UNEASILY LED

A month tomorrow, we shall learn the result of the ballot for leadership of the Labour Party. The consensus among observers has been and remains that the winner, probably in the first vote, certainly after subsequent rounds when runners-up are progressively eliminated, will be David Miliband. The only rival thought to have a chance of upsetting that coronation is Miliband’s younger brother Ed. I find it hard to depart from this consensus.

Inevitability is not necessarily desirability. Gordon Brown’s elevation to prime minister was inevitable – and indeed formally unopposed – once Tony Blair agreed to step down. Would a contest have benefitted either party or country more? Would Brown’s authority have been reinforced by his having had to fight for his position? In the long run, probably not.

Presumably none of the five current contestants will be seen to have done other, by running, than enhance their respective standing in the party. The public may have different ideas. Those casting votes need first to consider who is most likely to carry sufficient swathes of the public in a general election to restore Labour to power. All else is academic if the party cannot be led into government. Once holding power, having it is worthless unless what is done with it is constructive and lasting. So the tests for each of the candidates are: is this person a credible, electable prime minister? Will this person use power to help make the world a better place for significant numbers of its citizens, both at home and abroad?


Not a prayer

The candidate upon whom the largest lorryload of doubt falls is Diane Abbott. She is the oldest candidate – 57 two days after the vote – and the longest serving in the house – 23 years. She is the only one to have had a real career outside politics but also the only one never to have held office. As a regular broadcaster, she is probably recognisable to a larger number of people than any of the others, possibly than all of the others put together. And of course she is distinguished from the other four in two dramatic ways: she is a woman and she is black. It is largely because of these distinctions – in her own account, indeed – that she is standing at all.

It is not inappropriate to discuss these attributes. Being a woman and being black both carry advantages and disadvantages. It is to be doubted if there is any such thing as “the women’s vote”, though that possibility is often posited. There is precious little evidence that Margaret Thatcher was either elected or re-elected by virtue of dominating the votes of women but not of men.

There may be a more coherent ethnic constituency. Barack Obama clearly did register deeply among non-white voters in America in November 2008. Such hostility as there was towards him within the white vote was nowhere near sufficient to deny him victory. But it is instructive and troubling that racist instincts, though expressed in a round-about manner, have surfaced in the American electorate in recent months. They inform a renewed notion that Obama is a “secret” Moslem and that his birth certificate was doctored to qualify him for office as a US citizen. These are notions redolent of paranoia. They also speak to the infantilism of much of public discourse in the US, a discourse simultaneously far more elevated (at its best) and far less (at its worst) than that in Britain. That a politically illiterate cartoon character like Sarah Palin can be widely seen as preferable to the most intellectually gifted individual to occupy the White House since Jack Kennedy and the most strategically cunning operator to do so since Lyndon Johnson tells a great deal about the power of myth, rumour and the raised voice in American public life.

Diane Abbott, let me quickly aver, is no Sarah Palin. She is clearly smart and experienced and she rarely trims to please anyone. In the house, she has become a genuine star performer, admired and valued on all sides – two years ago, she won the Parliamentary Speech of the Year Award, bestowed by the Tory periodical The Spectator.

But she has alienated people on some important issues. Educating her son privately has caused and continues to cause her a deal of grief, which she has perhaps not ameliorated by her evident inability to find a definitive, consistent and coherent defence of her decision. She also made a foolish error in neglecting to disclose BBC earnings to the parliamentary authorities, earnings made in a very public arena.

All this aside, however, the most damaging perception of her is the least articulated, most nebulous. That is that nobody believes that she could be elected over David Cameron. She is just too idiosyncratic, too unpredictable, too undiplomatic. Could she run a government? What has she done that suggests she could? Perhaps if she wins a seat in the elected shadow cabinet, we might have a better idea of how she might run a big department. I’d love to see her mettle tested by shadowing Teresa May at the Home Office, indeed by being Home Secretary herself.

I doubt, however, that she will be eliminated in the first round of voting. Though she scraped onto the ballot paper by virtue of John McDonnell dropping out, I suspect that MPs will now want to show their enlightenment by keeping her in at least longer than Andy Burnham. The former Secretary of State for Health seems destined to be the fall guy. In many ways, it is a pity. Burnham looks to have fought a brave and determined campaign, articulating positions that make the other male runners seem less populist and even more the policy wonks that in reality they are. Like Abbott, Burnham learned at least some of his politics in the school of hard knocks rather than all at the knees of party frontbenchers. His identification with “ordinary people” is perhaps overworked – there are plenty of Labour members with stronger ties to the working movement – and maybe emphasises the unalterable fact that nobody sees him as a prime minister.


Bambi

Whether Burnham is genuinely a lightweight or just contrives to look like one is maybe too dull a question to pursue. His Bambi-like features certainly tell against him and as he gets older – he’s now 40 – they probably will fail to dwindle into a look that is any more reassuring. In interview, he has an unfortunate habit of hesitating long enough before replying to sow the doubt that he has anything thought-through to say. Ultimately, you picture the moment when the Labour Party next decides to turn in on itself, you picture the house in full cry at PMQ’s, you picture the world stage and you wonder if it’s at all credible to imagine Burnham being PM within it.

