BEING LACKED and LOST/WHY THEN WE RACK the VALUE

Ed Miliband made a good speech to the party conference. The word he hit time and again was “values”. It’s a usefully resonant term, speaking of morality as well as of economy, trailing association with family and tradition and honesty. And he encapsulated it in a neatly turned soundbite: “the wrong values for our country and the wrong values for our time: that’s David Cameron”.

I also thought he dealt subtly with the first subject that the commentators always bring up, this notion that his poll ratings are relatively poor. Those of opposition leaders always are low through their early months because opportunities to embed their strengths in the public consciousness are few. Miliband’s first few pages harked back to JK Galbraith’s coining of the “conventional wisdom” as something to be shunned, and he gamely bracketed it with consensus. He gave Ed Balls generous credit for opposing the conventional wisdom on the economy twelve months ago at a time – though he didn’t spell this out (but he didn’t need to) – when he, Miliband, was passing over Balls as the natural shadow Chancellor in favour of Alan Johnson.

Miliband on the podium today

He took some pleasure in reminding us of the credit he won on all sides for his stance on the hacking scandal: “I knew I was breaking rule one of British politics: don’t mess with Rupert Murdoch”. And he cited his own immigrant background to ally himself with those who feel excluded from David Cameron’s phantom Big Society: “21st century Britain – still a country for the insiders”. He ambitiously described himself as “the guy who’s determined to break the closed circles of Britain … we must take on the vested interests wherever they are because that is how we defend the public interest”.

The NHS is always fuel for a Labour leader’s speech and he duly got plenty of traction from a dazzling riff that ended with “the oldest truth in British politics: you can’t trust the Tories on the National Health Service”. I thought the applause would never end.

He also got off some sharply wounding points against perceived enemies of the people: Sir Fred Goodwin, energy companies (“let’s call a rigged market what it is”), Southern Cross, “runaway rewards at the top”, Nick Clegg (knockabout stuff) and the PM: “only David Cameron could believe that you make ordinary families work harder by making them poorer and the rich work harder by making them richer”.

In committing the party to be “pro-business” and for “co-operation, not conflict”, he was making an impeccably Social Democrat pitch. However, this didn’t stop the BBC’s Nick Robinson anticipating “We Told You So: Red Ed” headlines in the papers tomorrow – the Tory press, presumably. But it should be good for all shades of opinion that he wants to make Britain primarily a manufacturing nation again: “not financial engineering but real engineering”. We can all support his campaign for apprenticeships and his determination to favour productive business over asset-stripping: “growth is built on sand if it comes from our predators and not our producers”.

But I feared that there was too much revisionism and that much of it is wrapped up with a need the Labour leadership feels to apologize for losing public support. It surely isn’t necessary specifically to repudiate past policy positions, especially ones that are three decades old. The coalition government daily justifies its mistakes and its dire policies by blaming Labour for the “mess” it left. The Labour leadership has already left it too long to nail this lie credibly. Now is not the time to start handing the Tories abject quotes to be further exploited against the last government’s record.

A so-called Wordle of Miliband's speech; obviously they didn't load "values" onto the program

I don’t care for gesture politics. David Cameron evidently won a lot of credit for making a public statement of regret over Bloody Sunday. While I concede that he executed it graciously, I dispute that it cost him anything to do. He was five in 1972. Nobody blames him. The Heath government of the time was a very different beast from Cameron’s government and only four members of its cabinet are alive: Robert Carr (94), Peter Carrington (92), Margaret Thatcher (85 in a fortnight) and Jim Prior (84 in a fortnight). I don’t imagine that Cameron cleared his apology with any of them.

The “conventional wisdom” that Labour has much to apologize for is due for putting out to grass. It’s not the only old news. Jockeying the BBC’s live coverage of Miliband’s speech – disrupted, as was every other broadcaster’s, by a brief power failure at the Liverpool conference hall – Andrew Neil presumed to know what “people” think, as commentators are apt to do, for instance that they perceive Miliband as someone who “stabbed his brother in the back”. As a summary of the Labour leadership contest, it doesn’t survive five seconds of mature consideration. Anyway, why does no one suggest that Cameron stabbed David Davis in the back in order to win the Tory leadership?

Neil also banged on about the opinion poll ratings. As I tire of pointing out, opinion polls are a bankrupt pseudo-science, exemplified by Bob Worcester “calling” the 2004 US election for John Kerry quite late in the process on ITV. Look at the by-election results since the general election. Go on, look at them.

