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  1. Politics
5 July 2013

Miliband needs to go much further to restore confidence

The Labour leader must use this moment to emancipate himself from the machine that won him the job in the first place.

By Rafael Behr

Ed Miliband is at a fork in the road. Plainly he cannot go back, by which I mean he cannot pretend that there is nothing of great significance to see in the row over the Falkirk selection – that it was a rogue case; single bad apple etc.

Len McCluskey’s attack on the Labour leadership – accusing the party of smearing Unite and betraying its trust – bars that route. Besides, every Labour activist, member, MP and any journalist who has spoken much to any of those people knows there is a systemic problem with the opaque way the apparatus has traditionally operated. They also know there has been a concerted effort by Unite to manipulate that process to increase its control over Labour. So when McCluskey implies the party leadership is involved in some nasty plot to be beastly to the union and that Unite, in other words, are the victims of a conspiracy, he is directly challenging Miliband’s authority. He is saying, in effect: “You are not the master of this situation and have no control over how it will end; so let me make this easy – back down, and it ends.” Except, of course, it won’t.

So the choice for Miliband is between prolonged managed crisis and full-blown confrontation. It is between hoping that this can be made to go away with some judicious, calculated moves (Miliband’s standard modus operandi) or using the situation to open a whole new chapter in his leadership.

Miliband might think that Tom Watson’s resignation, freezing the Falkirk selection process and ending the system that allows unions to buy up bundles of party membership will signal determination to get a grip. He may believe that the necessary resolve is indicated with some firm words, whether from his own mouth or through a spokesman or shadow cabinet ally, saying dodgy selections will not be tolerated. If so, he is wrong.

Judging by my conversations with some Labour MPs in the past 24 hours, I’d say Miliband has to go much, much further to restore confidence. This isn’t about whether he supports the union link or whether he should be acquiescing to Tory attacks on the left. Nor is it about mechanisms to ensure more “working class” candidates are selected. (Of course, in that argument, class is usually a category of ideology, not background or income. The people defending Unite on those terms aren’t hankering after the next generation of working class Alan Johnsons, Alan Milburns or Hazel Blears.)

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What this is really about is Ed Miliband’s capacity to be a leader at all – to emancipate himself from the machine that won him the job in the first place and that has helped consolidate his position, but at a heavy price. A superficial unity was achieved but there was no intellectual or ideological harmony, no reconciliation between factions, no meaningful synthesis of ideas and, as a result, no clarity of direction. As I wrote in this week’s magazine, Miliband is desperate to be a candidate who talks about the future, but the Labour Party is still tangled up in a way of doing politics that reeks of a joyless, airless, stale past.

Worse, it looks to many people inside the party and beyond as if Miliband has been shrinking, not growing into the job. The cavalier and patronising tone of Watson’s resignation letter has not gone unnoticed. Between the lines, Labour MPs are reading a message of casual disregard: sorry mate, all got a bit tricky, can’t be bothered anymore, good luck with that whole ‘leadership’ thing, see ya around.

There is a feeling around the parliamentary Labour party today that Watson and McCluskey are threatening to take their ball home if the game can’t be played by their rules. And there is concern that Miliband is looking like the weedy kid in the playground who will be left standing alone, unpicked to play on any team. As one shadow minister, a despairing Ed supporter, put it to me last night: “It’s time to stand up to the bullies now and say clearly, ‘f— off'”.

Raising the tone a bit, I’d say this is starting to feel like Ed’s Prince Hal moment. There is the famous scene at the end of Henry IV Part II when the young Prince comes away from his coronation and is accosted by Falstaff – the ribald villain whose company he kept through the years of misspent youth. Falstaff has been waiting for this moment, thinking he will be in with the new King and enjoy grotesque and fabulous privileges. But Hal surprises everyone by cutting his old crony down. “I know thee not old man,” he says.

Well, Ed Miliband needs that kind of moment. He needs something that will signal the beginning of a new phase in his leadership; that he has the confidence and the vision to govern in a better, more open, more imaginative way. At the moment it looks as if it is Falstaff who is getting the last word, saying to the new King: “Thanks for the ride but, frankly, I’ve got better things to do.” And if Henry IV Pt II had ended like that, there would never have been a King Henry V.

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