Miliband won’t win unless he puts bully-boy Balls in his box

AN OPINION poll this week gave the Labour Party its biggest lead since 2007. Asked who they would vote for if there was an election tomorrow, 44 per cent of people told Ipsos/Mori they would vote for Labour, and just 31 backed the Conservatives.

Of course, there won’t be an election tomorrow: indeed, as a result of the new and insidious Fixed Term Parliaments Act, there isn’t due to be one until May 2015. But Labour’s lead should still alarm the Tories.

The same poll found 60 per cent of people were dissatisfied with the Prime Minister, and that he is not perceived as competent.

For its part, Labour has no coherent policies, which makes it all the more worrying that the party is so popular. It is simply ahead in the polls because of the failure of the Coalition to restore Britain’s economic fortunes.

The great irony is that the main reason that the economy needs restoring is because of Labour’s mismanagement of it — notably the decision to borrow excessive amounts of money and spend it incontinently. Had that continued, Britain would now be like Greece, but without the sunshine.

Another failed Coalition relaunch this week — which insulted the electorate’s intelligence by claiming this Government had been more radical than either Margaret Thatcher’s or Tony Blair’s — has further strengthened Labour’s position.

I am reminded of 1994, two years after John Major’s Tories had won an election, when Mr Blair took his party far ahead in the polls. It never looked back.

In other respects the parallel is not exact. Ed Miliband is nothing like the charismatic leader Mr Blair was. But he compensates by having a quiet integrity that the public seem to respect.

Also, Mr Miliband has not yet had his ‘Clause 4 moment’ — when Mr Blair ensured the removal from his party’s constitution of the clause that committed Labour to the socialist ideal of common ownership. And the truth is that although Labour is ahead in the polls, its policy vacuum is glaring.

ED MILIBAND was sensible, then, to appoint Jon Cruddas MP, one of the more cerebral critics of New Labour, as his policy chief. Mr Cruddas is an apostle of the ‘Blue Labour’ movement, initiated three years ago by the party’s adviser Lord Glasman.

Blue Labour’s ideology, for which Mr Miliband has expressed support, gives important clues to where the party may be heading.

Blue Labour’s argument is that the party has alienated itself from its core blue-collar constituency by becoming too metropolitan. An obsession with minority rights and ‘progressive’ social issues made New Labour a caricature of itself when last in power.

Ironically, this metropolitan mindset has now been adopted by the Tories, with their determination to pursue policies such as the legalisation of homosexual marriage.

Blue Labour also believes the Welfare State entraps rather than liberates those who use it, and understands how our membership of the EU has led to a very large influx of immigrants from poorer East European countries. It knows how ‘ welfare state scroungers’ and the issue of immigrants taking British workers’ jobs enrages the party’s grassroots supporters, many of whom voted Tory in 2010.

Also, Blue Labour realises, as Lord Glasman and others have advocated, that Labour should apologise for the mistakes it made when last in office.

A manifesto for the next election that avoids so-called ‘chattering class issues’ such as constitutional reform and minority rights, and is based on rebalancing our relationship with Europe, restricting immigration and getting people off welfare would have a broad appeal. Such an appeal would be especially potent if articulated by a Labour Party that addresses the electorate in a spirit of humility, and is seen to have ended its love affair with City grandees, so beloved of Mssrs Brown and Blair.

That last point, however, is far from straightforward, for there is a profound difference of position between Mr Miliband and his shadow chancellor Ed Balls.

During the last Labour government, Mr Balls was one of those who courted the banks, while Mr Miliband did not.

Mr Miliband recently lost a battle with his shadow chancellor over continuing to press for a full judicial inquiry into the banking system and the fixing of the interbank interest rate which got Barclays into such trouble.

Chancellor George Osborne has speculated that Mr Balls might have had something to hide from such an inquiry because of his strong links with banks during the last Labour government.

In fact, it would have undoubtedly highlighted the indecently close ties Labour had with major City figures such as disgraced ex-RBS boss Fred Goodwin, who was knighted by the Labour government, and Lloyd’s TSB boss Victor Blank, who was persuaded to support the disastrous merger between his bank and HBoS.

So long as Mr Balls is shadow chancellor, Blue Labour’s hostility to free markets will not be translated into policy. And, to be fair to Mr Balls, it would harm the British economy and the fortunes of his party if it were.

However, with Mr Cruddas charged to develop policy, some other old Brownite ways — such as centralised control of everything bar the markets — could be swept away in pursuit of the Blue Labour policy of localism.

MR MILIBAND must remember that what most undermined Mr Blair’s premiership was his failure to bring his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to heel. If history repeats itself and Balls is not controlled, this could end in misery for Mr Miliband.

It is often said that Labour is a national party — unlike the Tories, whose power base is in England alone. That is not entirely true, but the fact that despite having engaged in the worst act of economic mismanagement in 80 years, Labour still won 258 seats at the 2010 election does suggest it has a wider geographical reach.

However, Labour is increasingly unpopular in Scotland, and it remains marginal in London.

Lord Glasman is right: unless Labour can connect to the real concerns of working-class people, it will not regain power.

Crucially, Blue Labour has harnessed to its cause highminded politicians such as James Purnell, who resigned in disillusion from Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, and shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna, one of the party’s more able performers.

But it is Mr Balls who is the key to Labour’s future. His constant demands for a ‘ Plan B’ for the economy are legitimate: but his own Plan B, which would entail borrowing and spending more, and expanding the role of the State, would lead to international credit downgrades for Britain and a relapse into financial incontinence.

Much more appealing would be to call for a smaller role for the State, a less reckless economic policy and a dose of social conservatism that chimes with the traditional puritanism of the working class. Such policies would outsmart the Tories, who couldn’t argue against them.

Yes, Labour may be in the ascendant but to repeat: until Ed Miliband can put Ed Balls in his box, he is unlikely to triumph in the polls.