Core Vote Strategy
Now such an outcome could not be possible in Scottish Parliament elections or those that elect Scottish councils or the MEPs we send to the European Union (EU).
Yet this undemocratic First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system is still used at for electing MPs to the Westminster Parliament because it suits the two main parties, i.e. Conservatives and Labour to keep things that way.
I suspect that Dan Hodges is right and that Labour will not win next year's general election, but even if Ed Miliband does manage to top the poll because of this inward looking bunker mentality, he will surely be in the weakest position of any Prime Minister in living memory.
And to think that during the Scottish referendum campaign, Labour and its allies in Better Together demanded completely 'certainty' on a whole range of issues from independence supporters.
Yet Ed Miliband's big speech to the Labour conference is fast becoming famous for what he didn't say, for playing safe and for being of personal anecdotes and general waffle.
Ed Miliband has allowed Labour to stay in its comfort zone. That's why he won't be the next prime minister
By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph
Photo: GETTY IMAGES
He couldn’t do it. In fact, in the end, he didn’t even try to do it.
The conventional wisdom was that this was the moment Ed Miliband had to seal the deal with the British people. He would have to walk onto the stage as leader of the opposition, and walk off it as the next prime minister.
Ed Miliband didn’t even try to present himself as a prime minister. To do that necessitated him reaching out over the heads of the assembled delegates, and into the country. He had no interest in reaching out beyond his delegates. Instead he delivered a speech designed to move his party painlessly back into its comfort zone.
Think of where we began. Four years ago, in this very city, Ed Miliband pledged a new beginning. Lessons had to be learnt. Pages turned. The status quo confronted. It would, he told us, be a whole new politics.
And think where it has ended. With a Labour leader pledging to his audience he would raise taxes to boost public sector spending. Vowing to break up the banks, but veto reform in the NHS. And saying nothing – literally nothing – on immigration, law and order, welfare reform (save for the abolition of the despised bedroom tax), the deficit or the macroeconomy.
At times the insularity of the speech was staggering. His section on Englishness evolved into a roll call of socialist martyrs. The marchers of Cable Street. The unions at Dagenham. The veterans of the Spanish civil war. He seemed to be implying the only true Englishman are those carrying Labour Party membership cards.
His successes as Labour leader were also carefully chosen to be easy on the eye of his audience. He had stood up to Rupert Murdoch, to the bankers, to the energy companies, to the payday lenders and to the Daily Mail for what they had said about his father, he boasted.
One of Ed Miliband’s signature attributes is an endearing lack of self-awareness. And it was on full display today. The man burdened by perceptions he is “weird” opened the most important speech of his life by telling an anecdote about how he’d gone out for a walk in his local park and started chatting to two young women. “We were hoping you were Benedict Cumberbatch”, they told him. Then they started explaining how they felt their lives had fallen into a “black hole”.
Similarly, the main rhetorical construct underpinning his speech consisted of him talking about the concept of “togetherness”. Except he insisted on turning it from an adverb into a noun. “Together says…” “Together makes…” At times it felt more like watching a performance of Waiting for Godot than a party conference address.
But the most telling moment came when he announced to his audience that he’s about to embark on an “8-month job interview with the British people”. Ed Miliband is wrong.
His job interview for prime minister of the United Kingdom didn’t start today. It started four years ago when he was first elected leader of the Labour Party. Since that moment the voters have slowly, surely and subconsciously been formulating the opinion that will govern how they cast their vote at the next election. And I suspect we have just witnessed the moment that opinion became set in stone.
When he’d finished Ed Miliband stepped off the stage into the warm embrace of his party. Next May the response of the nation as a whole will be rather different.
