Last Best Hope

Dan Hodges maintains a relentlessly negative assessment about Ed Miliband's chances of winning the general election in 2015, but I think he's onto something when he talks about Labour running two elections - one involving the leader pitched at committed Labour supporters, the other aimed at the wider electorate in which Ed Miliband talks a back seat. 

Now this may be cynical politics, but in campaigning terms it makes sense because Labour strategy is really now rooted in appealing to the party's core voters and the possibility of 'winning' the election based on around only one third of the popular vote. 

How that can be regarded as a victory beats me, yet it does seem to represent the Labour Party's last and best hope. 

Why has Labour launched 'NHS Summer' in the middle of 'Business Week'?

By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph


So is it the NHS or is it business, Ed?

Last night I attended the Edelman party, one of the signature events of the metropolitan elite’s summer season. “Expect the unexpected,” the invite had said enticingly – and with justification, given that Bedford Square had been transformed into a surreal cross between a chemistry lab and a Tom Petty video. As I was queuing up to hand a random piece of clothing to a circus performer, who would then grant me entry to a tent where I would receive a small bottle of champagne wrapped in a paper bag (this is just how the out-of-touch Westminster political classes roll), a colleague from a rival newspaper joined me. “Business Week’s going well for them isn’t it?” he said with a laugh.

I looked at him blankly. “Business Week?” “Yeah. Labour’s big push on business. This is Business Week.” I looked at him even more blankly. “But this is NHS Week, isn’t it?” “Yes,” someone else chipped in, “that’s what Ed Miliband went on about at PMQs.” “No. This is Business Week. That’s what they’ve been briefing us.” At which point the clown started demanding my trousers, and the conversation moved on.

Miliband has often been accused of not knowing what day of the week it is. But it now appears he doesn’t know what campaign of the week it is.

It was definitely supposed to be Business Week. As I wrote several days ago, Ed Balls has become increasingly alarmed at Labour’s perceived anti-business narrative, and has been given license to start to redress the balance. On Monday it was announced that Balls would be launching a bid to bolster Labour’s credibility with business by promising to keep a low rate of corporation tax and attract long-term investors to Britain. Today Miliband is himself supposed to be giving a speech where, according to The Guardian, he will try to “convince business leaders on [his] infrastructure plan”. The first of July was inked in as the start of Labour’s fightback on business and the economy.

Except at precisely the moment that Balls and the rest of the shadow cabinet moved out to hit their agreed messages on business and the economy, Miliband’s office decided to start briefing about the NHS. At PMQs, Labour’s leader used all six questions on it. And for good measure managed to get his figures wrong. Then Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, took the unprecedented step of jumping up straight after PMQ’s had finished and challenging David Cameron on his own figures. And after the whole thing had finished Miliband’s advisers fanned out to tell the lobby that this PMQs session was the start of a “summer offensive” on the health service.

Labour’s Busine-Health Week mash-up is instructive. For one thing it provides yet another example of what a total and utter shambles Miliband’s operation has become. Business Week was signed off. It was in the grid. Balls and Miliband had personally agreed it. It was going to provide a clear demonstration of how the two men were working in tandem to the same script and agenda. And Miliband’s office unilaterally threw the whole plan in the bin.

Another thing it demonstrates is the full extent of Miliband’s capitulation on the economy. He has given up. Labour’s leader quite literally dares not raise the issue of the macroeconomy at Prime Minister’s Questions. He knows that if he does, Cameron will rip him to shreds.

So instead Miliband is retreating to the NHS. The NHS is Labour’s Rorke’s Drift. It is the final redoubt. When Labour is pushing on the NHS, it is because it has nowhere else left to turn.

The last time Labour decided to “get off the economy and onto health” was 1987. Labour lost the subsequent election by 12 points.

And Miliband has launched major offensives on the NHS before. When the Lansley reforms were first being pushed through, Labour claimed there were only “24 hours left to save the NHS”. Labour didn’t save the NHS. This winter Labour prepared another assault over the winter bed crisis. There was no winter bed crisis. Again, here is Labour’s strategy.“Would you like the steak sir?” “No, I don’t like steak”. “Ah. How about two pieces of steak?”

But the most fascinating thing about EconoHealth Week is the way in which Miliband is now starting to decouple himself from his own party. It appears that Labour is going to run two election campaigns. There will be the Ed Miliband campaign, which will essentially involve appealing to the Labour Party. That campaign will involve saying warm things about nurses and nasty things about bankers. And then there will be the campaign run by Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander and the rest of the shadow cabinet, who will be reaching out to the country.

This is basically an inversion of what Labour did in 1997. In 1997, Tony Blair reached out to Britain. And while he was doing so John Prescott, Gordon Brown and other members of the shadow cabinet were whispering to their party, “Don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on him. We’ll keep him honest.”

Some people have been urging Miliband to run from the Left. Their argument was encapsulated by Seamus Milne in the Guardian: “It's a cliché that Miliband succeeds when he's bold and flounders when he hedges and triangulates. Right now, that means bringing to heel the briefers and rivals who would take Labour backwards and turning the tables on his media tormentors. The public might even get the message.” It’s a clever line, because it actually serves two purposes. It tries to push Miliband Leftwards. But it also starts to construct a trap door for the Left when Miliband fails. “He would have won if only he’d stayed radical. But he let the Blairites turn his head.”

Then there are others who are urging him to change course, and start running from the Right. We saw that in the immediate aftermath of the European and local elections, with demands for tougher messaging on welfare and immigration.

So faced with a decision about running from the Left or running from the Right, Miliband has decided to do what he always does when faced with two difficult but competing options. He will do both. He’ll run a Left-wing campaign. And he’ll let his party run a Right-wing campaign. The first ever Light-wing campaign in British political history.

Balls will talk about the importance of business. Miliband will talk about the importance of bringing business to heel. Yvette Cooper will talk about the need for a tough stance on immigration. Miliband will talk about a tough stance toward gangmasters. Tristram Hunt will talk about the need for choice in education. Miliband will talk about ending elitism in education.

And it will be a disaster. The country won’t have clue what Labour’s really proposing. Labour’s own supporters won’t have a clue what Labour’s really proposing. And the whole thing will collapse in a sorry, shambolic heap.

You thought Miliband doesn’t know what day of the week it is? You were wrong. It’s whatever day Ed Miliband wants it to be.