That Labour has missed some tricks under Miliband must be acknowledged. There are many ways of releasing public expenditure and easing the burden on the public, and most of them are rather more effective than a temporary lowering of VAT, the benefit of which is highly questionable. I fervently wish that Miliband and Labour had had the courage to oppose Cameron’s intervention in Libya. With his often quoted opposition to the Iraq invasion – at the time, not in retrospect – Miliband could have credibly articulated the case against the UK’s involvement.

Instead he declared that we could not “stand by” and watch Gaddafi killing his own citizens. Well, we stand by through many another repressive regime: Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Myanmar, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, China. We do precious little to assist in those events that we call “natural disasters” but that we know are, at least in part, the result of man-made climate change: floods last year and this in Pakistan; floods and earthquakes in Australasia; earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan; tornados across the Caribbean and the southern States; famine in east Africa.

Yesterday, The Guardian scared up a defence analyst who reckoned that the cost to the British economy of Cameron’s self-serving strut upon the world stage, climaxed by his complaisant speech to the UN last week, will be in the order of £1.75bn. And don’t imagine that the British will not go on paying for months to come yet. At the London Conference on Libya in March, Cameron declared: “We must ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid where it is needed … when the fighting is over, we will need to put right the damage that Gaddafi has inflicted”.

My feeling is that there is little deep-seated support for this war among the electorate. Had Miliband stepped away from the consensus, the conventional wisdom, he could have given voice and point to this indifference and turned it into respect for his integrity. Now he and Balls could show persuasively that, under their policies, the government would have had at least £1.75bn to spend on stimulating growth, bolstering the NHS, reducing tuition fees or whatever domestic policy seemed most welcome to the electorate at the time. Cameron would have crowed for a few days when it seemed that his Libya policy had been “a success” but, besides pointing out that the Libya adventure, like that in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not over till it’s over and even then not without consequence, Miliband could have asked on a regular basis “at what cost”?

Labour should by now have worked up a programme of sources of revenue for encouraging the economy and never mind behaving as if they have accepted the Tories’ obsession with hauling down the deficit. Shadow ministers also might spend a bit more time pointing out that government expenditure is actually going up rather than coming down, instead of fatalistically accepting that it was Labour who went on a colossal spending spree.

So, although I like and admire Miliband, am glad he is the Labour leader and believe he can and will win the next election, I think he and his under-powered team should have inflicted rather more damage on the coalition. It’s certainly not too late to make up the lack.

PAINED LABOUR

The Labour Party is indulging its death wish again. You’d think its supporters in Westminster and Fleet Street would remember how damaging these bouts can be. But we know that journalists and columnists have the attention span of a mayfly and backbenchers would die of boredom if they didn’t have something vague but loomingly large to gossip and grumble about.

Ever since the Tory press started to worry last autumn that Ed Miliband might prove to be an effective and election-winning leader, it has systematically attacked him in its columns and editorials – and of course in its news-reporting which, in modern newspapers, is not distinct from expressions of opinion. If Miliband were not doing well, they wouldn’t need to bother. But the endlessly suggestible backbenchers and the commentators in the centrist and slightly left-ish papers have let themselves be influenced by these attacks and are parroting them. So now a consensus is building that Miliband is not doing well.

The front page of The Sunday Times today cites David Blunkett and John Prescott to justify its headline: “Labour big beasts maul Ed Miliband”. Here is the entirety of the “mauling” quoted from Blunkett: “We need to remember that Ed has only been opposition leader for eight months and it took David Cameron two years to establish himself in the public eye. However, the next year will prove vital in creating momentum and a sense of direction”. Stand well back while the blood flows past you.

Ed Miliband has every reason to be fed up

There are also quotes from party donors (all of them usually figures of fun) and further unattributed quotes, none of them especially critical of Miliband. The most savage unnamed speaker has a go at Ed Balls. This kind of non-story suggests that the Murdoch press do not expect readers actually to read their journalism but merely to be swayed by headlines that bear little relation to the text. And insofar as people do skip over political news and glimpse front pages in shops or being read by others, such headlines probably do have the effect required by Murdoch’s own political agenda.

John Prescott is also quoted in the Sunday Times piece. Prescott spent the morning on Twitter angrily denying that he and the author of the piece, Isabel Oakeshott (whom Prescott rather niftily refers to as Bullshott), had discussed anything other than how she came by his ex-directory number. He says that the quote was pure invention and the paper eventually accepted that and posted an apology. But of course in the unlikely event that a retraction appears on page 94 of next Sunday’s edition, it won’t signify because the lie has been spread. Job done.

