Could this speech on spending be Ed Miliband’s midwinter spring?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/11/miliband-speech-spending-economic-policy

Version 0 of 1.

In the seasonal half-light of December days like those through which we are living, TS Eliot once caught a gleam of what he called a midwinter spring. Bright with hard frost and brief sun, the midwinter spring was its own season, offering an illusory appearance of blossom and bloom in the dark time of the year.

The Labour party’s current sense of an opportunity, which triggered and was reflected in Ed Miliband’s speech on government spending on Thursday, may prove to be a midwinter spring too. It may be the political equivalent of something bright amid the cold coming of the current opinion polls. But there is no disputing that Labour scents a chance of making ground at the moment. And it may be that Labour is right.

Yesterday’s speech was nevertheless a gamble. The left will not like it. The right will not believe it. To misuse Eliot again, if you are talking about your fiscal prudence, this might not ideally be the route you would have taken from the place you have come from. Pitched out of office four-and-a-half years ago, Labour has wasted a long time before asserting its claim to be listened to on economic policy. The failure permitted the coalition to establish an unchallenged narrative of Labour profligacy. It wasn’t just Miliband’s conference forgetfulness in Manchester that made yesterday’s speech long overdue.

It is possible that the public, disenchanted with politicians and unaffectionate towards the Tory party, may indeed grant Labour some standing now. It is conceivable that they may like the message and be willing to trust the messenger once more. Stranger things – though not many – have happened. Right now, however, just 22% of the electorate say they trust Miliband and Ed Balls to deal with the deficit, compared with 41% who say they trust David Cameron and George Osborne. This explains why the speech was necessary, though not why Labour delayed so long.

Labour’s argument now is that the autumn statement was a big deal, opening the door through which Miliband and Balls now push. Part of that is surely right. Osborne has committed himself to a size and speed of deficit reduction that requires large slashing of most Whitehall budgets a year from now.

This doesn’t mean, in truth, that Osborne is actually set on driving the UK back into the 1930s. GDP today is some 10 times larger than it was then, so government spending still will be 10 times larger too, even at 35% of GDP. The claim of a return to the 1930s is political hyperbole. But, my goodness, it is effective: not least among the older generations who are likeliest to vote.

The real test of Miliband’s speech comes in two parts. First, can Labour win a hearing as a party that is serious about the deficit? Second, can Labour persuade voters that, while serious about the deficit, it also offers a different and better prospectus than the alternatives.

Partisans will reflexively say yes-yes or no-no to those question. The truth is more slippery. We really don’t know in either case. Miliband on the deficit starts from a disadvantage that can’t just be dismissed. He isn’t rated as a leader. And he isn’t trusted as much as the Tories on the issue. Those things matter. Miliband spoke words that are a necessary precondition for winning a wider hearing, which is important. Now he needs to go on saying them, in better ways, and also to find a way of saying more about the past.

But his message was also very different from Osborne’s message. That is important too, if people actually listen instead of pretending they’re all the same.

After his speech, Miliband was asked to encapsulate it in a sentence. He said Labour offers a government that works for you not the few. That was vacuous. He could have said – and it would have been true – that Labour will put the public accounts right in a better way, to favour those whom he, very clunkily, called “everyday people”.

But the real message was simply that Labour is serious about the deficit. That’s the one that could change the political weather. If it is the message that people hear, then Miliband and Balls have timed their move well and Labour may do some business. In this regard, note Balls’s letters telling shadow cabinet members to prepare for annual cuts in departmental budgets. The letters haven’t triggered the howls of outrage they would have provoked in the past. An effective political play, that. The shadow chancellor has refound a bit of form.

If all this succeeds, this was a speech that frames the election debate more advantageously for Labour than anything Miliband had yet said. Now he needs to say it again. There were, though, large omissions and ambiguities that will need to be filled in and clarified as polling day nears. There was little about business, again, and some of the spending language conceals the fact that Labour may be quietly creating a very considerable amount of wiggle-room on investment – as much as £50bn each year, according to the IFS. Expect Labour to keep quiet on that.

The speech was sotto voce on tax too. Miliband said a few things about this classic Daily Mail scare subject, recommitting to the mansion tax, the 50p top rate and effectively ruling out an increase in VAT. This last is a mistake, since VAT changes, not necessarily across the board, could make a useful difference to tax receipts, and thus to deficit reduction in the short term, and then be handily lifted as the next election nears. The reality is that other tax rises in the next parliament are unavoidable, especially if Labour’s spending plans are not to be butchered from day one.

Looked at in the round, Labour is being quite smart these days. Yesterday’s speech pivoted intelligently between centre-ground credibility and defending the interests of the core vote.

But let’s be honest. These are incredibly difficult times for social democratic parties across Europe. Globalisation is changing the world – and politics with it. Established parties must adapt to survive. The language of betrayal is no answer to any of this. Everyone who thinks of themselves as progressive needs to be self-critical and humble about responses that work. Labour faces that battle in Scotland under the new leader who will be elected tomorrow. But the rest of the UK and most countries in Europe are absolutely no different.

We are in a wintery world. Political spring is still some way off.