Why Tom Baldwin reckons Labour shouldn’t give up on Miliband

Before Christmas, The Times’s Sam Coates managed to get his hands on Labour’s ‘media grid’ for the week — and much Westminster-y fun it was too. But now he’s gone one better, by publishing a strategy memo that Ed Miliband’s director of communications, Tom Baldwin, has produced for his Labour colleagues. It’s well worth reading in full, here and here, not least because it outlines the party’s argument for the coming year.

In summary, though, it’s much like Miliband’s New Year’s address: more of the same, with a side order of fiscal responsibility. Baldwin emphasises the ‘squeezed middle’ and Labour’s ‘five-point plan for jobs and growth’, but he also adds:

‘We recognise that the next Labour government will inherit a deficit and both Ed M and Ed B have been clear that we will have tough new fiscal rules to ensure Britain lives within its means and that the old route to social justice of sharing the proceeds of growth is not available in the near future.’

The memo also contains an unintentionally hilarious ‘defensive’ section about Miliband’s leadership. ‘Ed has put the party back on its feet… kept it united and set out a new direction for the future,’ it urges — which must be news to the freethinking world.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to laugh at Baldwin’s subsequent claim that ‘Ed’s poll rating [is] broadly comparable with Cameron’s in the first 18 months of his leadership. Comparisons with IDS, Hague or Howard well wide of the mark.’ It’s an exaggerated claim, of course, but it’s not entirely untrue, as this graph shows:

Indeed, if there is any kernel of hope for Miliband and Baldwin in their current situation — the possibility, as I mentioned earlier, that ‘things can change’ — then it’s in that uptick that Cameron enjoyed after a couple of years as Tory leader.