Why Miliband needs to be more specific — and quick

Ed Miliband owes Coffee House contributor Ed Howker a drink. In his speech today, the Labour leader borrows the central idea — and the title — of the stunningly insightful book that Ed wrote with Shiv Malik last year, Jilted Generation: How Britain Bankrupted its Youth. It is, basically speaking, the idea that the current generation of twenty-somethings is, in many respects, disadvantaged in comparison their baby-boomer forbears. From the burden of dealing with debt, both personal and national, to the fluctuations of the housing and labour markets, young people are up against it. And it may get worse. As Miliband puts it, “I am worried — and every parent should be worried — about what will happen to our children in the coming decades.”

I’ve been saying for some time that politicians ought to concentrate on the poisonous cocktail of problems facing young people — so it would be silly to criticise Miliband for doing just that today. And yet his speech had exactly the same problem as the one he made on Saturday: it was good at identifying problems, but it contained practically no solutions (beyond attacking the government’s cuts, natch). Just as he has with the “cost of living crisis”, the Labour leader is chirruping a theme that has a huge intellectual underpinning to it — but isn’t proposing his own political response.

There is the argument, mainly forwarded by those around Miliband, that he needn’t do anything more for now. After all, a genuine realignment of Labour will take time and considerable forethought to accomplish — and the Labour leader will be afforded both in the years before the next election. But I don’t buy that for three main reasons. The first two I’ve mentioned before: that deficit reduction demands a more detailed policy prospectus than Oppositions might have given in the past; and that David Miliband is issuing clearer policy ideas from the backbenches than his brother is from the front. But the third is probably the most damaging to MiliE, it being that he is currently drawing his own caricature. The Tories would have it that the Labour leader is nothing more than a Westminster wonk who might be able to theorise but doesn’t have any hands-on ideas for actually running the country. Judging by his recent speeches, Miliband is keen to perpetuate that notion.

Just think how it would look were Miliband making pronouncements on other problems, without offering solutions. Drugs in prisons, but no rehab policy? IT overruns, but no measures for controlling them? Rising crime, but no policing agenda? The Jilted Generation, the cost of living and community breakdown may be grander themes and say more about where Miliband wants to take his party — but carping without curing is no less politically questionable.