Three daunting hurdles that the Labour party needs to overcome

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/22/ed-miliband-needs-signature-policies

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As I write, Ed Miliband and his helpers will be working on the latest version of his party conference speech. They have been at it since before August and the text has been rewritten so many times that they stopped putting numbers on the drafts some weeks ago. "It was bad for morale," explains one of the Labour leader's team. The sweat over it is understandable. The party goes into the penultimate conference before the next election with some daunting hurdles to overcome. Today, I will try to distil those challenges into three big Cs.

The first of those Cs is the Conservatives. When they aren't forming a circular firing squad and remember to turn their guns outward, the Tories can be a formidable fighting machine. Leading Labour figures are still ruefully reflecting on how Conservative spinners, with the assistance of their media allies, turned David Cameron's defeat over Syria into a question about Ed Miliband's character. The Tory party is moving into electioneering gear with an intense and personal focus on the Labour leader. The reason why is illustrated by the Opinium poll we publish today, which indicates that only 29% of likely voters can imagine Ed Miliband as prime minister while 65% cannot. Lynton Crosby, the Tories' campaign chief, reportedly told a recent away day of Tory MPs that they should relentlessly punch on voter doubts about Mr Miliband's capacity to lead his country.

In our interview with him, he expresses himself "unfazed" by Tory attacks. That sounds impressively sanguine, but some of his colleagues worry that he is underestimating the scale of the onslaught that he will face and the potential damage that it can do. His apparent lack of panic makes them panic more. "The Tories are already in campaigning mode. They've basically fired the starting gun on a 20-month campaign," says one Labour strategist. "We've got to do the same."

In terms of looking prime ministerial, there is only one guaranteed way to do that – become prime minister. It is a chicken and egg problem. But there are some things Mr Miliband can do to address this vulnerability. He can be clearer about why he wants to be prime minister and where he hopes to take the country. He can try to demonstrate his capacity for national leadership by showing that he commands his own party. Since he became leader, Mr Miliband's style has been a consensual one that places most emphasis on unity. Given Labour's history of uncivil wars, including the recent, ugly past exemplified by Damian McPoison's memoir, that isn't all that surprising. But the price of unity has been a fuzziness of definition and a haziness about direction. "He needs to put his own imprimatur on the party," says one friendly colleague. "All leaders need to do that." In that regard, reform of the union link is the test he has set himself. He cannot afford to fail it.

The other potential counter to attacks on his capacity to lead is to emphasise his party as a team. The Tories think their best route to victory at the next election is to turn it into a presidential contest: Cameron versus Miliband. The Conservatives are much less confident of prevailing if the question on the election exam paper is: Labour or the Tories? Polling suggests that the Labour brand is stronger than the Tory image, that Labour values are more widely shared than Tory ones and that there are more potential Labour voters than there are potential Conservative supporters. This is an advantage that Labour has failed to maximise. Too often, Mr Miliband's speeches and other pronouncements are discreet, one-off events with little back-up from his colleagues. His last conference performance was well-received, even in quarters not normally sympathetic to the Labour leader. But as one member of the shadow cabinet remarks: "There was no follow-on. The big test is not this conference, but what happens afterwards."

Some of his allies blame the shadow cabinet for not being willing to step up; some of the shadow cabinet point the finger at Team Miliband for failing to use them properly and not fashioning a coherent strategy or an effective machine. Whoever is culpable – I'd say there is some fault on both sides – the effect is to make him look like a lonely figure and the lack of follow-on greatly diminishes the chances of Labour's messages cutting through to voters.

And cutting through has never been harder because of the next C. That is cynicism. This is arguably a more difficult opponent than the Conservatives. Labour is struggling to overcome what one frontbencher calls "the almost impermeable levels of cynicism" among the many voters who are disinclined to believe that anyone can make anything better. This is a problem for all the parties, but an especially acute one for Labour. Parties of the left, by their nature, prefer to offer optimistic visions. Selling a brighter future while remaining plausible is very much more difficult when money is tight and many voters have lost faith in the ability of government to improve their lives. This challenge has repeatedly defeated centre-left parties across the advanced economies in recent elections.

The Brighton conference will focus heavily on what Labour likes to call "the crisis in living standards". For many people, the squeeze on their incomes has been so severe that it is right to call it a crisis. For others, crisis is a hyperbolic way of portraying their situation, but miserable is an accurate description. What that doesn't automatically translate into is Labour receiving their votes. "They may agree with us about living standards," notes one Labour MP. "But that doesn't mean they are yet convinced we can really do anything about it."

Because of this, the task confronting Labour now is rather different from that which faced Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they made their way to power before 1997 or that which faced David Cameron and George Osborne in the run-up to 2010. In those cases, it was clear that the country was making up its mind to throw out the incumbent government. The opposition could therefore approach an election under a broad banner of "change" without offering all that many specifics about what they would do with office. In the very different context in which Labour finds itself today, it will need to be more detailed and down to earth about what it would do with power.

It has become quite fashionable to say that Labour has no policies. It is also a myth. There has been a considerable amount of work under the radar and the party has already issued a fair amount of policy at what you might call a mezzanine level: in other words, at the sort of level that draws the interest of thinktanks, opponents and commentators, but not at the sort of level that catches the attention of most voters. "There is too much uncertainty about what the offer is," says one member of the shadow cabinet. This uncertainty does not just make it more difficult to attract support, it is also a cause of frustration to the party's MPs and activists. They yearn to be armed with some goods to sell on the doorstep.

This is not an argument for Labour suddenly publishing voluminous amounts of policy all at once. That will just sound like a list. What this conference does need to do is start filling in the blanks by promoting a few signature policies that will give more solid definition to what the public could expect from a Miliband government. At the same time, Labour will also have to address the third of the Cs. Credibility – specifically, economic credibility – is a major strategic vulnerability. Even if enough voters can be persuaded that Mr Miliband could cut it as a prime minister, even if enough of them can also be convinced that Labour has plans that could improve their lives, the public still has to be confident that the party can be trusted with the nation's finances. One member of the shadow cabinet frames the question accurately: "Will the sums add up?"

In this respect, the most important speech in Brighton will be that from Ed Balls tomorrow. The shadow chancellor hopes to send out a strong message that a Labour government would be fiscally disciplined. I am told that there will be "loads and loads" of "Iron Balls" in his address. There needs to be. For I also hear that the Tories have been compiling a dossier of Labour's spending pledges to date. They plan to try to disrupt Labour's week by publishing it in the middle of the conference. The Tory claim will be that Labour's promises already add up to an extra £27bn in spending, proof, so the Tories will allege, that a Labour government would be recklessly profligate. No doubt Labour will hotly contest the Tory figure. But if anyone in the Labour party needed a reminder, it will be a useful warning that they will have to be bomb-proof on tax and spending at the next election.

The three Cs will not be overcome by one leader's speech, however accomplished, or one conference, however successful. But a clear plan for conquering them needs to be apparent if Labour is to leave Brighton more confident about itself and more convincing to the country.

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