How galling this all must be for Miliband. He must ask himself, as I ask, what the hell these grumblers think they want. The 2015 manifesto to be published now? Another leadership contest? The leader to change his voice, as Margaret Thatcher did, or his choice of headgear, as William Hague did, or – worst of all – his instinct not to grin inanely, as Gordon Brown did? Once it becomes the conventional wisdom that Labour cannot win with this leader, nothing he does will satisfy the doubters. If he starts to trim to accommodate this insanity, he will begin to make gestures that are against his own instincts and then he really will be in trouble. As Michael White wrote in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago, “some Labour activists are gagging to be betrayed”.

John Prescott contemplates The Sunday Times; or channels Les Dawson

Today’s Observer carries various soundbites of “advice” from presumed supporters of the party. Needless to say, they don’t stand up to much scrutiny. Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society has the most supportive verdict on Miliband’s leadership thus far, but his advice on how to proceed is far from useful: “Articulate his strategy to get Labour into power … we need to hear where the leader defines where he wants the rethink to end up”. That sounds like fair advice for the party conference in, at the earliest, 2013.

Robert Philpot of Progress says that “Labour needs to reach out to those who have voted Tory in the past”. A lot of modern politicians talk about “reaching out” without suggesting what it means in practice. Philpot’s notion seems to involve co-opting right wing policies. If the opposite of reaching out is shoving away, then such a switch would certainly shove away many who have voted Labour in the past.

A lot of the others use the kind of warm waffle that all politicians of all persuasions use – about articulating people’s aspirations, reconnecting to the people, uniting interests under common themes. Ed Miliband already goes in for too much warm waffle. I hope he doesn’t take any of this vague and patronising advice to heart.

Prescott in his 20s: rather a looker

Guardian columnists like Martin Kettle and John Harris, nominally Labour supporters, do Cameron’s work for him by wringing their hands over the future of Labour, just as they did while Gordon Brown was prime minister. You begin to wonder if they aren’t Tory fifth columnists. They and the Labour backbenchers briefing against Miliband need to ask themselves some serious and searching questions:

1) How much of your criticism of/misgivings about Miliband translates directly into a wish that somebody else was leading the party, rather than that he would change his personality (which he won’t and shouldn’t be expected to do)?

2) If someone else is to lead the party, who? Can you guarantee that similar criticism and misgivings will not arise twelve months into that leader’s reign, rendering the leadership change pointlessly damaging?

3) What policies is Miliband failing to advance that would carry any support in the party?

4) How does any leader of the opposition, of any party, connect with the public without gimmicks or stunts? Are you absolutely sure that you don’t secretly want some kind of celebrity as party leader? If so, there is one who would happily take the job and I’d like to hear why you would not support him. His name is Ken Livingstone.

Labour is running a consistent opinion poll lead of five or six percent over the Tories. Sceptics say that this is “soft” and that it should be higher. Sceptics, by their nature, are never satisfied with anything. It is often said that the ballot box is the only poll that counts, so let’s examine the by-elections in this parliament. Bear in mind that all three could be accounted “unnecessary”, that is to say, precipitated by a vacancy that ought to have been avoided. In the past, the vote has often reflected irritation with unwarranted electoral burdens of this kind. Not this year.

Labour held Oldham East & Saddleworth on January 13th with 42.1 percent of the vote, an increase of 10.2 percent on the general election. The Tories came third, shedding 13.6 percent of their vote. Labour held Barnsley Central on March 3rd with 60.8 percent of the vote, an increase of 13.5 percent on the general election. The Tories came third (after UKIP), dropping 9 percent of their vote. (The Lib Dems fell from second to sixth). Labour held Leicester South on May 5th with 57.8 percent of the vote, an increase of 12.2 percent on the general election. The Tories came third, shedding 6.3 percent of their vote. The next by-election will be at Inverclyde, this time an unavoidable one because the sitting member died. It will be held on June 30th. I am hopeful that the 14,500 Labour majority is safe, even from the SNP.

You can call Labour’s support as soft as you like, but these are real results in real elections. I can’t see anything in these results suggesting that Ed Miliband has anything to fear from the electorate just yet. An average increase in a party’s vote of 11.97 percent is pretty impressive by anyone’s standards, especially in relatively safe seats where the scope for advance is necessarily limited. I look forward to the first by-election in a Tory seat and, even more, in a Lib Dem seat.

Oh Balls, here comes another revelation.

None of this is to say that I am complacent about Labour’s chances or uncritical of Miliband’s positions. I will advance some criticisms below, but they will be of policy not of personality, of substance not of style. The context of them is, however, that I know of no one in the parliamentary party who is advocating, privately or publicly, the policies that I advocate.

