If a week is a long time in politics, then the five weeks Ed Miliband’s energy pledge has dominated British politics represents a whole new time paradigm. He has, as Peter Kellner notes, won the battle – his task now is to win the war. He enters the fray on a sure footing. The government, having originally intending to denounce the proposal as dangerous, impractical and, well, downright Marxist, has resolutely dropped the temperature of its attacks. The prime minister has softened his tone, even to go as far as to concede that the Labour plan was both popular and had struck a chord. And to think that the proposal so very nearly didn’t make it into the Labour leader’s speech, a proposal that enjoys a coalition of 80 per cent of the public, to the former Conservative prime minister John Major. The malaise that hung over the Brighton air in September’s conference has given way to renewed optimism. Buoyed by an expanding poll lead, the trials and tribulations of a summer that rippled with discontent can and should give way to the pleasure of a party at ease with itself as the low drumbeat of the election begins to murmur.
It was not only on energy policy that the Labour leader enjoyed an assured month; October began with his energies deployed on a major reshuffle of his shadow cabinet. Widely described as ruthless cull, it was a perfect display of a political leader imposing his authority. One day the Labour party will move beyond its seemingly neverending desire to cast combatants as either ‘Blairite’ or ‘Brownite’ – a prism the party must have moved out of by the next general election. The Labour reshuffle was neither of the two-aforementioned labels, and the usage is increasingly insulting, as well as redundant, to a Labour leader who has done so much to move the party on from the visceral warfare that so characterised the tail-end of the New Labour years. The team put in place early last month is surely the one Miliband will take to the general election. As hopefully these personnel will form the next Labour cabinet the ups, the downs, the Westminster tittle-tattle, the egos enhanced and egos spurned should all be set aside to help achieve the gruelling march to power.
While the party may seem balmy in terms of its flagship policies and robust polling, an issue that has lingered for months threatens to become more than just a mild sore. The grubby contortions that have occurred in Falkirk threaten to spread far wider than a mere few rogue trade unionists allegedly hellbent on rigging a parliamentary selection. As the front page of yesterday’s Sunday Times detailed, Unite is at the centre of a political storm that can no longer be ignored by the Labour leadership. At its heart lie substantive allegations that the union conducted itself appallingly and was, for all intents and purposes, completely out of control in the central belt of Scotland. Threats, factions, bullying and intimidation were the mainstay and playing politics with people’s jobs part of the arsenal of securing their objectives. The comparison with another previous sorry episode in our party’s history is rightly there, with full and frank transparency now the only antidote.
Five weeks on from Miliband’s keynote speech there is increasing evidence that Labour’s position – both in body and in mind – has improved. But, to offer the obligatory caveat, even with the trailblazing policy now dominating the debate, a mere 41 per cent of the public actually think the Labour party will deliver it once in power. One flagship policy does not an election win make. Highly talented personnel have been reshuffled out or demoted from the Labour frontbench. Many of those promoted to key positions are either untested or unknown. And the poll leads are still far too narrow for a party needing to win the 68 seats it needs to secure a majority of just one, or many of the seats that make up the Frontline 40.
Miliband has demonstrated time and time again that he can take the big calls when necessary, witnessed yet again in October with his challenge to the established order with his impassioned rebuttal to the disgraceful Daily Mail smear of his late father. But equally Miliband is asking the public to take the biggest call of all. A good five weeks will not mask there is still much to be done as we come up to the 18-month mark until general election 2015.
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David Talbot is a political consultant. He tweets @_davetalbot and writes the Countdown to 2015 column as part of the Campaign for a Labour Majority