Desperate Politics
So I was disappointed to read today another negative attack from Labour leader - Ed Miliband - who seems to believe that simply calling the Prime Minister and the coalition government nasty names - will impress the voters.
In his 2011 New Year's message the Labour leader predicted that his party's 'fightback' - would begin at the Scottish elections in May 2011 - yet the SNP were returned with an overall and unprecedented majority in the Holyrood Parliament.
So it seems to me that Ed Miliband has much to be modest about - as we approach the end of 2011.
And in that spirit I thought I'd share with readers this comment piece by Michael Settle - The Herald's UK political editor.
The hidden message in the Ed Miliband interview
You know a politician is in trouble when he gives an interview to try to make him look like an ordinary human being.
So now we know Ed Miliband likes Desperate Housewives, is a Leeds United fan, loves cheesy 1980s pop music and can do a Rubik’s cube in 90 seconds.
The interview was not with a women’s magazine or a rightwing paper to try to broaden his political appeal but with the staunchly Labour-supporting Daily Mirror.
The underlying message appears to be that the Labour leader still has work to do to convince his own natural constituency that he is a bloke.
One has to ask if this is not a form of Labour HQ pressing the panic button.
At the weekend, Lord Mandelson, the former sultan of spin, effectively placed a dagger between Mr Miliband’s shoulder blades by damning him with faint praise and suggesting he should come up with more policies and fewer jokes.
Now, it is clear that the former architect of New Labour is less than happy by Mr Miliband abandoning the New Labour project and taking the party towards more traditional left of centre ground.
Yet the unease about the Labour leader - now well over a year in post - is growing among his party’s MPs at Westminster; of course, in the electoral college election Mr Miliband won, he did not get majority support from his parliamentary colleagues, who opted for his brother David instead.
Given all the political and economic circumstances - a fractious coalition, an economic crisis, the Government’s policy of balancing the books by 2015 now unrealisable, rising unemployment, real terms pay cuts, the spectre of Europe haunting the Tories once more and the little matter of the eurozone teetering on the brink of collapse - one might have thought Mr Miliband would be surging ahead. But he is not.
One poll last week actually put the Conservatives in front of Labour and on the key economic indicator the Tories remain ahead of the Opposition.
One problem, which Labour has never recovered from, is that their long drawn-out leadership election meant that they lost the chance to set the context of the economic argument.
The Tories were able to, in part at least, blame Gordon Brown’s government for the unfolding financial crisis and the public bought it.
Hence, when it is asked which economic policy is the right one - slash the deficit or invest and take a bit longer to bring down the deficit - they opt for the former.
The great launchpad to Mr Miliband’s leadership, that was Scotland and the May elections, turned out to be an elephant trap. The big worry for the Labour leader - and also the new Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont - is that the hole the party is in gets deeper with a poor performace in the local elections in May.
Meantime, the Tories cannot believe their luck nor, indeed, the opinion polls.
During a particularly bullish PMQs this week, Mr Cameron up-ended his Labour opponent by referring, yet again, to David Miliband.
Expecting an attack from the Labour leader over the Lib-Con fallout to the Brussels bust-up, the PM delivered a deeply cutting remark, saying with a smiling Nick Clegg sitting beside him: “It’s not that bad. It’s not like we’re brothers or anything.”
Mr Miliband in his interview declared that such remarks were “water off a duck’s back”. Yet judging by the expression on the Labour leader’s face when Mr Cameron made the remark, the PM knows it needles him.
He will go on mentioning Miliband senior because private Tory polling reveals that the one thing people know about the Labour leader is that he turned over his brother for a job.
The Daily Mirror interview is clearly meant to make the Labour leader more three dimensional.
Later last Wednesday a triumphant Mr Cameron told his backbenchers: “Don’t worry. I won’t try and finish him off.” Him, of course, being Mr Miliband.
At some point over the next year or so, Labour MPs will have to decide whether or not to stick or twist with their leader so that any successor has enough time before the next General Election to set out their stall.
If Scottish Labour does badly in May, do not only expect tongues to be just wagging about Ms Lamont’s false start but also Mr Miliband’s possible end.