First, I think it a great pity that Labour supported the government’s policy on Libya. I have set out my own view on the matter in earlier postings and do not propose to rehearse it here. But, with his well-known opposition to the Iraq invasion, Miliband could credibly and consistently have voiced opposition to Britain joining the NATO attacks on Gaddafi’s regime. Such opposition would have anticipated the dwindling support for the action among the British public and given Labour a line to use about public finances, so that, when Cameron and Osborne claim “no alternative”, Miliband and Balls could say “don’t spend £3million per day on military hubris”.

Second, Labour ought to have immediately countered the coalition’s attacks on the welfare state and public expenditure by demanding a balancing attack on tax loopholes, bank profits and city bonuses. There is a deep well of untapped public resentment against tax avoiders, non doms, fat cats and those who are patently not “all in this together” with the rest of us. Miliband and Balls can openly accept that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling got too close to the city and that city regulation was neglected by successive Labour governments. They need to counter Cameron’s playground taunts that “you didn’t do it when you could” with an undertaking to do it next time and a strong statement that Labour not having done it does not justify the coalition not doing it.

Third, Labour does need to get onto the front foot about the government’s record. Cameron easily turns arguments about his present policies into attacks on Labour’s past policies and/or lack of present policies. Miliband – indeed, the whole Labour frontbench – needs to grab this nettle and make it clear that the only policies of interest to anyone are those being presently pursued. Cameron’s stock answer – what would Labour do? – needs to be neutralised as irrelevant when there is no election in sight. It doesn’t matter what Labour would/might do and has/hasn’t done. The only thing that actually redounds on people’s lives right now is what the coalition is doing right now. Labour must keep the focus on that and that alone.

The current email revelations have not been fielded cleverly. Ed Balls shouldn’t leave himself looking slippery, defensive and rattled by trying to deny plotting or justify what may or may not have been said. Rather, he should take the line that The Daily Telegraph ought to be prosecuted for receiving stolen goods, that the paper – with its regular use of illicitly acquired material, whether by sending a fake constituent wired into Vince Cable’s surgery or publishing stolen records of MPs’ expenses – is no better than the News of the World hacking public figures’ mobile phones. And nor is The Guardian publishing the diplomatic traffic hacked by WikiLeaks. He should say that nobody outside the loop can know about party and government relations because the emails are only a part of the story seen out of context. And anyway it’s nobody else’s fucking business (he probably should leave out “fucking”).

Regular readers will know that I felt that Gordon Brown should have attacked SkyNews for broadcasting his private remarks about Gillian Duffy rather than humiliating himself for being overheard. It’s the same with the emails. Politicians need to tough out these attacks and to counter with the absolutely justified argument that the gutter methods of the media need to be brought under control by legislation. I don’t advocate more secrecy. I do advocate more confidentiality.

Labour has a big and juicy target to oppose as the coalition unravels and Cameron’s overweening self-confidence leads him into more and more miscalculation. Support for the coalition is on a downward path. In the end, elections are always lost by governments rather than won by oppositions. Ed Miliband has every reason to expect to be the next prime minister. But he needs not only to ride out the misgivings but to quell them.

I’d start by retiring at least two-thirds of his under-performing shadow cabinet and toughing out any outcry from the party about the supposed democracy of having a voted-in front bench. The party has made life difficult for itself by electing too much dead wood. Miliband could do much worse than bring some hungry and angry trouble-makers into the front line.

UNLOOKED-FOR PROMOTIONS

I’m truly sad that Alan Johnson felt the need to leave front-line politics. This was done, as some outlets are beginning to explore in lip-smacking detail, in order for him to try to save his marriage. I hope that, if and when he sorts that out, he can return. Johnson is too likeable and reliable a man to be spared.

At least his departure was unforeseen, is not the result of a clamour, does not damage Labour or its leader and has been smoothly and swiftly covered. Compare and contrast today’s resignation, after months of resistance, by David Cameron’s media advisor Andy Coulson, increasingly mired in the phone-tapping scandal at his former home, the Murdoch press.

Alan Johnson: leaving the shadow cabinet to pursue a career in rock

But it’s as odd that Ed Miliband has replaced Alan Johnson with Ed Balls as it was that Miliband overlooked Balls’ claim to be shadow Chancellor in the first place. If Miliband thought Balls’ economic arguments were at odds with his own when he constructed his first shadow team, what can have changed in the four short months since? What’s more, moving Balls from shadowing the Home Office, means that Miliband felt it necessary to reshuffle all his candidates for the “three great offices of state”, so Yvette Cooper (Mrs Balls) moves over from shadowing the Foreign Office and Douglas Alexander steps into her shoes from Work and Pensions. Alexander has been a great success since the general election. It would have been simpler to move him into Johnson’s role.

