Can Ed Miliband survive?

James Macintyre rates the Labour leader’s chances of pulling through
June 22, 2011
Ed (left) and David as boys: there is talk about whether David may try to oust his brother
As parliament rises for the summer recess, Labour is drifting towards a party conference that has already been billed as “make or break” for Ed Miliband, its leader. There is widespread disillusionment among MPs about the first year of his leadership. More members of the shadow cabinet backed David Miliband for leader than backed his younger brother. Ed’s upbeat start, which saw Labour ahead of the coalition in public support, and victory for the party in three by-elections, is in danger of fading away. Labour is now neck and neck in the polls with a government which is carrying out unpopular cuts in public spending and is itself dogged by divisions and accusations of U-turns. Ed is widely accused of failing to find his voice: of committing the ruthless act of destroying his brother’s political career, but of then not knowing what to do with power. Most subversively, there is still talk about whether David Miliband may try to oust his younger brother in turn, even though he has not said so. David and Ed Miliband separately dismissed speculation about their dysfunctional relationship as “soap opera” on the 12th and 13th June—the first joint message they had agreed for months. Yet the lasting bitterness leads to questions over whether Ed can—or should—survive as leader, and whose policies represent the best future for Labour. How did it come to this? In one sense, the roots go a long way back: Ed’s politics have always been hard to define. Before he became leader, he had been conspicuously torn between what he calls his instinctive “detachment” from Tony Blair’s New Labour and his loyalty to the party leadership of which his mentor Gordon Brown was a central part. In 2003, he opposed the invasion of Iraq, and privately urged Brown to oppose it. But in 2005, when he was an MP, he failed to vote against 90-day detention for terrorist suspects, although he told Brown it was “madness.” He won the leadership on 25th September by declaring the end of New Labour. He attacked its technocratic “triangulation”—that is, trying to build a bridge between left and right, as Blair’s “third way” had sought to do. But as leader, Ed is now falling victim to the same tempting compromises, in a way that is prompting accusations of muddle, drift and opportunism. The biggest mistake he has made so far, and a sign of how much he needs to mature as a leader, was his call in May for Kenneth Clarke to be sacked as Justice Secretary. Three days after becoming leader, Ed singled out Clarke as someone Labour should not attack “from the right,” that is, for being liberal on crime. But his desire to exploit Clarke’s loose language concerning rape led him into the attack all the same. A muddled performance on the same issue at prime minister’s questions the following week helped trigger a wave of disruptive publicity. On crime more generally, Ed has gradually shifted from liberal to authoritarian, influenced by his first and second shadow home secretaries, the husband and wife duo of Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. His aim is to portray the coalition as “soft on crime.” But in opposing police reforms, Ed may find himself on the wrong side of history if, for the first time in a generation, some accountability is brought into the force. Ed, who feared Brown would follow Blair in trying to court the populist press at the expense of Labour values, has managed only to win the some-time support of the Sun, a cause to which his office is devoted. Ed’s desire to have it every way at once was demonstrated in his “relaunch” speech of 13th June, in which he targeted both undeserving benefit claimants and bankers’ bonuses, wrapping both positions under his vision of “the promise of Britain.” If Ed has a compelling social democratic vision for this country, he has yet to articulate it effectively. At the moment, large sections of the public know him best for committing political fratricide. That brings us back to David, at once isolated in parliament but still widely admired among many Labour MPs. Yet although David would almost certainly stand in a contest if one occurred in the next few years, he will not challenge his brother openly. Although privately neither of them wants David in the shadow cabinet, the elder Miliband may take on some kind of policy role before the next election for fear of being seen to “sulk.” His supposed mentor Blair is said to be encouraging him to get in the tent and be seen as a “team player” for his own sake as well as the party’s. Ed Balls may be more of an immediate problem for Ed Miliband. Balls may well be restless and individualistic until he is leader or retires. But he was heavily defeated because of the divisiveness with which he is, still, associated. Douglas Alexander, backed as a future leader in Tony Blair’s memoirs, remains loyal to Ed Miliband, for now at least. The likelihood, then, is that Ed will last the full parliamentary term as the head of a party that has never removed a leader in the way that the Conservatives did even to Margaret Thatcher, and that the Lib Dems have done in recent years to Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell. Ed has been underestimated in the past, by his own brother as well as the media. It may be unwise to underestimate him still. But while personally engaging in private, he has yet to project himself to the country. He needs to decide where to take Labour. Having come from the left to win, he could revert to the belief that the social democratic moment has come. Or he could steer his party to the centre. But as the past year has painfully proved, he cannot do both.