http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/7786088
John Harris on election of Ed Miliband as Labour leader.
26 September 2010 12:23PM
Morning all.
Here is why this is a good thing, though
let's not make the 1997/2007 mistake and get far too carried away. On
the social circuit last night, a former Labour insider and left social
democrat said this to me: "What this boils down to is the fact that our
politics now has a chance." To make the point for the 1000th time,
though David Miliband is not an accredited Blairite, he was the
candidate of NuLab continuity, with big guns and huge money behind him.
If he'd won, labour ditching the essential thinking of the 1990s would
have been a forlorn hope. With Ed, it is already happening.
A
Labour leader made a speech yesterday that contained a promising passage
about the inequality gap. On Andrew Marr this morning, he talked about
the downsides of flexible Labour markets. Through the campaign, he has
been going on and on about his party's lamentable record in Civil
Liberties. He gets the Iraq issue. Etc. Etc.: all this is progress.
And
yes, he may have problems convincing ordinary Joes that he is a rounded
human being resident in the same universe as them. But that applies to
just all of our professionalised political class, and it seems to me
that he has a much softer, empathetic disposition than his brother. Or
George Osborne. Or Nick Clegg. Or David Cameron, come to think of it.
Among
his first priorities - partic. given the closeness of the result and
the good showing by Ed Balls - should be to present a collegiate front
and talk a lot about the opposition as a team. Self-evidently, he's not
of the Thatcher/Blair leadership school, and nor should he be: if he
presents a more team-based front, it'll also provide a nice contrast to
the two-headed Cam/Clegg monster Labour now faces (while I'm here, he
should make Balls chancellor).
Oh, and on this lurch left/Middle England stuff... I
wrote about
that yesterday, and it sounds just as specious twittering from TVs and
radios today, Respect to MissGlenghis above for making a similar point:
our politics is crippled by rhetoric that thinks W11 and "Middle
England" are interchangeable - and if Ed M keeps on about the "squeezed
Middle" he can expose that con (Dem!) trick for what it is.
So there you are: I'm (very guardedly) optimistic. Now shoot me.
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