It is argued that Cooper was wasted and/or sidelined as shadow Foreign Secretary. I have certainly argued on these pages before that of all shadow posts, that one is the least powerful. I would not have put Cooper there in the first place. Now Alexander’s articulate, street-smart style will be less available for arguing the domestic issues that will preoccupy this parliament.

Ed and Yvette Balls shadowing economy and home

Commentators like to pretend that Ed Balls is Gordon Brown to Ed Miliband’s Tony Blair and that enmity will take root between the leader and the economics spokesman. Such parallels as may be found do not take us very far. Both Miliband and Balls were protégées of Brown but both have put distance between themselves and Brown’s policies, though on different issues and in different ways. Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that there could be any kind of a Granita pact for Balls to invoke when he thinks Miliband has been leader long enough.

What will change most is the dynamic of relations between government and opposition. Theresa May’s brief will give Cooper something immediate and palpable to get her teeth into. Douglas Alexander will be a good foil for William Hague. And where Cameron and George Osborne could scoff, not always without malice, at Alan Johnson’s feel for the economy (or rather lack of it), they won’t dare do that with Ed Balls. Indeed, I imagine Osborne will be waking up in a muck sweat at least every morning between now and the end of the debate on his next budget.

Miliband and Alexander apparently declining to give up their seats on the tube to Westminster

The trick – and it will be a trick for both Balls and Miliband – will be for the Labour team not to let any disparity between the two men’s economic instincts be detected by the government because Cameron will miss no opportunity to try to suggest that the opposition is divided. That Miliband initially shrank from letting Balls loose on Osborne will need to be parlayed into yesterday’s news rather more decisively than Labour has so far managed to shrug off the daily claim that all of the coalition’s unpopular policies are the fault of Labour’s irresponsibility.

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This week’s ruling in the Bristol County Court by Judge Rutherford in favour of a gay couple who sued the owners of a Cornish hotel for excluding them as guests was a rare and enormously welcome landmark. Peter and Hazelmary Bull describe themselves as “devout Christians” and claim that their exclusion policy relates to marital status only and not to sexual orientation. Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy contended that as civil partners they were entitled to be allowed to share a room. The judge agreed.

Preddy and Hall: not married enough for acceptance

A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said that “when Mr and Mrs Bull chose to open their home as a hotel, their private home became a commercial enterprise. The decision [of the court] means that community standards, not private ones, must be upheld”.

Being in thrall to supernatural superstition does not render bigotry any more acceptable or respectable than does the indulging of racial hatred. To deny accommodation to paying guests on the grounds that they have not celebrated a Christian marriage is as morally bankrupt as to deny them for being black or Jewish. The Bulls were justly found guilty of discrimination in this case.

On December 14th, The Guardian quoted Mrs Bull thus: “we accept that the Bible is the holy living word of God and we endeavour to follow that”. The Book of Exodus decrees that “whosoever doeth any work on the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death” [31:15, not my italics]. That is quite a severe sanction, you might think, and not to be lightly ignored. I have studied the hotel's website in vain for any evidence that it is closed on a Sunday. How are rational people to guess which particular cherries the devout will be picking from their holy scriptures?

The Bulls: no room at the inn

It’s just as well that William Hague has not had occasion to travel into Cornwall lately.

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I am reading for the first time Trollope’s masterly novel of 1864, The Small House at Allington, in the Penguin Classics edition. Bethinking myself (as Trollope might put it) that, 550 pages in and with some one hundred to go, it was safe to do so, I happened to glance at the blurb on the back of the edition and damn if the upshot of the main story wasn’t there revealed. Why do publishers do this? One certainly doesn’t read a great book solely for the working out of the plot but, at least on first acquaintance, this aspect is apt to give much pleasure. I could not go so far as to say that the completion of my reading has been spoiled for me, but I much regret being denied the satisfaction of discovery at the author’s chosen pace.

A RATHER SUSCEPTIBLE SHADOW CHANCELLOR?

Alan Johnson as shadow Chancellor: hands up those who saw that coming. Not Johnson himself, evidently. He has no departmental background in economics, only (as many have been quick to point out) in spending. His genial joke – that his first move would be to “pick up a primer, Economics for Beginners” – was a heedless error that will come back to haunt the opposition as coalition members twit him with it at every opportunity.

Alan Johnson is confident with one ...

What was Ed Miliband thinking? Too much, I venture. In making Johnson his choice (the positive part of the decision), he was certainly seeking to offer a contrast with the present Chancellor. This working class meritocrat has, at 60, seen some of the real world first hand and proved himself steady under fire in the latter years of Labour government. Some of his hitherto apparent niceness got rubbed off in his last government post as Home Secretary, where his stance on security, surveillance, police and drugs put him in the anti-progressive line of David Blunkett, Charles Clarke and John Reid. But along with his abiding amiability and self-deprecation, his ordinary-Joe image will draw attention to the 39 year-old George Osborne’s moneyed self-confidence and complete lack of any common touch. Johnson was also the first former minister to declare in favour of the leadership bid of David Miliband. In appointing him, leader Ed could hardly do more to appear properly conciliatory and collegiate.

