A confession, dear reader: I did not watch the whole speech. When I heard that the hall was to be in raptures for a full hour and 20 minutes, I thought of the soon-to-be-available transcript. I thought of the pre-briefing I had been helpfully emailed the night before.
It occurred to me that these labour-saving devices had been created precisely to excuse my poor lumbering middle-aged legs the effort of propping me against a wall for an hour and 20 minutes. I could retire to sip coffee, or fizzy drinks. My will broke. I caved.
Suitably distanced, refreshed and watered, with snacks close at hand, my speech experience was a pleasant one, and I could lend Ed a more lordly and sympathetic ear than that proffered by the poor hacks sweltering in cattle class at the back of the hall. (Memo to self for next conference: business class seating for journalists, with press officers ferrying themed amuses-bouches to journalists: ‘and for the education section, please enjoy chef’s signature memories of free school milk and biscuits). Since I was sitting comfortably, what to make of the effort?
I am sure the NHS pledge will be very popular. More money for care, funded by mansion-dwelling tobacco company executives? Yes please, and twice on Tuesday.
Since that was the heart of the speech, and can easily be extracted for quotes, TV clips and headlines, you would be tempted to stop there, walk off the stage and say ‘That’s what the election is about. Him or me, folks’.
Truth is, I wish he had, because the six-point plan for 10 years of progress to a better Britain began to drag after a while.
Truth is, Ed can’t win, really (Quiet at the back! This is a literary device). The whole reason we were given such an abundance of detail is that after two rhetorical and philosophical victories for the Labour leader, the pressure was for this speech to bring together Labour’s vision into concrete, deliverable, meaningful policies.
We got these in spades. Unfortunately, as soon as we got the concrete, we turned to each other and said ‘concrete is boring, all grey and lumpy and ready-mixed and full of girders. Where’s the baroque filigree and latticework?’
To extend the architectural metaphor beyond breaking point, the issue is that for the last few years Labour has sketched out a vaulting cathedral of social democracy. Then the collection plate came in and we decided it would be more of a chapel.
This distresses the evangelical crowd who had hoped for more ambition, while the virtues of the gradualist, pragmatic changes could seem somewhat at odds with the claim that this will be transformative.
To counter this potential for disappointment Ed offered an accumulation of market interventions that were more than the sum of their parts.
That is why we heard of housing, green energy, apprenticeships, wages. And real people, oodles of them, complete with first new and meetable aspirations. Gareth and Rosie? We can rebuild Britain for you and you and you. A flood of targeted limited, practical changes swept over the hall, their real-life exemplars bobbing on each wave.
As policy, it will definitely make a difference; as rhetoric it was perhaps less successful. For a prospective government, the first is more important than the last.
At least it feels that way when you’re able to take a snack break.
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Hopi Sen is a contributing editor to Progress and a candidate for the Progress strategy board
A good speech if you were looking back at the achievements of a Labour government in 2030. High on ambition which is a good thing but lacking in the ‘blood and guts’ of real politics which will shape 2015. NHS tick but what is a ‘Senate of the Regions’? If Britain faces a cost of living crisis, why does it have to wait until 2020 to get a £1.50 raise? Almost as bad as Gordon’s 10p for pensioners (there wasn’t anything for them today BTW) – today was about jam down the line with a worrying lack of detail about how Labour will produce the jam. 1m new green jobs by 2030. I’ve heard successive conference speeches from all parties extolling the potential of green technology – it hasn’t happened and 1m green jobs looks impressive but 7,500 a year which is what 1m jobs amount to over 15 years. That doesn’t look ambitious does it? More of the lack of discussion about ‘pensioners’ – Ed B says freeze child benefit but what about pensions which is by far the largest slice of the welfare pie? Today’s speech didn’t ‘feel’ quite right. I was struck by the particular irony of a ‘Westminster politician’ decrying ‘Westminster politicians’ and putting forward ‘Westminster solutions to Westminster problems’. It was all a bit ‘Westminster’ and I just can’t shake off the feeling that this was a patchwork quilt of political ‘thoughts’ searching desperately for some political expression.
What would you have proposed for pensioners over and above the policies aimed at improving the UK generally (of which there were quite a few). It is easy to pot-shot at a speech for not mentioning a particular group, but what for that group – in this case, pensioners – would you have wanted to see proposed? At best he could have proposed so increase in the state pension above and beyond the triple lock levels. That would have smacked as desperation, and if meaningful in size would have been immensely costly (and I’m a pensioner myself). So, what?
Miliband is truly impervious to reality. I second John Rentoul, the speech was , ” lamentable, weak, clichéd, embarrassing, uninspiring, stylistically inept, vacuous, unambitious, grandiose, cringeworthy, patronising, foolish, an unappetising blend of impossiblism and incrementalism, and a complete and final disaster for the Labour Party.”
The commentary on the speech is being led in the media by those most deeply unsympathetic to the prospect of a Labour Government. This focuses on the crucial omissions from the speech which will probably come to haunt Ed Miliband.
Hopi Sen’s piece was a welcome contrast – thoughtful, reflective, and constructively critical. I’d prefer that any day to John Rentoul’s dislike of Ed Miliband, seemingly whatever speech he made. When any commentator like Rentoul dumps such a screed together rather than one or two well chosen and evidenced points, there is a high likelihood that they are insecure in their arguments but think we won’t notice.