Political Underdog
Yet another opinion piece, this one by Adam Boulton in The Sunday Times, takes the view that Ed Miliband is punching well below his weight which seems an obvious point to make given that the party leader is running well behind his party in all the opinion polls.
The most remarkable thing to me is the way in which Ed Miliband seems to have decided to portray himself as the underdog with a mountain to climb.
Now I didn't vote for either of the two parties which make up the present Coalition Government, but I would readily accept that they have had to make many difficult decisions against the toughest economic circumstances that any government has faced in living memory.
And what that says to me is that if Ed Miliband and Labour really had the answers, they would be way out in the lead - as the party was before the 1997 general election.
It’s OK to like being the underdog, Ed, but you still have to bite
By Adam Boulton - The Sunday Times
These are strange times. The opinion polls have given the Labour party a steady lead over the Conservatives since at least 2012. Even on the rare occasions when the parties have been at the same level, electoral mathematics dictates that Ed Miliband would still be on his way to Downing Street with comfortably more MPs than David Cameron.
Yet last Friday the Labour leader took himself to an achingly trendy location in Shoreditch, east London, to protest that he is the underdog in the general election battle. “I knew when I took this job on that we were going to have a tough fight,” Miliband assured a Labourite think tank, “We . . . are trying to defy the historical odds, which is that governments that lose elections don’t tend to be one-term oppositions.”
Miliband is right that he would have to “defy history”, at least recent history. There hasn’t been a one-term government since Harold Wilson ousted Ted Heath in 1974. On the other hand we haven’t had a coalition since the Second World War, led by a party without a parliamentary majority. The last incumbent prime minister to increase his party’s share of the vote at a subsequent election was also that record-breaker Wilson, this time in 1966 (probably not a date for Englishmen to dwell on in this current World Cup).
So why are Labour MPs, including their leader, so gloomy about their prospects of returning to power and why, conversely, do the Conservatives feel increasingly cheerful?
The answer can be summed up in one two-letter word: Ed. YouGov reports that 60% of those asked believe he is “not up to the job” of prime minister. According to Ipsos Mori, 49% want him sacked as Labour leader, and that includes 43% of Labour supporters. On net approval / disapproval ratings he has sunk below Nick Clegg — “the favourite joke” once identified by Cameron.
It’s not even clear that Miliband’s own party wants him to succeed. Remember that when he won the leadership back in 2010 he was not the first-choice candidate of either Labour MPs or paid-up party members — his brother David was.
“I think the next election is pretty clear,” one new Labour veteran volunteered a few days ago. “The voters won’t have Ed. And we better hope they don’t. If he won, it would set the party back 20 years.”
Few express their anguish so openly and most try to put on a display of loyalty. But few feel able to go further than Lord Mandelson’s parting gift to Jeremy Paxman, a lukewarm endorsement of Miliband as “the leader we have”.
Having disowned Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in his first year as leader, it’s no surprise that Ed now openly admits he does not want to lead a “continuity party”. In return it is not as controversial as it once might have been for Mandelson to observe that Miliband has abandoned “consensual politics” and has yet to develop a “pro-business” stance. Where Mandelson erred was in saying that Ed “has got a year” to put things right. Ten months is significantly shorter than that.
Most veterans of the last Labour government either can’t or won’t work for Miliband. Many feel that in any case their services are not wanted. This goes for Blairites and Brownites — from the former home secretary Alan Johnson refusing to pretend that people “are really enthusiastic for Ed” to Brown’s thuggish attack dog Damian McBride complaining about Ed’s backroom staff.
Meanwhile his two predecessors have been making unhelpful interventions. Blair re-entered British politics with a set of speeches bemoaning a lack of leadership on the vital foreign policy issues of Europe and Islamism. Brown is egotistically trampling on Better Together’s carefully constructed cross-party show of unity against Scottish independence.
Miliband will do his bit north of the border this week, arguing that the union is the best way to deliver social justice on both sides of it, but his trip has been carefully choreographed so that there will be no overlap with Brown, once his mentor.
Today two of Miliband’s closest allies in the shadow cabinet are Rachel Reeves, who gave her first preference to Ed in 2010, and Tristram Hunt, who hotly backed his brother David. Brainy, academic, metropolitan middle-class professionals, they are also very much in Ed Miliband’s mould, which tells you a lot about his approach to politics.
Miliband believes he can answer doubts about his personality with two other P-words, policy and principle. In Miliband’s view, last week’s promised clampdown on the jobseeker’s allowance wasn’t a knee-jerk attempt to stem the flow of working-class voters to Ukip. It was a carefully calculated plank in his plan to combat youth unemployment.
The announcement was just a taster of the policy platform — on growth, on infrastructure, on education — that Miliband’s Labour will roll out through the summer, culminating in the party conference, an event that has so far proved a successful marshalling point for this Labour leader. The problem with this policy process comes when it intersects with reality. Not everyone sees things his way.
The Conservative work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, trade unionists and left-wing groups such as Compass have all condemned the jobseeker’s allowance as unfair and mean-minded. Labour’s staple response to better jobs figures used to be that there were a million unemployed young people but last month alone the figure fell by 48,000 to 868,000.
Cameron also has his problems. Downing Street sources now admit that his chances of stopping Jean-Claude Juncker getting the European Union’s top job are about as good as England getting to the next stage of the World Cup.