... can get to two ...

The negative part of the decision was to exclude Mr & Mrs E Balls, not just from shadowing the Treasury but from any position the primary focus of which is economic. This indicates two threads: that Miliband intends to avoid any possibility of replicating the long war of attrition between Tony Blair as PM and Gordon Brown as Chancellor (a war now enshrined in legend whatever the truth of it) by handing economic policy to an ambitious factionalist and proven rival; and that he has no wish to pursue the Ballsian line of rewriting Alistair Darling’s economic policy.

... but three defeats him

It is intriguing that the three candidates who topped the shadow cabinet poll were, in order: Yvette Cooper, John Healey, the former housing minister, and Balls. All three were keen Ballsites in the leadership campaign. Miliband has made Healey shadow health secretary, safely away from economic policy. Cooper has the high-profile non-job (see earlier posting) of shadow Foreign Secretary. Balls will make a good fist of shadowing the Home Office and you can bet that Theresa May will not be sleeping easy this weekend.

Time will tell how far Miliband’s choice on economic policy is a missed opportunity. But with each day deepening the impression that Osborne and David Cameron – let alone the coalition government as a whole – have not wholly thought through the policies to address the deficit, Labour could have set to work to craft a distinctive and credible economic policy. Ed Balls – and by inference Yvette Cooper too, his wife also being an economist who long worked in the Treasury – had already begun the process of repositioning Darling’s approach as the centrepiece of his own leadership bid. There is a real danger now that the coalition will find itself forced to admit defeat in its attempt to eradicate the deficit before the next general election and that Labour will have accepted so many of the government’s measures that it will deprive itself of the widest ground on which to oppose Cameron’s re-election. Its position will be analogous to that of the Tories on the war against Iraq. I suspect that events are going to make Ed Balls’ proposals look more and more on-the-nose and Labour less and less smart in not pursuing them.

The government is running into trouble. How could they not have anticipated the nature and degree of the outrage that the announcement about child benefit provoked? Or if, as one or two commentators have suggested, Osborne did indeed see that reaction coming, why did he invite it ahead of the spending review rather than burying it among all the bad news that the big announcement will undoubtedly bring? The impression Cameron promptly gave of rowing back from the commitment and improvising ways of restoring some of the lost benefit looked merely amateurish.

And then how could they have imagined that ruthlessly culling quangos and other public bodies would simply be a clean and brutally efficient operation, inflicting pain only on the staffs of those organisations? Did it occur to no one that the functions performed by these bodies might be highly desirable and, in some cases, indispensable and that laying off well-remunerated people can be a costly business in at least the short term?

There are increasing indications that one or two ministers will not be able in all conscience to offer the demanded 25 percent cut in costs; Jeremy Hunt is not the only conscience-free member of the government, but he may not be in a large majority. One or two voices – Chris Huhne’s is the latest – have suggested gently that a goalpost or two might turn out to be moveable.

If Cameron is obliged to eat at least a side order of his words, it will not only be the Labour Party that is crowing. And ministerial contradictions and miscalculations are welcome in another way. They cannot credibly be blamed on the Labour government. An urgent task for Alan Johnson is to nail the history rewrite – in danger of being established by the coalition as generally accepted history – that the global recession was caused by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s policies over the last thirteen years and nothing at all to do with the policies of the banks, the greed of the private sector or the sub-prime mortgage disaster. Tory supporters already appear to believe that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Labour cabinet ministers who lost their seats at the general election.

The shadow cabinet certainly has an unfamiliar look. The obligation on Labour MPs to elect a minimum of six women candidates has propelled into the front line a number of women whose names mean nothing outside Westminster and the lobby. Indeed, Wikipedia is, at the time of writing, in the process of bringing its pages up to speed on the new women and only the last named of these new shadow cabinet members – Mary Creagh, Maria Eagle, Anne McKechin and Meg Hillier – has a facial likeness posted there. Maria Eagle is rather less well known than her twin Angela, partly because the latter has served longer in front line politics, partly because she was the first out lesbian in the house. The four newbies take as their respective portfolios rural affairs, transport, Scotland and energy. Angela Eagle takes over as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from Liam Byrne who, having come last of those elected, is demoted to shadow the cabinet office.

