The Spirit of Ed Miliband

Can anyone else hear an unattractive whine? Oh, it’s coming from Ed Miliband’s supporters. It seems that they do not like one candidate for the Labour leadership pointing out some important differences with another candidate.

According to Nicholas Watt at The Guardian, Ed Miliband “showed his irritation with what he regarded as a barely concealed personal attack”, namely an article in The Times by his brother (pay wall). David Miliband wrote:

Strong opposition, while necessary, is not sufficient. Simple opposition takes us back to our comfort zone as a party of protest, big in heart but essentially naive, well meaning but behind the times. This is the role our opponents want us to play.

Personal attack? We all know what a personal attack looks like, and that wasn’t one. But it prompted the younger brother to issue a statement:

As we head towards the ballot papers going out, all of us as leadership candidates must take special care to continue our debate in the spirit we started out. I will continue to conduct this campaign in that spirit.

In other words, when the campaign started a lot of people thought I was going to win and now they have realised that David would be a better prime minister. And now Jon Cruddas, darling of the sensible left, has gone and endorsed David Miliband, as it was predicted that he would.

Saying that your opponents’ policies are “naive” is not a personal attack, it is a political argument. One which is developed well by David Aaronovitch in today’s Times (pay wall again), taking just one example:

In an interview last week MiliE said the following: “Actually, if we’d listened to our party more on a range of issues — housing, agency workers, tuition fees — we’d have been a better government, not a worse government.”

As far as I can tell, “listening” on tuition fees would have meant not bringing them in. Readers may recall that the contention back then (fed, secretly, by Mr Brown’s lieutenants) was that applications to university would fall with top-up fees. Exactly the opposite happened. Which disconcerted the Tories, who also opposed tuition fees (should Labour have listened to them?) but not the Lib Dems who, in opposition, were always undisconcertable.

MiliE’s blueprint for good government, then, would have required either ignoring the crisis in higher education funding caused by expansion, cutting student numbers or bringing in an unstated alternative form of funding. He may recall that when asked to provide numbers for such an alternative — the graduate tax — Mr Brown declined. Top-up tuition fees, then, were a classic example of a government taking the right, if unpopular, step; ie, an example of what leadership is all about.

Let’s hear a real argument from Ed Miliband on this subject, or on how his plan for tax breaks for companies paying a “living wage” would work in practice. Rather than complaints about the “spirit” in which the campaign is conducted, or whining from off-stage whenever he loses a vote of party members.

Photograph: Ed Miliband addressing Hendon Labour Party

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