All Puffed Out
Everyone and their uncle is getting their tuppence worth in about the likely outcome of next UK general election in May 2015.
Nothing's certain if you ask me, although another hung Westminster Parliament looks all but inevitable since the voters don't trust the Conservatives or Labour sufficiently to hand either party a working majority of MPs.
Dan Hodges, as a former Labour supporter and GMB union official, thinks that Labour's Ed Miliband is a busted flush; a leader who has finally run out of steam having had very little of substance to say to begin with.
Ed Miliband’s wind of change is all puffed out
The Labour leader has neither the personality nor the policies to take the Tories down in 2015
By Dan Hodges - The Telegraph
Can you sense it? It’s in the air. Britain is on the brink of change. A new year, a fresh beginning. The old order is about to be swept away. The electricity of renewal. Can you feel it?
No. Of course you can’t. Because it isn’t there.
The year 2015 promises an election. Another of those moments when, for all the spin and sophistry, we will face a relatively simple choice: to continue along the road we’re on. Or turn off on to the path less travelled. Indeed, a path none of us has travelled before.
If you believe the pundits and the polls, we are torn. Labour and the Tories currently each command the support of a third of voters. The support of the final third is fluid. Ukip, the Greens, the Lib Dems – remember them? They swirl in and out of the electorate’s consciousness, clouding minds, confusing the issue. It is, everyone confidently predicts, the election no one can predict.
Perhaps. But for a moment, let’s set aside the polling graphs. Let’s ignore the vagaries of the constituency boundaries, and the thrusts and counter-thrusts of the parties that fight over them. Instead let’s ask ourselves: are we really 132 days from a great leap into the unknown? On the cusp of a new dawn? Something reminiscent of Obama in 2008; or New Labour in 1997?
I’m not entirely sure I can remember exactly what change then felt like. But one thing I do know. It didn’t feel like this.
On Christmas Eve, the three main party leaders issued their festive messages. David Cameron’s and Nick Clegg’s were traditional – if rather bland – evoking the spirit of the season, and “Christian values”. Ed Miliband’s, as even the Guardian acknowledged, was “more politically partisan”. It concluded with the following appeal: “Our country faces a choice next year. Let’s choose generosity and inclusion.”
I didn’t detect partisanship behind those words, so much as a sense of desperation. “OK, I may not have convinced you,” he seemed to be saying. “But please, don’t just think of yourselves. Think of those people who really, really need me in Number 10.”
In a couple of days, we’ll get the leaders’ traditional New Year’s missives, and they will be chock full of freshness, and newness and the repetitive mantra of change. But change isn’t coming. Or if it is coming, it’s arriving by stealth. And for those trying to divine the result of the next election, that represents a significant narrative omission. For the most basic job of an opposition leader is to build a consensus around change. First, you construct a desire for change. Next, you layer on top a sense that change is inevitable. And finally, you present yourself and your party as the agents of that change.
On all three counts, Mr Miliband has failed. He could have opted to attack the Coalition for the botched way they were implementing the politics of austerity. Instead, he chose to try to make the case austerity wasn’t necessary at all. And the British people – rightly – didn’t believe him.
Moreover, his agenda consistently proved incapable of passing the most basic of credibility tests. Take, for example, the famous pledge to freeze energy prices. People said they liked his the policy. But they also said they didn’t believe Mr Miliband would be able to deliver it for them. All too often, Labour’s offer has not seemed aspirational, but fantastical. And if something is seen as fantastical, then by definition, it will rarely be seen as inevitable.
These combined failures have meant Mr Miliband has never been able to adopt the “change” mantle. In Scotland, it has been ceded to the SNP; in England, to Nigel Farage’s People’s Army; and latterly, Natalie Bennett’s Green maquis. As a result of which, Mr Miliband has become neither the change candidate, nor the continuity candidate. He is Labour’s nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
Every year for the past five years, a couple of days before his conference speech, I’ve rung Mr Cameron’s communications team for a read-out on the main themes. Every year, I’ve received the same message. Delivery. Continuity. Delivery. Continuity.
Five years ago, Tory strategists bet the farm on 2015 being a “safe pair of hands” election. Mr Miliband and his team bet the farm on it being a “change” election. That election may well now hang in the balance. But from the vantage point of December 2014, it is the Conservatives who look like winning their bet.
Over the past few weeks, Labour has come to recognise this. That is why we have seen the attempt – via their hyperbolic “Back to the Thirties” line – to present the Tories, with their proposed public service cuts, as reckless gamblers, while Labour offers stability and maintenance of the status quo.
It’s worth a try, but I suspect it’s come too late. Mr Miliband has spent too long embracing the politics of the student union for him to take up residence in the Master’s study.
Plus, real political change requires a confluence of circumstance. The stars behind each man – or, in one notable case, woman – who wants to achieve it, must come into alignment with genuine popular support for his or her political agenda. And at the moment, Labour appear to have neither the personality or the policies.
The year may be ending. But change is not in the air. Because of that, I suspect the 2015 election won’t be as close as many people think.
