Labour got the right Miliband. But the party needs to lose an Ed

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/labour-right-ed-miliband-ed-balls-needs-to-go

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For Labour and its leader in particular, the latest polls, showing that the Conservatives have pulled ahead, if only by the slim margin of two points, will seem so unfair. To him who hath – David Cameron – is only given more. Not only is he generally liked, not only is the economy turning up, but fate provided a casualty in the street for him to comfort yesterday as he was out campaigning. Ed Miliband should be so lucky.

There are dangers in these numbers, of course, even for the Conservatives. They will worry, as they should, that they have peaked too soon. The election is just short of a year away, and campaigns have a habit of springing surprises. The economy may be recovering, but that is not how it feels to many people; plus there is all the public bickering – both manufactured and real – within the coalition that can damage both parties.

There is also the perversity of the UK election system that means Labour could win an outright majority even in the unlikely event that the polls remain as they are until next May. And Ukip remains an unknown quantity, although the assumption is that it will harm the Conservatives more than Labour.

If you were choosing whose problems you would prefer, however, it would have to be Cameron's. Given the economic woes of the coalition's first four years, Labour should be consistently ahead by now – think Labour and Tony Blair in 1996 – but it is actually losing ground.

Many will blame Ed Miliband, who is still carries two heavy pieces of personal baggage. He does not have the easy public manner of Cameron and Clegg, and even some of his supporters find him "weird". There also persists a feeling in many quarters that "fratricide" was not the way to become Labour leader.

Having followed the Labour leadership campaign, I do not find it self-evident that Labour got "the wrong Miliband". As he showed on the hustings then, David is every bit as awkward in his own way; he was a liability as foreign secretary and remains tarnished by association with Tony Blair and Iraq. If Labour was destined to have a Miliband, they probably have the right one, and it is high time for all the David-ites to stop hankering after bringing their man back.

Nor, on balance, has Ed Miliband done a particularly bad job of opposition. He has given some justly praised conference speeches. He has changed the voting system for the leadership, in the teeth of much resistance. He led the campaign against the Murdoch media over privacy and phone-hacking, and he identified energy companies as a target.

His difficulty was twofold: he was not in power actually to do anything about any of this and he has to deal with a government, and especially a chancellor, in George Osborne, who is politically both astute and adroit, and not averse to co-opting other people's good ideas. Which suggests where Miliband might usefully move next.

Less than a year before the election is far too late for Labour even to think about replacing its leader. Miliband will take the party into the next election and stand or fall by the result. But he can change his team, and the weakest link by far is Ed Balls. The shadow chancellor is unpersuasive in his commons and media performances by comparison with Osborne. He is fatally associated with the failures of Gordon Brown, and the early upturn in the economy – whether felt by most Labour voters or not – risks leaving his central message on living standards outdated.

For all sorts of reasons, from personal loyalty to uniting the party, it will be hard for Miliband to jettison Balls. But Labour's best chance of winning the election will be with only one Ed.