David Miliband was always expected to lay out his creed somehow – the surprise is that he has done so now. Here’s my take.
Straw’s move last week, with his “calm down, dear” routine, where he persuaded Labour that he was in charge, was intended to show it was him, not Miliband, that worried MPs (and, by the by, Cabinet members) were coming to for help. Miliband is left looking a bit weak – like the sort of man who goes to the pub and orders half a lager (which he does) while Straw is hinting he’d take on Brown. The News of the World headline writers put down “Alpha Male v Half a Lager” on my column last Sunday, which aptly summed up the Straw v Miliband race as I saw it.
Miliband has upped the ante today. Yet as I say in tomorrow’s Spectator cover story, there is something a bit dainty about the Miliband technique. He doesn’t want any blood, or any dagger. Yet both are required, because Gordon Brown won’t go anywhere. I am told Straw hates the idea that he’d be the one to pull the trigger on Miliband’s behalf – it’s not his plan to be seen as little more than a political hitman.
But how do you knife Brown? You can bet his attack dogs will be ready to savage anyone challengers to the throne (and judging by this story in today’s Standard, they’ve already started). He would probably survive Straw’s resigning on his own. He could probably survive a few junior minister resigning. A threshold needs to be crossed, and Straw would need other Cabinet members with him. Those other Cabinet members are not there. Straw can’t do this on his own. So right now we have Straw, Miliband and (for some light relief) Harriet Harman parading around.
A Labour backbencher gave me a nice phrase to sum up the Cabinet – “all Balls and no balls”. Yet Ed Balls will be the person we should keep our eye on now. He has spent months working Labour’s left, and they have no candidate. Cruddas has told them he won’t do it, I gather – he hates government. He’s a campaigning man, and would like to be on someone’s join ticket so he can rev up the grassroots and fight the BNP. The left may have to make do with Balls. So might he want to put in his tuppenceworth, unofficially declaring as Straw, Harman and Miliband have effectively done? Let’s see.
I have a major problem with all this. Our runners are limbering up, going to the starting line – but the starting gun is jammed. Someone has to dislodge Brown. This is not a technicality. It’s a huge battle, which will involve collateral damage. One might argue Brown chose his Cabinet specifically so it would be “all Balls and no balls” – if so, he did a great job. Self-defence and self-promotion are two areas where he is not incompetent. His core skill is bulling his way to the top of a timid Labour Party. And does that party have the cojones to oust him? Straw and who?
Sure, Brown can’t fight the next election. Everyone says that now. But no one says how they will get rid of him. Between these two points lies an abyss, which if the Labour Party is not careful it will fall straight into.
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