Mary Creagh

Maria, the less blonde Eagle twin

Anne McKechin

and Meg Hillier

Should we deprecate the tokenism – if that is what it is – that elevates women at the expense of men of known talent: Stephen Twigg, David Lammy, Chris Bryant, Stephen Timms, Vernon Coaker, Chris Leslie, Gareth Thomas? Is it really of importance that women achieve some semblance of parity with men in the conduct of government? And is it useful and just to try to achieve it by manipulating eligibility for election? Some argue that no right ever won is as sure and satisfying if conceded by a benevolent dictatorship as when extracted by sustained guerrilla warfare. Anyway, who is to say that women are drawn to politicking and legislating and managing public affairs in such numbers as are men? And if they are not, is it because men and women broadly have distinct instincts and priorities or perhaps is it simply because the ascendancy of men has made the heights of politics an uncomfortable place for women to operate? I’m sure that the likes of Lady Astor, Margaret Bondfield and Ellen Wilkinson would have scoffed at quotas and all-women shortlists. But at the same time, all of them were constantly being undermined by male members and found that their sex was a daily issue.

Looking at the alphabetical list of those elected on Friday, before Miliband had dispensed their roles, I was struck by the fact that all the surnames came from the top half of the alphabet. Someone had a Guardian letter published about this today. My suspicion was that there are so many new members entitled to vote who know nothing of most of the candidates that they ticked names largely at random and ran out of votes before getting into the latter half of the ballot paper. In fact, however, it was a curious fluke of the field that only six of the 49 candidates possessed surnames beginning with a letter later than M. From among them, Miliband has preferred the unelected Shaun Woodward for his old portfolio of Northern Ireland, along with the also defeated Peter Hain shadowing his former role as Welsh Secretary. The only member of the late cabinet left with no front bench role is Ben Bradshaw. Rather sadly, Diane Abbott failed to get elected too. It remains to be seen whether Ed Miliband offers her a desirable second-rank post.

Will Miliband’s be a team to fight and frighten the coalition? I hope so because it’s vitally necessary. But I feel less than sanguine so far.

A SHADOW of the MAN HE WAS

We shall learn tomorrow afternoon whether David Miliband intends to serve on his brother’s shadow cabinet team or leave front-line politics, perhaps for good. “Why would he not stand?” you ask. “Isn’t Ed begging him to do so?” Well, of course, Ed is bound to do so for form’s sake. But in many ways, it would make his task a lot clearer, if not necessarily a lot easier, if his elder brother did walk away.

The first and most pressing matter is that of the Shadow Chancellor’s identity. Before one speculates, one must of course make assumptions about who will be standing for election to the Labour front bench – the composition of the leading team is always decided by the parliamentary party when Labour is in opposition – and who of those will prevail. It’s safe to calculate that, provided they stand, all of the following will be elected: David Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, John Denham, Douglas Alexander and Peter Hain. I’m sure Diane Abbott will get in too. Jack Straw and Alistair Darling have already announced their intention to stand down and Harriet Harman, as Deputy Leader (she has not had to face re-election at this conference), is an ex officio member. That leaves another nine places to be filled. At the time of writing, more than forty names have been put forward. Six seats are reserved for women candidates.

"luv u, bro"

During the leadership campaign, Ed Balls made a cogent case – usually implicit but latterly explicit – for himself to be Shadow Chancellor. He is prepared, as no other Labour politician seems to be, to reconsider the deficit reduction target set by the former Chancellor and retiring shadow Alistair Darling. He has also played a strong hand in debate with his present opposite number, Michael Gove the Education Secretary. In his initial address to conference after being elected leader, Ed Miliband paid particularly warm tribute to both Balls and Andy Burnham, suggesting that both have reason to hope for important posts.

Miliband is reported to have offered his brother the shadow chancellorship. David Miliband is not a trained economist. Balls is, and so is his wife Yvette Cooper, another candidate to shadow George Osborne. Moreover, David’s instinct is to cleave to Darling’s caution. But Ed Miliband would be far better advised to mount a strong opposition to the coalition government’s autumn programme of cuts. Even if the Labour stance is – as far as the notion has meaning – “wrong” in economic terms, it is strategically more urgent for the party to position itself where it can be seen as supporting those who will be impoverished as a result of the spending review rather than appearing as merely a paler version of the government by lying somewhere along a continuum of parties ranged against those whose only unequivocal support is the trades unions.

Ed Miliband: the message writ small

The International Monetary Fund yesterday endorsed Osborne’s policy thus far. Naturally, Osborne has trumpeted this support and is fully entitled to do so. But the IMF is not the holy see. It is only one judgment on government policy. And the IMF is not a government, does not have a welfare state to oversee, does not have to balance fiscal policy with social policy and indeed against electability. Put another way, the IMF’s interest is purely monetary. A government’s must also be political, strategic and even moral.

