So What?

Dan Hodges makes a bold prediction in his regular blog for The Telegraph - that the Labour Party and Ed Miliband are effectively dead in the water, politically speaking, with just over a year to go to the next Westminster election.

Now Dan's views are based on the fact that an opposition party should be much further ahead in the polls at this stage in the electoral cycle, just as Tony Blair was ahead of the 1997 general election when Labour stood  more than 20 points ahead of the Conservatives.

Times have changed since then, of course, and it is still possible for Labour to scrape  a narrow win based on 35% or so of the popular vote given the vagaries and inherent unfairness of the First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system reserved for Westminster elections. 

But I think Dan is right because Labour's attempt to paint David Cameron's Britain as North Korea is simply unbelievable and is failing to gather any real traction with the voting public, so unless something very unexpected happens I suspect it's all going to get worse for Labour from here.


Those exciting Labour policies you were waiting for? There aren't any

By Dan Hodges Politics - The Telegraph

For his next trick, Ed will tick some boxes

When I was a boy my dad took me to see Paul Daniels performing his magic show at one of the big theatres in London. (The fact that he could actually fill a major London theatre back then gives you an indication of just how long ago it was.)

For the climax of his act Daniels came on stage, placed one of his assistants – the lovely Debbie McGee – on a long table, and covered her with a blanket. There were several other assistants on stage, and they and Daniels each proceeded to place an ornate masks over their heads. There was then a bit of magical jiggery pokery, and then the diminutive conjurer intoned “Watch closely ladies and gentleman. You will remember this trick for the rest of your lives”.

At which point he took off his mask. I knew it was his mask because I’d kept my eyes on him for the entire routine. But it wasn’t him. It was the lovely Debbie McGee. The lovely Debbie McGee then sat up from the table. But it wasn’t the lovely Debbie McGee. It was Paul Daniels.

Today Paul Daniels is regarded as a rather faded symbol of a rather faded entertainment era. But give him his due, he’d said I’d remember his big reveal for the rest of my life. And he was right.

The remainder of this article has absolutely nothing to do with Paul Daniels. Or the lovely Debbie McGee. It’s about the Labour Party.

The – admittedly tenuous – link is the concept of the big reveal. For a long time now people have been waiting for Labour’s big reveal. Ed Miliband and Jon Cruddas and Ed Balls and Harriet Harman would one day stand up and go “ta-dah!!!!!” and with a dramatic flourish unveil a raft of exciting and radical policies to amaze and excite us.

There is not going to be a big reveal. Sadly, Ed Miliband will not be sawn in half. Jon Cruddas will not emerge dripping but unscathed from a glass water tank. Ed Balls will not remove his mask to reveal the smiling face of the lovely Harriet Harman.

Today it was announced that the cost of living crisis is officially over. Wages are finally rising faster than inflation. And with it Labour’s chances of winning the next general election are effectively over as well.

Last September, when Ed Miliband announced his “cost of living” crusade at Labour party conference, I wrote that it represented his last throw of the dice. A last chance to change perceptions, reverse his party’s fortunes and arrest their steady poll decline. That chance has now gone.

Labour has nothing left to offer. Last week, Miliband unveiled his new proposals for reform of local government. The were, he said “the biggest shift of power and money to towns and cities in living memory”. Burdened with his signature caveats, and obfuscations and competing themes, the speech promptly disappeared without a trace.

But that was the announcement that comprised the heart of the Jon Cruddas policy agenda. For weeks journalists had been briefed that this represented the new political dividing line; devolutionists versus centralisers. And the country looked at the new dividing line and said: “So what? What’s that got to do with me?”

On Friday Labour NEC member Ann Black published her monthly NEC report. She listed some of the policy areas that Jon Cruddas said his 15 policy groups were working on. They included local government innovation (that was what Miliband unveiled last week), low pay, zero-hours contracts, a 21st-century Labour Party, creative industries, the care sector, growth, disability, housing, school reform and universal credit. Black concluded, a touch wryly, that “everything will be knitted together” during the summer. Jon Cruddas assured the NEC that the papers were awash with ideas.

