Ed Miliband Has Just Given The Worst Speech I've Ever Heard From A Party Leader. He's Running Out Of Time.

By Dan Hodges

The time has come for Ed Miliband to put up or shut up. Last October, he stood on the stage where he had accepted the Labour leadership 24 months earlier, and told his party conference: “I didn’t become leader of the Labour Party to reinvent the world of Disraeli or Attlee. But I do believe in that spirit. That spirit of One Nation. One Nation: a country where everyone has a stake. One Nation: a country where prosperity is fairly shared. One Nation: where we have a shared destiny, a sense of shared endeavour and a common life that we lead together. That is my vision of One Nation. That is my vision of Britain. That is the Britain we must become.”

In contrast to his “Producers and Predators” speech, his address got rave reviews.  I thought it had been overhyped, writing the day after that Miliband was now “The man who knows how to work a crowd and hit his opponents hard, but lacks a strong and coherent prospectus for how to govern.”

But I was in a minority. By common consent, this was a breakthrough moment. Miliband had set out a compelling vision of the Britain he wanted to lead, and the manner in which he wanted to lead it. All that was required was for him to spend the next 12 months fleshing out what that vision would mean in practical political terms.

And he blew it. On Saturday, Miliband addressed the annual conference of Progress, the pseudo-Blairite think tank. It was by some distance the worst speech I have read from the leader of a major British political party.

It wasn’t just that it was vacuous. Or structurally incoherent. Or that the one announcement of substance – another rejection of a referendum on Europe – was politically irrational.

Whole passages just didn’t make sense. They had no grounding in basic logic. Take this section on David Cameron and his own Euro travails: “I know David Cameron is a man who likes to be known for a bit of relaxing, even chillaxing, but on this occasion, it beggars belief. 
He’s not lying on the sofa, relaxed. 

He’s hiding behind the sofa, too scared to confront his party and provide the leadership the country needs. 
He’s weak and panicked and flailing around.” Which is it. Is he hiding behind the sofa? Or is he panicking, and flailing around?

On immigration he said, “In our society, we are not dazzled by change. 
But nor do we seek to recreate the past.” What does that mean. We want to change? We don’t want to change? We want to change in a way that keeps everything the same?

But by far the worst section was when he tried, for the umpteenth time, to flesh out the One Nation vision he had unveiled last October; “We don’t like their story about our country. 
And we have a much better one ourselves. 
A sense of mission for the country. 
Inclusive. 
Not exclusive. 
Outward looking. 
Not inward looking. 
Optimistic about our future.” This isn’t a serious political prospectus. It’s gibberish.

If Ed Miliband really does have a strategy for transforming Britain then he needs to tell people what it is. Not in two years, not in 18 months. Now.

Labour’s had great fun demonising David Cameron and his Tory toffs. They’re posh, they all went to the same school, they don’t like poor people. Yes, we get that. Now what?

Ever since being elected, Labour’s leader has constructing a grandiose picture of Milibandism. There is no time for Blairite managerialism; in his eyes, we are living through a period of unprecedented national crisis, and this requires an unprecedented and radical transformation of society and its governance.

I personally think that’s so much student-union posturing. But let’s engage with Ed Miliband on his own terms. Fine, we need radical solutions. So please tell us, without resorting to meaningless abstraction, what those solutions actually are.

To date Miliband’s leadership has been an exercise in playing for time. A hope that the difficult policy and political decisions can be put off for just one more day.

Time has run out. The local elections saw Labour finally come face to face with electoral reality. Last Friday’s analysis by YouGov pollster Peter Kellner confirmed what every rational observer within Labour’s ranks knows anyway, that Labour is nowhere near winning a majority at the next election. Today Lord Sainsbury, formerly one of Labour’s biggest donors, confirmed he will not be donating to Labour again, and described Miliband as an “average leader” – though, to be fair, he said the same about Nick Clegg and David Cameron, and tactfully made clear his decision had nothing to do with Miliband personally.

Most significant of all, there are growing signs this morning that Miliband’s colleagues are no longer prepared to sit back and allow the policy paralysis that has gripped the party over the past three years to continue. Both The Guardian and the Sun report that Jon Cruddas, who is heading Labour’s policy review, is urging Miliband to refocus on a more grounded Blue Labour agenda. This would require a radical change of tack on issues such as welfare, Europe and deficit reduction. Some of the ideas need more thought – for example, the 10-year time frame for deficit and spending reduction being reported by Guardian journalist John Harris would be a gift to the Tories: “Vote Labour for a decade of Debt”. But there is a growing feeling that if Miliband continues to duck the tough decisions, they are going to have to be forced upon him.

I’m told that shadow cabinet ministers who have become exasperated at the way even minor policy papers vanish into the “Black Hole of Calcutta” – the nickname given to Miliband’s personal policy unit – are now urging clarity in four key policy areas: Europe, welfare, immigration and spending. Of these, welfare and immigration are regarded as the most urgent, not least because the next spending review and forthcoming welfare legislation represent a political elephant trap for Labour.

“Those are the two areas to watch,” one shadow cabinet member told me, “He needs to move decisively on those. If he doesn’t, then it’s game over.”

Ed Miliband says he has a vision for Britain. If so, he’s finally going to have to start sharing it with the rest of us.

Dan Hodges is a Blairite cuckoo in the Miliband nest. He has worked for the Labour Party, the GMB trade union and managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation.He is the son of actress and Labour MP, Glenda Jackson.