‘If this was a play, David would come back in two years’ time and take the crown from Ed,’ one David Miliband supporter whispered to me moments after the Labour leadership result was announced.
‘If this was a play, David would come back in two years’ time and take the crown from Ed,’ one David Miliband supporter whispered to me moments after the Labour leadership result was announced. As we shuffled out of the hall together he chuckled at the thought, at how absurd it was. In real-life, this Miliband family drama was surely a one-act play.
Some David supporters, though, are refusing to accept that when the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage. His supporters are on restless patrol throughout Westminster. The rage that made them so loquacious in the bar the night after the Labour leadership result was announced has not subsided. They tell those who will listen that they are being proven right, that the younger brother is demonstrably not up to it.
They have convinced themselves that Ed’s decision to run against his brother makes him a usurper, so it is not treason to scheme against him. Their other justification for their actions is that they are the only people in the party who know how to win elections. They, not those who are loyal to the leader, are the real party loyalists in this warped world view.
There is no plot, or anything like it yet. But they maintain that it will be David, not Ed, Miliband who will lead Labour into the next election.
David, as is his wont, is flirting with this drama. Newspaper editors are being thanked for their support during his leadership bid. There is the odd appearance in the atrium of Portcullis House, the new social heart of the Palace of Westminster, resplendent in his trademark black suit trousers and sharp white shirt to remind Labour MPs that he’s still around.
These actions might be entirely innocent. But a canny politician should know how they look. As the joke has it, the smile on David’s face is a far better guide to how Ed is doing than the polls: the more teeth you can see, the worse his younger brother is faring.
Two months into his leadership Ed Miliband is already being hunted by the media. They sense weakness and are moving in. Anything and everything is being used against him. The Times has even attacked him on its front page for not linking peerages to donations.
A below-par interview on Radio 4’s Today programme last Friday is rapidly being turned into the defining moment of his leadership. Ed loyalists say that this is all Westminster village chatter and that with the next election four and a half years away it really doesn’t matter. But this ignores the fact that the chatter creates the prism through which his leadership is being seen. At the Fabian Society reception on Monday night, one of the big Labour gatherings of the festive season, there was no talk of a poll that night which had Labour four points ahead but lots about that Today programme interview. There was even, in a sign of just how febrile things are, muttering about whether or not he could survive.
Compounding Ed Miliband’s problems is his shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, who keeps making him look weak. Johnson, a David Miliband supporter, was appointed to the job because he was presumed to be more malleable than either Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper, who are both hardline neo-Keynesians. His appointment was also meant to symbolise how the victor was reaching out across the party to assemble his top team. Indeed, in a demonstration that the age of faction had passed, the new leader’s team let it be known that he and the shadow chancellor were going to share staff and offices.
Johnson, though, has been less than helpful to his new office-mate. He has regularly reminded interviewers that he doesn’t agree with the leader about a graduate tax or making the 50p tax rate permanent. This has allowed the Tories to deride Miliband as a leader whose writ does not even run in his own shadow Cabinet.
Colleagues stress that Johnson isn’t trying to cause trouble but that he has to balance loyalty and credibility. They say that it would look absurd for him suddenly to renounce his previous positions and that he is trying to toe the line as much as possible. But when he goes out of his way to tell the Financial Times that he prefers to work out of his own office and not the ones he shares with the leader, one really does wonder.
So, what is Ed Miliband to do? Some argue that he needs more definition, some policies to put meat on the bone. This would be a mistake. Any firm commitment now is likely to be either overtaken by events or co-opted by the coalition. Instead, Miliband should focus on introducing himself to the public. Labour MPs report that if voters know anything about Ed Miliband it is that he beat his brother. He needs to tell people who he is and what makes him tick.
In the leadership hustings, Ed Miliband always finished by talking about how his family had fled fascism to settle here in this country and that this experience had taught him about why politics matters and how special this country is. It is a heartwarming and inspiring tale which Miliband should take to every daytime TV sofa and lifestyle magazine that he can find. The public is much more likely to pay attention to someone with whom it can connect.
The next thing he needs to do is learn how to make holding statements interesting. On Saturday, he announced a whole series of policy review groups. But they are all to be led by Labour politicians. As David Cameron proved, dropping the odd celebrity and thinker into a policy review process makes it a far bigger story. It turns it from a boring but necessary internal process into an eye-catching initiative with which the leader can be personally associated.
But the most important thing for Ed Miliband to do is not to let his critics bounce him into action. Reacting to this media drama would turn it into a crisis.
The course of politics over the next few years is, for Labour, thrillingly uncertain. Miliband’s aim must be to maintain maximum room for manoeuvre. But his ability to do that will depend on how patient the Labour party is prepared to be with its new leader.
Comments