The Labour leader’s strategy relies on voters one day realising that he was right all along. Then rewarding him for it.{C}
The Financial Times has an interview with Ed Miliband this morning, revealing in that it shows the Labour leader unperturbed by his party’s apparent failure to break through in opinion polls and confident that voters are swinging in his general direction.
In fact, he tells the FT opinion is “moving significantly towards us” and cites as evidence the fact that David Cameron has had to imitate some of Labour’s language about responsibility at the top of society and excessive corporate pay.
Meanwhile, the Labour leader continues to express certainty that, eventually, voters will see that the coalition’s economic plans have unravelled and start listening more to the opposition.
I think 2011 was the year when the economic argument has shifted. The government’s economic strategy has fallen apart in my view.
Well yes, that is his view and he soldiers on in dogged determination to bring the country round to sharing it. The problem is that Miliband has yet to demonstrate that he has any effective techniques for mass persuasion. By his own admission, Cameron is prepared to ape Labour’s potentially popular banker-bashing postures and there is a peculiar complacency in thinking that voters care who said something first. Miliband’s strategy seems to be based on an assumption that you can build a wonderful edifice of analytical truth about the failings of the current system and critiques of the incumbent government, so it is all ready to be admired when the electorate deigns to pay attention. I can’t think of an example of this approach – build it and they’ll come – working in recent political history.
Of course, Labour can take some comfort from the party’s fairly easy win in yesterday’s by election in Feltham and Heston. I doubt that will stop the frustrated murmuring that is getting louder on the opposition benches. The party’s strategic dilemma, or rather its confusion, is neatly encapsulated in one especially odd line from the Miliband interview today:
I always said it would be a long journey to be just a one-term opposition.
Surely if the ambition is to be in opposition for just one term, the journey is, by definition, relatively short. You can just about see his point – there is a lot of work to do in a short space of time. But at the moment it feels as if Labour hasn’t decided whether it is running a marathon or a sprint – or maybe just jogging on the spot.
Content from our partners
Related
