An email exchange with a Conservative-leaning friend this week left me feeling sheepish. But if shameful my behaviour be, I’m not alone in the shame. I thought it worth sharing the conversation.
We were corresponding about Ed Miliband’s stand-off with the Unite trade union. In a message to my friend, I remarked: ‘It’s reaching the point where (paradoxically) EM’s tendency to take the line of least resistance may actually push him into confronting Unite.’ And that’s true: worms turn and it’s not always good politics to corner people. But it is the next part of the message that I’m hard-put to defend. If Miliband wimps out, I said, then ‘I remain vaguely worried that Labour may ditch Ed before the election and replace him with the more formidable Alistair Darling’.
‘Worried’? What’s going on here? If I believe the former chancellor would be good for the Labour party (and I do) and quite possibly a decent prime minister too (and I do) then shouldn’t I want him to have a chance to prove it? My friend was quick to pull me up. ‘The patriotic Tory in me would like a change of Labour leader in case Labour win.’ I was duly stung. ‘You shame me,’ was my reply. ‘How I admire your patriotism!’
Which I do. Nor does public-spirited patriotism entirely desert me. What Neil Kinnock, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair were trying to do to change Labour was in the national interest and in Labour’s interests too, and I said and wrote as much. And (though this would be terrible news for the Tories) I do think Ed Miliband could render our politics a great service by standing up to Unite and the union movement, and refloating Labour on a million small donations from everyone in our country who wants a party on the centre-left that can look the world in the eye when it comes to its funding — which the Conservative party most assuredly cannot.
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