29th September, 2010

Is it just me, or did the cutaways during Ed Miliband’s first speech as Labour leader reveal a squirming, rueful conference audience?  Is it just me, or did those expressions read: Dear God, what have we done?

Clearly a lot of those present had supported Ed’s leadership campaign.  And those who hadn’t will now get in behind him for the good of the party.  But whichever camp they had been in, it looked as if it was suddenly dawning on all of them: David would have to go, and the Labour front-bench would lose its most charismatic player.

Some of them will have been thinking: we need the break from the past that Ed offers us.  Others will have thought we may not have needed it, but let’s take it anyway and draw some lines under Blairism, Brownism, Iraq.  But mostly I reckon they were thinking: what have we done?

It’s as if Labour had always assumed it would be able to have both Milibands on the team.  It could have had Ed under David.  But it could never have had David under Ed.  Did nobody think that through?  I know I didn’t, but that’s because I thought David would walk it.

Ed won it on the 5th round, and on the union votes, not those of the PLP or ordinary members.  When we see Ed speaking for Labour, we’re going to see a man who is there because of the unions.  That is not undoable, and it is an electoral handicap.  It will identify Ed with the forthcoming union resistance to the Coalition’s cuts, which in turn will make a nuanced Labour position on the deficit impossible.  The Conservatives, who have succeeded in keeping the argument binary – you either cut or you spend – could not have scripted a better outcome.

When we see Ed speaking for Labour, we’re going to see the man who denied us David; the man who got where he got by stabbing his own brother in the back.  Ed’s supporters can argue all they like that he had the right to stand, even the duty to stand.  Of course.  But the reality is that Ed’s success required the political assassination of his brother, while David’s did not. 

Ed seized his chance.  He had seen his own brother dither, and he wasn’t going to do the same thing.  (Although it’s said that Ed helped persuade David not to stand against Brown, ironically.)  In the end Ed’s was a winning decision, and you can’t take that away from him.  But was it thought-through?   Rumour has it that, when he learned of his victory, Ed turned to Sadiq Khan and asked, “What have I done to David?”  Whether that rumour is true or not, the victory already seems Pyrrhic, the stage already lacklustre without David’s presence.

The ‘Harman moment’  (in which David rebuked her for applauding Ed’s anti-Iraq stance) proved that David had no choice but to retreat to the back benches.  Labour’s only hope is that this retreat will work, that the man whom a thrilled Hillary Clinton described as “vibrant, attractive, vital” can melt into the political background.  That is Ed’s only chance of a ‘clear field’ in which to define himself and ‘NextGen’ Labour. 

I’ll believe it when I see it.