UNEASY LIES the ED that WEARS the CROWN

Barely has he been Labour leader for five minutes and the Cassandras of the commentariat are writing his political obituary. Ed Miliband must be fed up with the media already, let alone with the Tory Party. The soubriquet ‘Red Ed’ – as though Dave Nellist had returned to the House after a long and thorough fanshen under the combined tutelage of Derek Hatton, Derek Robinson, Linda Bellos, Frances Morrell, Danny Le Rouge, Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali, Jeremy Corbyn, Eric Heffer, Joan Maynard, Ian Mikardo, the WRP and the Angry Brigade and had promptly mounted the kind of putsch not seen in Labour politics since Ken Livingstone ousted the late Andrew McIntosh from the leadership of the old GLC – is as illiterate as it is puerile.

The other canard that the Tories and the right wing press are striving to establish as fact is that Ed Miliband is the mindless creature of the unions, taking his orders each morning from Moscow via Bob Crowe. Here’s the quote (in full) that Tory MP Priti Patel gave for this morning’s Observer: “As the trade unions exert a vice-like grip on Ed, there will be no fresh thinking as Labour reverts to its ideological comfort zone. Instead of taking responsibility for his part in bringing Britain to the brink of ruin, expect nothing more than Miliband having his strings pulled by union barons”.

It’s tempting to confine one’s response to: “That’s Mr Miliband to you, young lady”. But as this quote was clearly given to her by Tory Central Office and reproduced obediently and verbatim by her, we should pay it heed as reflecting the official line. The evidence for the origin lies in the final two words: Priti (if I may make so familiar) is way too young ever to have had recourse to the phrase “union barons” by herself.

Ed in tooth and claw

So the Tory line – hot-wired into those of today’s Tory papers that I have set eyes on (The Sunday Times as hard copy and The Sunday Telegraph on line) – is that Ed Miliband’s warning to his brother against a return to the “comfort zone” of New Labour is to be twisted round and used against him, that Labour disagreeing with any of the Con-Dem measures to reduce the deficit is evidence of Labour recidivism (so forget “the opposition’s duty to oppose” of hallowed tradition, as well as the fact that Miliband has said he will not oppose any measure purely for the sake of it), and that Miliband cannot be taken seriously until he has done personal penance for all Labour’s misdemeanours, including enclosures, the Glencoe Massacre, Suez, the sinking of the Belgrano, poll tax, Cecil Parkinson, David Mellor and Neil Hamilton.

But let’s look at this seriously. The “unions’ vice-like grip” is the one that – if the evidence of steadier news outlets like the BBC be any guide – is going to be hardest to shrug off. So what is the evidence? Well, Ed Miliband is sponsored as an MP by the T&G. So are Ed Balls and Andy Burnham. So are Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman. So is Frank Field, who is now doing a job for the Con-Dem coalition, David Cameron having decided to perpetuate the “big tent” policy of Brown and Blair before him. Blair was also sponsored by the T&G. Burnham is further sponsored by Unison, as is Miliband’s close ally Sadiq Khan.

And anyway look at the voting patterns in the leadership ballot. In the first count, before Diane Abbott was eliminated, Ed Miliband got only 4.5 percent more of the union vote than did his brother and only 6.5 percent more when the elimination of Ed Balls had led to the last configuration of the numbers. To make such sweepingly categorical claims for what the vote means when it is so close – only 1.3 percent difference in the whole voting college – is mere ignorant folly.

Ed Miliband addresses conference

Still scared of Miliband’s strings being pulled by the unions? The fact is that Labour depends on financial help from those unions, just as the Tories and the Lib Dems need funding from business. The difference is that union funding is open and transparent and comes with no detectable strings attached, pulled or otherwise. If Ms Patel can point to any legislation in history enacted by a Labour government and show that it was dictated by unions in the teeth of what Labour MPs and/or the party membership wanted, I will eat my cloth cap.

There was a resonant exchange on BBC1’s Question Time ten days ago, a special edition featuring all five Labour leadership candidates. A London firefighter in the audience said that she and her work colleagues were being “sacked on November 25th and forced to sign a new contract with unfair working conditions”. Moderator David Dimbleby asked the panel if firefighters were justified in going on strike. Diane Abbott waded in on “what ordinary workers have to do when faced with losing their jobs”. Perhaps believing that he had had a good shake on an earlier question, Dimbleby permitted Andy Burnham only a yes-or-no answer and he said yes. David Miliband was more cautious which drew a few groans from the audience and spurred him to say sharply: “any politician saying yes glibly to firefighters going on strike has to think very, very carefully about the consequences”. Ed Balls agreed, sticking to points he’d already made about the importance of negotiation. And Ed Miliband agreed too, emphasising that “a responsible government and a responsible fire authority would do everything possible to get round the table and discuss”. Not much evidence of union string-pulling there.

I wished Dimbleby had permitted Burnham and Abbott to speak further to their supportive instinct for firefighters downing tools, if that is what it comes to. It has always seemed to me that denying workers in supposedly essential services the right to strike is no more than a means to reduce their rights. Withdrawal of labour is the only action workers possess that is as powerful in their hands as dismissal is in the hands of management. If health workers, police, firefighters and other front line services are penalized by management because management can, because the workers have no power to fight for their rights, the inevitable upshot will be that workers will leave the service and that management will be obliged to seek cheap labour from overseas. Such measures bring their own complications.

The Miliband brothers take distinctive stances

Strike action is habitually portrayed in the media as a deplorable eventuality because it inconveniences the public. The implication – often very clearly intended – is that the workers are at fault in resorting to stoppages. Look at the coverage of action by staff at BA, for instance. But industrial action is frequently precipitated by management intransigence, insensitivity and sometimes deliberate provocation, all eventualities impossible to illustrate in news footage and newspaper shots. Because this cannot be shown, reporters lazily portray the calling of strike action as the moment of breakdown so that unions are habitually seen as the aggressors. If Ed Miliband really wants to do unions a favour, he should sit down with news managers and hammer out a new approach to the way industrial relations are portrayed in the media.

Not that he would get very far. The media is far more interested in David Miliband’s next move than in any statements of policy or philosophy by the new party leader, certainly if Nick Robinson’s reports for the BBC today have been any guide. What job will Ed offer David? What job does he want? Will he walk away? This is all ludicrously presumptuous. Voting on the composition of the shadow cabinet does not begin until October 4th. Ed Miliband will not decide on filling the posts until he sees to whom he has to offer them. He may well have some dispensations in mind but the MPs’ election of the cabinet members can spring some intriguing surprises. It would be good if reporters could put their soap opera instincts to one side and stop writing about the Miliband brothers as though they might be some kind of grown-up version of the Mitchell brothers in EastEnders.

Finally there is this constant refrain about Labour “taking responsibility” – and, worse, “apologizing” – for the conditions that furnish the rationale for the Con-Dem coalition to make its ideological assault on public services. Miliband is wise to stick to his line that the Labour government made mistakes and that ‘New Labour’ is dead and buried and it’s time to move on. But he has nothing to apologize for concerning Labour’s handling of the economy. He needs to remind the coalition that the then wholly independent banking sector was not implementing Labour government policy when it financed bad debts in Britain and especially in the USA. Alistair Darling kept Britain out of double dip recession, something George Osborne may yet prove unable to do.

In any case, this politics of the gesture that butters no parsnips is not for grown-ups. The coalition will soon enough have plenty of mistakes of its own to be sorry for.