Then there’s Ed Balls. He raises another ticklish question or two: does anybody really like Ed Balls? Does anybody really trust Ed Balls? I’m sure he would answer, quick as a flash: “yes – Gordon Brown”. And that, you see, Ed, may be the problem in a nutshell.

I’m sure the nation would get over the embarrassment of having a leader with that name. Ed himself has of course heard every “balls” joke ever invented and has even added one or two of his own. No politician can credibly make a joke of it now. Long, long ago, Michael Heseltine mocked the then shadow chancellor’s latest policy proposal (revealed as a brainwave of his most loyal lieutenant) to a delighted party conference – always Heseltine’s favourite audience – with the line: “Now we know the truth about this policy. It wasn’t Brown’s. It was Balls’.” That deftly killed the necessity ever to josh him for his name again.

Like Burnham, Balls has made some canny adjustments to Labour’s positions on several policies since the election. Any new leader will need to do no less. But why would anyone vote for Ed Balls when they could have Ed or David Miliband? Even Yvette Cooper – Mrs Balls, who many regret didn’t herself run – might be hard pressed to offer the conclusive answer to that question.


Shyster lawyer

So, will it be Miliband major or Miliband minor? David has a great many advantages, not just over Ed but over the whole field. He has served three years as Foreign Secretary. He has been a player on the world stage and patently comfortable in that spotlight. Hillary Clinton is weak-kneed with adoration of him. Such profile and such support is not to be discounted. David Cameron has a lot of catching up to do, still.

Miliband D is also clearly a skilful player at politicking. Offering Diane Abbott his own support if it helped her onto the leadership ballot paper reflected on him in good and bad ways – generous, patronising, self-confident, imaginative, tokenistic, embracing, hubristic, sharp-elbowed – but probably more pluses than minuses.

If Burnham looks like a Disney creature and Ed Balls looks like a shyster lawyer, the Millibands are pretty funny-looking too. Sadly, these things count nowadays. Ed Miliband is a disconcerting cross between Ken Dodd and Bernie Winters. It’s not a look this will wear well, especially if (as seems inevitable) he grows jowly. Brother David bears a disconcerting resemblance to Alfred E Newman, but then so did Tony Blair and it seemed to do him little harm. In any case, everybody takes a bad picture or two and those in politics – once dubbed Hollywood for ugly people – are photographed so regularly (and usually when they are speechifying or argufying) that the portfolios are packed with horrors.


Young Ken Dodd

David M is never going to live down those press pictures of him brandishing a banana and looking a dork but such a millstone is preferable to the still unresolved matter of Britain’s implication in the murky business of extraordinary rendition and the question mark over his own candour on the matter. Along with Andy Burnham, he supported the government’s position on all votes concerning the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and he has maintained his support since, though with the important rider that his support was garnered by the belief that Iraq held “weapons of mass destruction”.

Diane Abbott consistently voted against the Iraq strategy. Neither of the Eds was yet in the house in 2003; both now say they opposed the invasion and would have done so as MPs, a claim that not all can find it in themselves to credit.

Ed M may claim an international profile of his own, particularly after last year’s UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. In his policy statements during the leadership campaign, he has made the most intriguing proposals, shifts and commentaries, perhaps mindful that only by positioning himself in a less guarded place than his brother will he be able to prevail. Indeed, the greatest enemy to David Miliband’s chances of succeeding is probably the perception that he is being too conservative in both policies and tactics.

Looking across the field, however, it’s hard not to feel that Labour has a good prospect of emerging from this too drawn-out leadership selection with combative and broadly attractive leadership. Both Milibands are plainly strong and nimble in intellect. Not for nothing are they the sons of Ralph, the Marxist historian and propagandist of the highest order.

Is there a question over their Jewishness? There shouldn’t be, but any “difference” from the proscribed “norm” can be a liability. A century before David and Ed Miliband were born, Benjamin Disraeli was the first and only Jewish prime minister of Great Britain. The only other Jewish party leader in Britain has been Michael Howard, David Cameron’s immediate predecessor. There have been far more Jewish MPs on the Labour benches than on the Tory – and indeed far more women – but oddly it has been the Tory Party that has proved more enlightened in its choice of leaders.


Alfred E Newman

No Briton has ever entered Downing Street denying the supernatural. Either of the Milibands would do so and, to make matters “worse”, Ed would be accompanied by a partner – the mother of his son – to whom he is not married. Would the Labour establishment see a problem with that? Andy Burnham is a member of the Roman church and no such has ever been British prime minister (Tony Blair did not embrace Rome until after stepping down). Ed Balls is safely Anglican. Diane Abbott is unforthcoming about her beliefs but clearly understands that religion is relatively important in her constituency. But Abbott is also a divorcee, which would be another Downing Street first.

I would suggest that the British public is pretty relaxed on such issues. The party hierarchy may be less sanguine. But that may be just as true about policy. And if it were down to policy alone – which in an ideal world it would be – I think my vote, if I had one, would go to Miliband … Ed.