Take Me To Your Leader
Now I've never met or even spoken to Dan Hodges - but reportedly he has worked for the Labour Party and the GMB trade union in the past - and managed numerous independent political campaigns.
Dan's billing is that he writes about Labour with tribal loyalty - and without reservation - clearly he's a very passionate fellow.
But what I like even more is that Dan has an eye for the ridiculous - and a keen sense of humour.
Ed Miliband's New Year message: has he been kidnapped by aliens who wiped 2011 from his memory?
There's something familiar about those eyes...
I’ve got to be honest. When I first read Ed Miliband’s New Year’s message to the nation I was a little underwhelmed. To put it mildly. “Did somebody actually write this crap?” was my initial, uncharitable response.
At first glance it looks as if a series of entirely random statements were jotted down, jumbled together and then pasted in no particular order back onto the page. “We rebuild on the basis of our ideals. I believe this country needs profound change, not small change”; “a lost generation of young people, Britain struggling to compete in the world, and greater inequality”.
But then I had another look. And a fresh though occurred to me. This is in fact a statement of political genius.
Think of it for a second. You’re leader of the Labour party. You told everyone this would be the year you started to win the hearts of the electorate. And you ended it more unpopular than Nick Clegg, himself ending the year in a marginally worse political position than Kim Jong-il. George Osborne has announced the economic recovery will be taking an unavoidable detour via hell in a hand cart, Andrew Lansley that the NHS is going to be turned into a McDonald’s franchise, and David Cameron has declared war on every country that doesn’t have Her Majesty’s head on its currency. And yet people are still telling the pollsters, “Yes, things are bad. But really? Ed Miliband?”
So what do you do when 2011 has been such a God awful year? You do what Ed has done. You pretend it never happened.
Literally wipe 2011 from the history books. And in the case of your New Year’s message, don’t write a new one, something that has to address the calamitous, diabolical disappointments of the past 12 months. Just reissue your message from 2010.
In 2010 Ed told us he’d been out and about talking to, “people in different areas worried about their services and those wondering where the new jobs to replace those lost are going to come from”. Today he recounted how, “What I have heard, going round the country in the last year, are the same concerns everywhere: young people struggling to find work, families feeling their living standards squeezed.”
In 2010 Ed told us sombrely that “many people feel powerless in the face of these decisions that will affect their lives, families and communities”. Today it was his concern that “many people feel politics cannot answer their problems. Some believe things would be the same whoever was in charge.”
In 2010 his mission was to “show that these are changes born of political choice by those in power not necessity”, and to “offer a better, more optimistic future for Britain”. In 2011? Yep, you guessed it. “My party's mission in 2012 is to show politics can make a difference. To demonstrate that optimism can defeat despair”.
Brilliant. 2011. The year that never was.
But then I had a second, more troubling thought. What if it isn’t part of a strategy? What if 2011 has been so terrible, so soul destroying, so traumatic Ed just couldn’t cope with it?
Perhaps he has become like one of those people you read about who are found wondering along dual carriageways at two in the morning on New Year’s day. Or who awake in hospital beds with only the clothes on the back and the nickname they’ve been given by the nurses – John or Fred.
Fred has no idea of who he is or why he’s here. And he retains only a hazy, selective recollection of the immediate past. That would explain why Labour’s leader, seeking to highlight the “fairness” and “responsibility” of the British people chose to talk about “the riots “ and “those who came out to clean up”. That whole nasty looting and burning and beating thing has been entirely erased from his consciousness.
Then I had another, even more chilling thought. What if Ed’s amnesia isn’t self inflicted? What if it’s been deliberately induced?
Perhaps Ed Miliband isn’t one of those people found wandering along dual carriageways. Instead, perhaps he’s like one of those haunted characters who pop up on the Discovery Channel, with weird markings on their arms, a tale of bright flashing lights and an ability to do strange things to Geiger counters.
I’ve no concrete evidence the leader of the opposition has been kidnapped by aliens. But let’s examine the facts. That occasional strange, vacant stare at PMQs. The unusual markings on his hair. And the oblique reference today to “others” who “fear the Government is in the grip of forces so powerful that nothing can be done”.
Of course I may be way off beam. Ed Miliband’s New Year’s message may not be an attempt to erase history, nor proof of post traumatic stress disorder or extra terrestrial abduction. It could be a serious and sober attempt to address the doubts surrounding his leadership, confront the mounting political problems facing his party, and reassure the British people he is heir apparent to the highest office in the land.
Actually, scrub that. Now I’m just being silly.