So if I were Ed Miliband, I would discount Ed Balls’ compelling claim on Labour’s economic policy only if I were absolutely sure that a) I wanted to pursue a different but at least equally convincing route to that of Balls; and b) that I will not, by denying a shrewd and combative operator like Balls, be storing up factional trouble for the future. The Tory press would love Balls to be the face of Labour’s attack against the spending review and the refrain of “Two Red Eds” would be trotted out at every verse end. But a confident leader can ride that and, once the electorate’s anger with the cuts is roused, be in position to represent it in parliament and spearhead it on the streets.

Foreign Secretary and friend: those were the days

So why not simply keep David Miliband as Shadow Foreign Secretary? It places him in a policy area that would provoke less media speculation about fraternal disagreement. But the fact is that, to be brutally candid, Shadow Foreign Secretary is a non-job. Having been Foreign Secretary for real for three years, David Miliband knows that better than anyone. The broad strokes of foreign policy are inevitably painted by the Prime Minister, the one who deals directly with fellow first ministers, presidents and, in some cases, monarchs and emperors. Leaders who begin to see their foreign ministers as potentially over-mighty are apt to move them back into domestic concerns. Tony Blair did this to Robin Cook and, from his point of view, was justified when, as Leader of the House, Cook resigned from the government over the imminent invasion of Iraq. Had Cook still been Foreign Secretary in 2003, matters might have panned out differently – more difficult for Blair, certainly. (I imagine Cook would be very content at Ed Miliband’s elevation).

The foreign secretaryship is a very high-powered function of diplomacy. But it is impossible to act at all meaningfully as a diplomat unless you meet people and, moreover, people who are the ones making international decisions (i.e. your opposite numbers). Shadow Foreign Secretaries don’t do that because they are not in power. Looking back on foreign affairs spokesmen in previous shadow cabinets, it’s striking how often the opposition leader of the day has put someone “out of the way” in the role.

Ed ponders his shadow cabinet options

Every Shadow Foreign Secretary in the last half-century who also served as Foreign Secretary in government was either about to do so or had just done so (like Miliband) and was awaiting new shadow dispensations. The one exception is Francis Pym, a previous Shadow Foreign Secretary to whom Margaret Thatcher reluctantly turned in government when Peter Carrington abruptly resigned at the height of the Falklands War. Otherwise, it’s striking how often the Shadow Foreign Secretary was someone who obviously wouldn’t get the role in government: Alf Robens, Nye Bevan, Christopher Soames, Geoffrey Rippon, John Davies, Peter Shore, Gerald Kaufman, Jack Cunningham, John Maples, Francis Maude. Liam Fox was William Hague’s predecessor as Shadow Foreign Secretary and has developed such a scratchy relationship with his leader in government that he may well be lucky to survive Cameron’s first reshuffle as Defence Secretary.

Shadowing the Foreign Office offers few opportunities to make policy, largely because the shadow is uniquely out of the loop on what the government is doing. That is certainly one of the reasons why there is almost always broad consensus between government and opposition parties on foreign affairs, save when those affairs are dividing government – Suez and various matters concerning the EU, for instance. A still-ambitious elder brother twiddling his thumbs over his foreign brief might be fatally tempted into putting more than his two-penn’orth into domestic policy discussions.

The Glenn Miller Band: one of the results of putting 'Miliband' in Google Images

The only other possibility, then, would be for David Miliband to shadow Theresa May at the Home Office. That would work. Home affairs can be a notorious bear trap, tempting its exponents into much more repressive policy than they or anyone else thought they might espouse. Miliband’s mettle would be tested and at least he would have a proper job to do. But to accommodate him, Ed Miliband would have to demote Alan Johnson, Home Secretary in government until the election and a well-respected fellow. Johnson wouldn’t suit foreign affairs and the shadow leadership of the House (as high-profile as consolation prizes come) surely must be reserved for Harriet Harman after her gracious and sure-footed stint as acting leader.

Then there is Andy Burnham to consider. He has made a lot of his Health brief and might be persuaded that letting him develop it further is a just reward. But if discernible promotion is his desire, the Home Office would clearly fill the bill. So Ed Miliband has no shortage of urgent claimants on shadowing the three high offices of state – the Exchequer, the FO and the Home Office – and anything less for his brother would certainly be deemed an insult. It seems that, from Ed Miliband’s viewpoint as well as from that of Davld’s very publicly aggrieved wife, it would be best if the elder brother left the stage. And my guess is that he will.

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.

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.