. To the frustration of many in the Labour party, Miliband and his team took their time about this. In the febrile atmosphere of Westminster, his failure to make instant appointments led to accusations of dithering and incompetence. But he would not be bounced into hiring people. His team pointed out to critics that Tony Blair spent months recruiting Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell.

It wasn’t until shortly before Christmas that he made his move. But when he did it was impressive: two accomplished journalists — Bob Roberts from the Daily Mirror and Tom Baldwin from the Times — joined as his communications chiefs. These two have helped to give Labour the most energetic media team in Westminster. The benefits are already clear: in the first few days of the new year, the coalition has found itself reacting to Miliband’s widely reported attacks on it.

Clegg, by contrast, has changed strategy noticeably in the face of the Lib Dems’ falling poll ratings. In the first few months of the government, sources close to Clegg repeatedly made clear that there would be no attempt to issue lists of Lib Dem achievements until the last part of the parliament. The message was that the Liberal Democrats had to ‘own’ the coalition’s agenda if they were going to demonstrate that they were a serious party of government.

Recitation of the party’s battle honours were to be saved up for the last 18 months of the coalition’s term, to give the party momentum and distinctiveness for the next election. Recently, however, the Liberal Democrats have been regularly briefing journalists with lists of their achievements and boasting about how much of their manifesto is now being enacted.

In some respects this is a sensible shift: the previous Lib Dem strategy failed to take account of the extent to which political parties face daily referendums on their legitimacy, and thus needed to be changed. But the hasty tactical switch has added to a sense that Clegg is beginning to wobble, and that he can be bullied into changing tack. This is a very dangerous impression to give the press, who like nothing more than forcing politicians into U-turns.

Clegg, though, has a helpful ally in his duel with the Labour leader — the Prime Minister. The Cameroons are acutely aware that if they can help Clegg stay in post then they will lower the bar that they have to clear at the next election. Thus, whenever Clegg is in trouble, the Prime Minister offers him a helping hand. Cameron is doing exactly that in Oldham East and Saddleworth, where the Tories are giving the Lib Dems as free a run as decency allows.

By-elections are often the moments when British politics reaches a turning point and fails to turn. But if the Liberal Democrats could pull off a victory in Oldham East and Saddleworth, it would transform the political situation. Clegg would be able to reassure his own party that the coalition was enhancing — not hurting — its future electoral prospects, and Miliband would find himself under pressure as his party wondered how it lost a seat to the Lib Dems when the latter party is down to single figures in the polls having broken its promises on tuition fees.

But if, as seems more likely, Labour holds the seat, then there will be many more months of winter for Clegg. His party will see the defeat as a worrying sign for the elections in May and for the referendum on electoral reform. Miliband will have scored a very palpable hit.

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