But we already know what they are. They are another list of forthcoming Ed Miliband “tick-box” speeches. The policy groups will report. They will be digested. They will involve some awkward and difficult decisions. Those decisions will not be taken. Hard policy will become vague aspiration. Clear ideas will be ditched in favour of impenetrable abstraction. And then Labour’s leader will stand up and say “this is the most radical [insert name of policy area] proposal for a generation”. And the voters will again shrug and say: “But what’s that got to do with me?”

Last week those Labour supporters pinning their hopes on some great policy reveal had their hopes effectively dashed. Today they’ve seen their hopes of a great cost of living crusade dashed. Their hopes of a great macroeconomic crusade were dashed over a year ago.

Labour will not actually have a political or economic offer to present to the electorate in 12 months' time. Instead it will offer them a moral choice. Attempts will be made to paint Cameron’s Britain as a western European North Korea. Starving children lining up at food banks. Vagrant families made homeless by the cruel and inhuman Bedroom Tax. “Surely we can do better that this?” Ed Miliband will implore.

And the voters will look at him and say: “Fine. But what’s that go to do with me?”

And the answer will be “nothing”. No cost of living crusade. No macroeconomic crusade. No great policy reveal. Labour now has nothing.

Wrong Priorities (9 April 2014)

Here's another newspaper article (from The Independent) which features Ed Miliband harping on about his favourite subject - the 'squeezed middle'.

Now if you ask me the Labour leader has his priorities all wrong because middle income earners don't really need his help for a variety of reasons, including the fact that housing costs for this group have actually fallen significantly in the past 6 years.

I think it reveals the rather strange thinking at the top of the Labour Party, which while in power back in 1999 (in both local and national government) sanctioned an £800 million a year pay deal for Scottish teachers - while reneging on a £400 million a year equal pay deal for low paid council workers.

The majority of whom were women of course.


Exclusive: Ed Miliband to the rescue of the middle classes as Labour leader says 'cost-of-living crisis' will be at heart of election manifesto


By ANDREW GRICE - The Independent

Ed Miliband has promised to rescue Britain’s struggling middle classes by boosting their living standards as he warns that the “cost-of-living crisis” will last for at least another five years.

Writing in The Independent, the Labour leader insists that living standards are “the greatest challenge of our age” and will be at the heart of his party’s general election campaign next year. He rejects calls from within his own party for him to change his strategy because the economy is improving.

He promises that a Labour government would champion the “hollowed-out” middle classes, by creating the decent, secure jobs they need and ensuring they benefit from the recovery. His appeal to this group will be compared to Tony Blair’s pitch to “Middle England” before he won his 1997 landslide, as Labour aides deny claims that Mr Miliband is focusing on the party’s “core vote”.

In a speech tomorrow, Mr Miliband will unveil plans to allow Britain’s “great cities” to become powerful “engines of growth” by devolving new powers from Whitehall so they can create “quality jobs”.

His refusal to depart from his cost-of-living agenda will worry some Labour MPs, who fear it is a diminishing asset because wages are expected to rise by more than inflation later this year.

In his article today, Mr Miliband seizes on new figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the fiscal watchdog, showing the traditional link under which earnings rise in line with economic growth is broken and will remain so well into the next five-year Parliament. “Real earnings will on average increase at only half the level of economic growth in 2015 and will still lag behind even in 2018,” he says.

He also warns that “middle-income Britain” will not enjoy the fruits of an improving economy without the reforms that Labour plans, because higher wages “will disproportionately benefit those at the top.” Mr Miliband dismisses George Osborne’s “conversion” last week to the goal of full employment. He argues that the Conservatives will not deliver on the promise because they have “an economic ideology built on low pay, low skills, low prospects and … low productivity”.

Labour doubts about his strategy may be reinforced by a study by the Social Market Foundation think-tank of the middle 20 per cent of the income ladder – between £21,100 and £41,200 a year in 2011-12. It suggests the squeeze on living standards has been exaggerated.

Emran Mian, the foundation’s director, said: “In reality the middle has coped surprisingly well since 2007-08… Even in the teeth of the recession, two-fifths of them moved up the income distribution. Just as many managed to stay where they were. By 2011-12, the middle as a whole had the same earnings in real terms as they did in 2007-08. With the recovery under way, their prospects are likely to improve further.”