But they say the prime minister has taken a deliberate and principled stance — unlike Miliband, who only speaks sotto voce on Europe. The Labour leader may eventually have let it be known that he opposes Juncker but Cameron believes Ed is waiting for the government to trip up — just as he is felt to have undermined Britain’s foreign policy over Syria. So much for principle.
In the end, Tory strategists comfort themselves, there is the “helicopter moment” — who do you want to see coming down the steps on the White House lawn? Miliband’s reply is that he never said it was going to be easy ousting this government. But he likes being the underdog. At least that is what he said he was when he took on his brother for the Labour leadership — and, then, he had the arithmetic on his side.
Yet last Friday the Labour leader took himself to an achingly trendy location in Shoreditch, east London, to protest that he is the underdog in the general election battle. “I knew when I took this job on that we were going to have a tough fight,” Miliband assured a Labourite think tank, “We . . . are trying to defy the historical odds, which is that governments that lose elections don’t tend to be one-term oppositions.”
Miliband is right that he would have to “defy history”, at least recent history. There hasn’t been a one-term government since Harold Wilson ousted Ted Heath in 1974. On the other hand we haven’t had a coalition since the Second World War, led by a party without a parliamentary majority. The last incumbent prime minister to increase his party’s share of the vote at a subsequent election was also that record-breaker Wilson, this time in 1966 (probably not a date for Englishmen to dwell on in this current World Cup).
So why are Labour MPs, including their leader, so gloomy about their prospects of returning to power and why, conversely, do the Conservatives feel increasingly cheerful?
The answer can be summed up in one two-letter word: Ed. YouGov reports that 60% of those asked believe he is “not up to the job” of prime minister. According to Ipsos Mori, 49% want him sacked as Labour leader, and that includes 43% of Labour supporters. On net approval / disapproval ratings he has sunk below Nick Clegg — “the favourite joke” once identified by Cameron.
It’s not even clear that Miliband’s own party wants him to succeed. Remember that when he won the leadership back in 2010 he was not the first-choice candidate of either Labour MPs or paid-up party members — his brother David was.
“I think the next election is pretty clear,” one new Labour veteran volunteered a few days ago. “The voters won’t have Ed. And we better hope they don’t. If he won, it would set the party back 20 years.”
Few express their anguish so openly and most try to put on a display of loyalty. But few feel able to go further than Lord Mandelson’s parting gift to Jeremy Paxman, a lukewarm endorsement of Miliband as “the leader we have”.
Having disowned Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in his first year as leader, it’s no surprise that Ed now openly admits he does not want to lead a “continuity party”. In return it is not as controversial as it once might have been for Mandelson to observe that Miliband has abandoned “consensual politics” and has yet to develop a “pro-business” stance. Where Mandelson erred was in saying that Ed “has got a year” to put things right. Ten months is significantly shorter than that.
Most veterans of the last Labour government either can’t or won’t work for Miliband. Many feel that in any case their services are not wanted. This goes for Blairites and Brownites — from the former home secretary Alan Johnson refusing to pretend that people “are really enthusiastic for Ed” to Brown’s thuggish attack dog Damian McBride complaining about Ed’s backroom staff.
Meanwhile his two predecessors have been making unhelpful interventions. Blair re-entered British politics with a set of speeches bemoaning a lack of leadership on the vital foreign policy issues of Europe and Islamism. Brown is egotistically trampling on Better Together’s carefully constructed cross-party show of unity against Scottish independence.
Miliband will do his bit north of the border this week, arguing that the union is the best way to deliver social justice on both sides of it, but his trip has been carefully choreographed so that there will be no overlap with Brown, once his mentor.
Today two of Miliband’s closest allies in the shadow cabinet are Rachel Reeves, who gave her first preference to Ed in 2010, and Tristram Hunt, who hotly backed his brother David. Brainy, academic, metropolitan middle-class professionals, they are also very much in Ed Miliband’s mould, which tells you a lot about his approach to politics.
Miliband believes he can answer doubts about his personality with two other P-words, policy and principle. In Miliband’s view, last week’s promised clampdown on the jobseeker’s allowance wasn’t a knee-jerk attempt to stem the flow of working-class voters to Ukip. It was a carefully calculated plank in his plan to combat youth unemployment.
The announcement was just a taster of the policy platform — on growth, on infrastructure, on education — that Miliband’s Labour will roll out through the summer, culminating in the party conference, an event that has so far proved a successful marshalling point for this Labour leader. The problem with this policy process comes when it intersects with reality. Not everyone sees things his way.
The Conservative work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, trade unionists and left-wing groups such as Compass have all condemned the jobseeker’s allowance as unfair and mean-minded. Labour’s staple response to better jobs figures used to be that there were a million unemployed young people but last month alone the figure fell by 48,000 to 868,000.
Cameron also has his problems. Downing Street sources now admit that his chances of stopping Jean-Claude Juncker getting the European Union’s top job are about as good as England getting to the next stage of the World Cup.
But they say the prime minister has taken a deliberate and principled stance — unlike Miliband, who only speaks sotto voce on Europe. The Labour leader may eventually have let it be known that he opposes Juncker but Cameron believes Ed is waiting for the government to trip up — just as he is felt to have undermined Britain’s foreign policy over Syria. So much for principle.
In the end, Tory strategists comfort themselves, there is the “helicopter moment” — who do you want to see coming down the steps on the White House lawn? Miliband’s reply is that he never said it was going to be easy ousting this government. But he likes being the underdog. At least that is what he said he was when he took on his brother for the Labour leadership — and, then, he had the arithmetic on his side.
