Character Counts

I think Rachel Sylvester puts her finger on the 'Ed problem' with this opinion piece in The Times in which she characterises Ed Miliband as a tactician rather than a political strategist.

The Labour leader now has more faces than a town hall clock as he sets about the business of carefully positioning the party and laying out voter friendly policies in the run up to next year's general election.

So we are meant to believe that Labour which did nothing to reform and modernise the welfare system during its 13 years in power between 1999 and 2010, now has the tools and conviction to do the job.   

But this sounds to me as if it's been made up on the hoof, cobbled together like so much of Labour's policy agenda in response feedback focus groups, just like the new found determination to tackle inequality and the issue of low pay.     

In other words, Ed Miliband looks and sounds phoney when his party is crying out for real character and conviction.    

Ed doesn’t lack policies. He lacks character

By Rachel Sylvester - The Times



Frustration is growing on the Labour benches as Miliband’s lack of grip makes it likely that victory is slipping away.

Criticisms of Ed Miliband come not as single spies, but in battalions. Every week brings another attack on the Labour leader, a new red-on-red assault from a different direction.

This weekend it was Jon Cruddas, Labour’s policy chief, laying into the “dead hand at the centre” that puts out “cynical nuggets . . . to chime with our focus groups”, rather than advocating radical policies. Last week it was Lord Mandelson warning that there was no “convincing and vivid narrative”.

Some of this is unfair, but it reflects a growing mood of frustration on the Labour benches. There is no plot to oust the leader but his authority is slipping away. Only a handful of MPs turned up to the annual parliamentary Labour party dinner in the House of Commons last week. Across all the factions — from “new” to “blue” — disappointment is turning to despair.

The local elections confirmed what opinion polls have indicated for some time — that Labour shows no signs of breaking through in the south, while leaking support in the north. Yesterday the Unite union announced that it would fund the party’s general election campaign, but the money came with an insistence that the leader should ignore the “siren voices” urging him to implement “austerity-lite”.

That will only make it harder for Labour to regain the economic credibility it badly needs. Flanked by Len McCluskey and Neil Kinnock, Mr Miliband just doesn’t look like a winner. “The next election is ours to lose,” says one senior MP, “and if we keep going like this we’re going to lose it. I’m just so depressed.”

The individual criticisms are easy to rebut. For a long time Mr Miliband was accused of lacking policies but that’s no longer true — he would freeze energy prices, limit rent increases, introduce a mansion tax, license teachers and do many other things. Then he was attacked for being anti-business, but yesterday Ed Balls promised to make Britain a “great place to do business”, with a competitive tax regime.

It’s wrong to suggest the party has no economic plan — the shadow chancellor has taken on board the need for spending restraint, promising to balance the books in the next parliament. And today Lord Adonis will unveil a package of practical and sensible measures to encourage growth by improving vocational training, including 100 new university technical colleges, devolving £30 billion to the regions, and supporting small businesses with a target of 25 per cent of all government contracts going to them.

Nor is the problem necessarily that the Labour leader is too left-wing for the electorate — there is anger at the perception of a wealthy elite floating away from the rest of society, and it would be easy for Mr Miliband’s campaign for greater equality to tap into this. And it is, of course, irrelevant that he struggles to eat a bacon butty with sufficient elegance in front of the cameras. As each of these alibis falls away, though, a real and more profound problem is exposed — it is the character and credibility of Mr Miliband himself.

He lacks authenticity because he oscillates between boldness and caution. He looks tactical, not strategic, as he swings from left to right on immigration, welfare and tax. He seems better at identifying problems, such as the “cost-of-living crisis” than at crafting an positive, inspirational message.

There is a credibility issue as he promises to reshape capitalism, but never quite makes clear how. Focus groups love all the individual policies that make up his populism of the left — but they don’t trust Mr Miliband to deliver them.

The totemic pledge to freeze energy bills is “off the scale” in voter-approval ratings — but most people don’t think it would actually happen. “He blames the press for his problems but that makes me so livid,” says one former minister. “He’s got to accept responsibility.”

The truth is that Mr Miliband’s radical reform agenda would require enormous strength, determination and focus were he to become prime minister — but he can’t even make the decisions required of a leader of the opposition. Speeches take months to write, policy debates go round in circles. He agreed to hold up The Sun for a picture, then apologised for doing it — the worst of all worlds.

There is a lack of grip and consistency at the top. The Labour leader calls for a new kind of politics then gets involved in cheap political stunts. His office is by all accounts a shambles, with rival courtiers offering conflicting advice and competing for the leader’s ear. “He’s not surrounded by a team but a cacophony,” one insider says.

Mr Miliband boasts that he has more intellectual self-confidence than David Cameron, but seems strangely lacking in political certainty, hedging and trimming rather than following through.

One former cabinet minister says: “He is a curious mixture of dogma and indecision. Whenever you listen to him, he seems wooden and stilted as if he’s reading out somebody else’s script. Everything is so hidebound. It’s either that he doesn’t really know what he thinks or doesn’t want to share it with people — I don’t know which is worse. It’s like somebody who can’t give birth and you’re not even sure there’s a baby inside.”

Many MPs see the shadow of Gordon Brown — who was always nervous of revealing his true instincts because he feared the voters would not like them — hovering over his protégé. “This is nothing to do with policies at all. We have got them coming out of our ears,” says one MP. “Ed just can’t communicate. He’s lost the ability to show passion, it’s all tactics and no strategy. It’s just like Gordon.”

Just as Mr Brown was ruthless in his dealings with Tony Blair over the leadership, so Ed was willing to stick the knife into David Miliband. “If you’re going to do that to your brother you should at least be good at the doing the job you took off him,” says one senior Labour figure. “It’s not a bacon sandwich problem, it’s lack of clarity. People think he’s out of his depth and not a leader.”

Many at Westminster think Mr Miliband will be prime minister in 2015 — but most are Conservatives, convinced that the electoral system and the new four-party dynamic will deprive them of victory. Labour MPs are much more gloomy. New candidates feel uninspired. One senior figure sums up the mood of resignation, saying: “Unless Ed can undergo some kind of transformation we are walking helpless towards the gunfire.”