I can defy the odds and become Prime Minister, claims Ed
Even though just one in five voters think he’s up to it
ED Miliband yesterday insisted he can ‘defy the odds’ and win the next election – despite mounting criticism from senior colleagues and dire results in the polls. The Labour leader admitted he faces a tough fight to take his party to victory next year and said he always knew it would be no ‘walk in the park’.
Launching new welfare proposals that were immediately savaged by both left and right, he claimed he was relishing the prospect of arguing the case for a Labour government over the next ten months.
His optimism came despite a YouGov poll suggesting only one in five voters thinks he is up to the job of being prime minister.
His personal ratings have been lagging significantly behind those of David Cameron, while a poll for Prospect magazine found voters thought his brother David would make a better prime minister.
To add to the Labour leader’s humiliation, Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman bowed out on Wednesday night claiming polls show he ‘has about as much appeal as a flatulent dog in a lift’.
It came as a series of party grandees lined up to criticise his leadership. Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson said Mr Miliband could not connect with voters as well as his brother, and Gordon Brown’s former spin chief Damian McBride said there were no ‘fighters’ in his
‘They are not fighters’
top team. Former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson appeared to offer only lukewarm support, saying he was ‘the leader we have’.
Mr Miliband tried to shrug off the comments, saying: ‘I always welcome advice, whatever source it comes from.’
But he insisted that his party could not act as ‘continuity Labour’, picking up from where it left off in 2010. Instead, it must respond to problems of inequality and poverty among those in work, which had not been solved by New Labour.
Asked about his poll ratings, Mr Miliband said: ‘I knew when I took this job on that we were going to have a tough fight, because we are trying to defy the historical odds, which are that governments who lose elections don’t tend to be oneterm oppositions.’
He added: ‘In the end, I have a big cause that I am fighting for and it is a tough fight, but I am determined that we win this fight.
‘I didn’t take this job because I thought it would be a walk in the park, I fought for this job because I thought it was important and I thought I had something distinctive to say about how we can change this country.
‘I relish the next ten months, I relish the opportunity to fight for my vision for the country.’
Lord Mandelson told BBC2’s Newsnight Mr Miliband had brought forward eye-catching policies. But he added: ‘Having policies without those being drawn together into a convincing vivid narrative, a story about yourself, who you are, what you stand for and what you are going to do for people in the country, is really not enough.’
Asked whether Mr Miliband was the best leader the party could have, he replied: ‘In my view he is the leader we have and therefore the leader I support, and somebody who I believe is capable of leading the party to victory.’
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson told the New Statesman magazine that the Labour leader was ‘not as able to connect (with people) as strongly’ as his brother David. ‘It’s not his strong point,’ he said.
‘I can’t pretend that, knocking on doors, people come out and they’re really enthusiastic about Ed.’ In another sign of the discontent in the party, the magazine said deputy leader Harriet Harman feels that she has been ‘shut out’ of the election campaign.
And in his blog, Mr McBride said Mr Miliband was ‘guilty of recruiting his innermost circle of advisers entirely in his own image’.
‘There are many positive things to say about the people managing Ed Miliband’s operation and running Labour’s campaign,’ he said. ‘But what they are not is fighters.’
Mr Miliband’s comments came as he launched proposals to strip unemployed youngsters of handouts unless they agree to training in vital skills. He called for 18 to 21year-olds to be given a ‘youth allowance’ instead of out-of-work benefits. It would be conditional on them signing up to learn key skills, and they would not get it if their parents were relatively well-off.
Tory chairman Grant Shapps said: ‘This is just a recipe for more spending on welfare, more borrowing – and more taxes to pay for it. That’s exactly how Labour got us into a mess in the first place.’
But Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union and Labour’s largest financial backer, accused Mr Miliband of using ‘Tory rhetoric of sanction and punishment’.
WITH voters writing him off as a metropolitan policy-wonk weirdo, and party activists crying out for a bit of mercurial brilliance from their leader, Ed Miliband acted. He did! He went to, er, a trendy, black-draped London think-tank event to yowl and yack about sociological concepts, his mouth stretching like loosened butterscotch.
We had been summoned to his launch of a 270-page book entitled ‘The Condition of Britain - Strategies for Social Renewal’. Snappy title, chaps. Mention that on the doorsteps of Thurrock and the blue-collar voters will flood back.
This worthy volume was put together by the Institute for Public Policy Research, along with the likes of Relate, Shelter, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and the Sisters Trust. More eggheads than a barn of hens.
Yesterday’s venue was an arthouse cinema complex in one of those parts of East London where polo necks, pussy cats on leads and a subscription to ‘ Wallpaper’ magazine are de rigueur. An upstairs room had been arranged as though for a Brechtian fringe show: a tubular metal set, monochrome lighting, thrust stage area and an audience of Leftwing professionals from the Third Sector (before they were politicised they were called charities).
‘The lighting’s horrible,’ complained one of the Fleet Street snappers. A few yellows and browns might have warmed up cadaverous Ed, but minimalism takes no prisoners. Mr Miliband was suited, his hair big, the eyes set deep, ringed like two dartboards. He looked knackered.
Energy levels were so low, one expected his aides to rush in with a hospital drip containing Lucozade. He kept closing those eyelids and licking his lips. One close of the eyes lasted four seconds. He no longer pronounces the word ‘I’ as that. It comes out as ‘Arrh’, as though he has a doctor’s wooden spatula on his tonsil.
We were told he would announce a change in Labour’s policy on jobseekers’ benefits. ‘Ed Mil gets tough on the welfare state’ was the desired message du jour. Alas, it was not laid out with any clarity.
My fault for not listening more closely? But there was so much terminological clutter and the delivery was so prosaic.
Entire loo rolls of cliche had been thrown down the pan and were blocking his message. His nose, too, by the sound of it. If the PM thing doesn’t work out, he should become a frontman in the Tunes adverts.
‘Challenging the orthodoxy ... this is the right thing to do ... generational challenge for equality ... people power, public service ... zero-based reviews ... evidence-based change.’
These are not exceptional phrases. They are not the language of someone bursting with new ideas. They are old formulae and he was wading through them in a derivative way. Where is the novelty, the frisson of the unknown, the zing Oppositions need to project?
FEW voters will understand what a ‘zero-based review’ is. ‘We can’t just borrow and spend,’ he said. Yet he wanted ‘access to affordable credit’ for the poor. ‘We’re actually gonna make it happen,’ he droned. It was put with all the gusto of Leonard Cohen singing Bird on the Wire.
A few trusties put dutiful ques- tions, among them a Fabian, a New Policy Institute bod, someone from ‘Mother & Baby Magazine’ and that incorrigible crawler Sir Stephen Bubb, a spokesman for voluntary organisations. Whenever a think-tank puts out a table with custard creams and name badges, springy-heeled Bubblet pops up like a kiddies’ conjuror.
It was left to a reporter from ITN News to ask Mr Miliband if he faced the same fate as Gordon Brown – of having his policies ignored in an election campaign because he was so odd. Ed Mil leaned forward on the lectern and looked at us in a folksy way. He rotated his vast jaw, gave his accent an extra coat of Americanisation and said: ‘Arrh relish the next ten months. Arrh relish the next ten months.’ He didn’t sound as though he convinced himself, even second time round.