One Labour Prime Minister, two Labour Prime Minister… three….?

It is shortly after sun-rise on Wednesday morning in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Andalucia. I am in despair at the behaviour of ministers and MPs who were briefing against Gordon Brown once the Glasgow by-election result came in. Then the phone rings. It is the Today programme. Would I like to comment on David Miliband’s article in the Guardian? What article? They send it over on my Blackberry.

It is like a breath of fresh air after the stale self-indulgent solipsism from Warwick. It attacks the Tories. Hooray! It sets out Labour’s mistakes – not under Brown’s brief premiership but strategic wrong turns or failures to get out of first gear since 1997. At last! It suggests that Labour needs to do. On the record. Signed by a senior cabinet minister. About time!

So I tell Today I would like to comment and invite other ministers and MPs top attack the Tories and to discuss ideas and ideology and not personality. Big mistake. The phone goes silent as all the BBC wants from me as a Labour MP is to join in the get-Gordon dance.

pfpfpfpffff. Denis MacShane clearly has his own agenda. But I can’t help but feel there is something completely absurd about the firestorm that’s blown up about Milliband’s article in the Guardian. Is it a glowing endorsement of Gordon Brown? No, clearly not. But it’s hardly the scathing attack it’s been portrayed as. The declaration “The starting point is not debating personalities but winning the argument about our record, our vision for the future and how we achieve it” would be a bloody odd way to start a leadership campaign. He clearly feels significant changes need to be made if the Government is to be re-elected, and he clearly isn’t prepared to declare loudly that Brown is the man. Why should he, when all the signs are Gordon has lost all his nerve to put forward a strong platform? Milliband knows that an assasination might ultimately become necessary and he doesn’t want to lie through his teeth to the public. Good for him. At least when he stands, he’ll be able to say he was honest.

The kind of ultra-parsing we’ve seen of the article is reminiscent of some absurd theological dispute turning on the interpretation of a line of the Bible. Except the Bible is supposed to be the word of God, while this was an article in the Guardian clearly aimed at Labour supporters - no doubt written with great care by Milliband’s aides, but hardly in expectation of this sort of over-analysis.

“At his press conference yesterday, Miliband repeatedly dodged the question when he was asked if he would rule out standing for the leadership. He also made a point of saying that Gordon Brown could lead Labour to victory, not that he would or that he should. “

So acknowledging the possibility that Brown might resign - or that he may like to try for the job - makes him disloyal? Come on. The Standard even managed to hyper-ventilate about Milliband’s admission that “We needed better planning for how to win the peace in Iraq, not just win the war”. Even Bush has admitted this, for god’s sake!

What’s so exhausting is that the press has managed to remove Milliband’s actual meaning from the picture completely. “He’s a seasoned political operator,” declared David Grossman on Newsnight. “He knows we’re going to see it like this”. In this insane, cannibalised world, you can’t complain if the press puts the most sensational possible interpretation on a remark. If you’re familiar enough with their ways to know they might, then that might as well be what you meant.

What Milliband actually meant is obvious. Labour has run out of ideas and of spirit. It needs a radical agenda, passionately argued, to re-enthuse the voters. Endlessly claiming that Brown is the man to solve the economic slowdown, while appearing to do little about it, won’t do. If Brown endorses this approach, he can win and should stay. If he doesn’t, he - and Labour - are in trouble.

Is there any aspect of this anyone sensible can disagree with? At the risk of sounding naive, my genuine suspicion is that Milliband was amazed and dismayed to see the article interpreted in this way. And rightly so. With the party so far behind in the polls, to have simply leapt to Brown’s defence would have seemed disingenuous - indeed, Harriet Harman’s reputation is being damaged daily by her willingness to do so.

It’s just another sign of how our newspapers have come to lack all sense of proportion. A minor economic slowdown, likely to become a shallow two-year recession, is an economic crisis. Families forced to stop eating at restaurants so often are deemed to be “hurting” and “suffering”. And with the governing party starting electoral meltdown in the face, a reasoned piece by a cabinet member - that contains not one explicit criticism of Brown - is a declaration of civil war. Grow the fuck up.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Politics, Posts

Labour has done badly in previous contests between election[sic]. It even managed to meet disaster in a national election - the 1999 European Parliament election - and still win by miles the next time.

Yet what characterised these previous defeats was base Labour voters staying at home, unwilling to go out and cast a positive vote for Labour.

Glasgow East was different. In Glasgow East, voters in pretty large numbers did turn out. They rushed out to vote for anyone who could beat the Labour candidate.

In a recent discussion I had on Newsnight, my friend the former Blair adviser Peter Hyman said Labour was “sleepwalking to a massacre”.

So they are.

Daniel Finkelstein has a point, I suspect.

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Clippings, Politics

Labour’s current Britain-wide predicament seems to polarise between “New Labour ultras” and “left Labour traditionalists” - the former stressing winning aspirational middle Britain voters, the latter “core” or “traditional” working-class voters. But this offers a false choice. There are core voters in every constituency in Britain. It is not possible to form a Labour government by winning key marginal seats where aspirational voters predominate unless core voters turn out.

We have lost support in both sectors, and our challenge is to win them both back. The New Labour ultra assumption that core voters have nowhere else to go is plain wrong: they are staying at home, or voting for minority parties, including, sadly, the BNP. Equally wrong is the assumption of traditionalists that aspirational voters’ concerns are secondary.

Peter Hain offers a refreshing dose of sanity in the Compass-Progress feud

Permalink | No comments yet | Print this post

Email this | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Share this on Facebook
See other content filed under: Clippings, Politics