So far, this is the Labour leadership crisis that David Cameron would have scripted. The papers this morning are full of awful poll findings for Ed Miliband, negative briefings and on the record criticism from his own side. But, there is no sign of a challenger yet nor has a frontbencher resigned. So, all this strife is doing is further turning public opinion against Miliband and turning the focus to where the Tories want it to be, is Miliband Prime Ministerial material?
Where does all this go from here? Well, if Alan Johnson was at all interested things would get very interesting very quickly. But his denials seem entirely genuine. This means, as I say in the Mail on Sunday, that Miliband’s position is fairly secure because there’s no one who his many internal critics can agree would be better. As one dispirited Labour campaigner told me, ‘If you are in a car with a driver heading towards a cliff but none of the passengers can drive, do you take the wheel away from the driver?’
The one caveat to this is just how grim the Labour mood is. One former chief whip told the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party a few days ago that the mood was as bad as they had ever known it—and that included during Michael Foot’s leadership. When a party’s spirits are this low, odd things can happen.
What should worry Miliband and Labour most is how public opinion is calcifying against him. YouGov finds that among Labour 2010 voters only 34 percent think he is up to the job of being Prime Minister; that is down from 51 percent a month ago. If his numbers continue falling like this, it could make the 2015 general election cataclysmic for Labour.
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