Ed Miliband must decide: is Labour austerity-lite or Syriza-lite?
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Version 0 of 1. In an otherwise assured performance on Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show, Douglas Alexander – when urged to address Ed Miliband’s woes – resorted to the words of Harold Wilson. “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” the shadow foreign secretary said, through a truly abject rictus. “We’re going on, and we’re going on to victory.” Wilson’s original line, delivered at a May Day rally at the Festival Hall in 1969, after weeks of plotting by supporters of Roy Jenkins and Jim Callaghan, has been worn smooth and frictionless by decades of overuse. (What he actually said was: “I know what is going on. I am going on.”) In choosing this particular entry from the “wiki-desperate” list of political quotations, Alexander effectively admitted that the knives were out for Ed. He might also have recalled that Wilson went on to lose the 1970 general election. Not, perhaps, the best quotation to deploy in the circumstances. Alexander’s performance was in most other respects sound and persuasive. His role in the Labour firmament has long been that of the sane one, sent out to sound measured and sensible in interviews but invariably blamed when the broader strategy fails (for details see, in particular, Gordon Brown’s election-that-never-was, 2007). If the party loses on 7 May, I cannot see things being any different for this likeable scapegoat. If Labour loses: why does this now seem so much more likely than six months ago? If Labour loses: why does this now seem so much more likely than six months ago? The fundamentals remain propitious for Miliband. In his 2013 conference speech he framed the contest around the “cost of living crisis”, calling on the electorate to ask whether they felt better off and to vote accordingly. Since pay growth only started to outstrip inflation again at the end of last year – after six years in which the real value of wages fell by about 8% – household finances remain on Labour’s side. For most of 2014, furthermore, the dominant political story was the rise and rise of Ukip, the rattling of Tory nerves by Nigel Farage, and an ugly Dutch auction to see who could be toughest on immigration. Often, the Conservative tribe appeared perilously introspective, more attentive to its own fixations than the needs of the country. And then, of course, there was the structural advantage to Labour of the unreformed constituency map. Without fanfare or, frankly, much enthusiasm, Miliband’s party seemed on course for a small majority or the basis of a coalition. That is emphatically not how it seems now, with little more than three months to polling day. Indeed, Labour is conducting itself increasingly like a party in the midst of a leadership election than a team readying itself for power. Most of the static is coming from the Blairite rump of the party, which despairs of Miliband. It is true that Tony Blair himself appeared to fire the starter’s pistol in December when he told the Economist that the 2015 election risked being one “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”. But Blair, like Margaret Thatcher before him, is anxious not to be blamed for defeat, should it come. He treads a fine line of notional support for Miliband and carefully hedged critique. Related: Lord Mandelson attacks Ed Miliband’s ‘crude’ mansion tax plans Still, the Blairite caucus is undoubtedly leading the attack: witness Peter Mandelson’s comments on the mansion tax, Alan Milburn’s warning that Labour would make a “fatal mistake” if it did not embrace public service reform, and John Hutton’s explicit charge that Miliband risked “a re-run” of 1992. Most striking of all is the number of Blairites who are pressing the claim of Liz Kendall, the shadow health minister, as a leadership candidate. The undeniably able Kendall now stands alongside Chuka Umunna and Rachel Reeves (both fellow members of the 2010 intake) as a potential successor to Miliband. This is not to say that a succession race would exclude more familiar contenders such as Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham. But the party elite is starting to behave as if the time has come to make the leap to a new parliamentary cohort. I happen to agree with most of the Blairite critique. Yet I do not think ideology is the principal force driving Miliband’s present predicament. Lack of clarity has been a much greater problem for this Labour leader. He and Ed Balls have attacked Tory austerity and blamed it for the slow pace of the recovery. They have made significant spending commitments. Yet – seeking economic credibility – they have also signed up to substantial chunks of the coalition’s fiscal strategy and to its welfare cap. So which is it? Syriza-lite? Or austerity-with-a-human-face? The consequence of this ambiguity for what used to be called “high politics” has been dire. It is one thing to be attacked by the chief executive of Boots (as Miliband was by Stefano Pessina in the Sunday Telegraph). It is another to be given a genteel kicking by David Hare (who wrote in this newspaper last week that the Labour leader was worse than Neil Kinnock). But by both, almost simultaneously? Ever since he took on Rupert Murdoch he has believed he can rewrite the rules of politics No aspiring Labour prime minister, however gamely he shrugs off the brickbats, can afford to lose the support of business and the creative intelligentsia. Yes, I know we live in an age of “new politics” and Twitter and digital communities. But that does not alter a fundamental truth about gaining and keeping power, which Blair understood and Labour has never forgiven him for understanding: a progressive party has to devote at least as much energy to reassuring as it does to inspiring. It has to win new friends, sometimes to the fury of its established supporters. The new Jerusalem gets built only if the company that supplies the bricks and mortar is on side: that is the hard truth confronting any idealist. And I am not sure how firmly Miliband grasps it. Ever since he took on Rupert Murdoch he has believed he can rewrite the rules of politics. There is nobility in that conviction, but also folly – for no person, however committed, can recast the system singlehandedly. Labour still conspicuously lacks the gravitational pull of a party that is about to win. It is not surrounded by a coalition of the willing, urging it on to victory. There are still three months to go, and much left to play for. But for now, Miliband seems ever more solitary, a lone figure trying to keep hold of the bacon sandwich that looks all too symbolic of an omni-crumble to come. |