Not-so-Red Ed?

In last week’s blog on the TINA phenomenon, I talked about the inability of the Labour Party to make up its mind about who its next leader should be, and what that said about the party’s response to its electoral defeat. I also argued that this limbo in which the Opposition finds itself presented an opportunity for the coalition to get ahead of the game in convincing the public of the case for cuts.

A week on, a new Labour leader (pardon the pun) elected, yet nothing has changed on either of these fronts. The dramatic outcome of the tedious leadership contest can’t exactly be described as a lurch to the left, but it does appear to demonstrate an unnerving error of judgement by those in and around the party about the reasons behind the events of the spring.

This is particularly so, given that the decisive blow to the elder Miliband’s ambitions was landed by the only bloc within the tripartite electoral college with the potential to swing the next election back in Labour’s favour (I wouldn’t imagine that MPs and party members account for many of the 5 million votes lost since 1997 that the new leader has so often lamented).

The minutiae of the voting results have been gone over a thousand times now, or so it seems, but the potential impact of them has not diminished. More of the 258 Labour MPs voted for David than voted for Ed; likewise a higher proportion of the party’s (participating) membership did, too.

Labour’s new leader, widely seen as the more left-leaning of the Miliband brothers and hence of the front-runners in the contest, triumphed by securing a staggering advantage among members of trade unions and other ‘affiliated’ organisations – together comprising Labour’s traditional socialist core.

This core, it seems, sought to gain greater control of the party by voting to consign to history the New Labour revolution that had gnawed away at the party’s age-old roots. If true, this would be an ideological misjudgement threatening to spoil what could have been – and could yet be – a 2015 election that is Labour’s to lose.

And there was much in the new leader’s first keynote speech to the party conference this week to suggest that those wishing to see Labour return to its ‘old’ values might get something of what they bargained for when they cast their ballot. A belief in a greater role for the state in stimulating long-term economic growth following the suffocating recession, coupled with faith in the power of communities to generate optimism and ambition; prioritising these tangible aims over a more ruthless approach to deficit and national debt reduction; declaring an end to the days of international unilateralism, including a (somewhat dubious) expression of regret over Iraq; and an emphatic endorsement of that most modern of socialist causes – the protection of civil liberties.

But is it wise to attempt to deconstruct the foundations of thirteen successive years of government – the party’s most electorally successful era by a long stretch – as if it’s some kind of secret past, an historical shame? Tony Blair made Labour electable again after nearly two decades in the doldrums, and his successors cannot get away with celebrating its proud achievements in office whilst dismissing the values that underwrote those successes; it cannot have the one without the other.

Or is Mr Miliband Jnr smarter than that? The man dubbed ‘Red Ed’ – much to his proclaimed disgust – wasn’t part of Blair’s New Labour machine in quite the same way as his brother (Ed was an advisor to Gordon Brown at the Treasury before being elected; David was a policy aide in Number 10), but he surely recognises the importance of Labour’s occupation of the centre ground in enabling and delivering its recent victories.

He was also elected under Blair’s leadership, and in spite of toeing the party line on controversial issues like Iraq, and anti-terrorism, and the like – not because of his pledge to overstep it or shift it. His defeated brother may have had the look of a sore loser when he complained to deputy leader Harriet Harman about her apparent hypocrisy in applauding Ed’s anti-Iraq overtures, but his awareness of ‘how this looks outside’ was impressive in the circumstances, and may well have struck a chord.

That is why Labour’s protégé-cum-principal was careful not to make his self-crafted bend in Labour’s road too sharp, especially at this early stage of the journey and before the government’s roadmap has been fully drawn out (in the form of the forthcoming Spending Review announcement). Perhaps, he thought, it’s a little too early to nail his colours to the mast.

Or perhaps ‘Red Ed’ has a more sophisticated shade than his backers had hoped – and voted – for.