Labour's (David) Miliband Problem

Labour has a problem, and it goes by the name of Miliband. But it’s not Ed that is a cause for concern (at least not yet), rather his brother and defeated Labour Leadership contender, David. To state the obvious, David Miliband is not the leader of the Labour Party, and as such, even almost one year on he acts as a very visible sign of the path not taken.

The former Foreign Secretary is what Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight would call a ‘ghost’. Not because he is admirably thin, nor because he is particularly pale, but because candidate David has been usurped by the ghost of David, like the deceased hated husband who can now do no wrong.

Ghost David would have gained far more than 800 seats in the local elections, and would have orchestrated a miraculous Labour victory in Scotland. Ghost David would out do the Prime Minister every week at PMQs, framing him as a bully that panders to the vileness of the Tory right and the mendacious Liberal Democrats. Ghost David would have the Labour Party twenty points clear in the opinion polls.

Victorious candidates always live with a ghost or two. William Hague had Margaret Thatcher for company, Barack Obama had Hilary Clinton and Ron Greenwood had Brian Clough. Ed Miliband has it tougher than most; for 'Mr Miliband' once meant David.

There are still (probably) four years before a general election will take place in the UK. The result will be determined, as ever, by economics. If the Osborne plan works, the deficit is reduced and a pre-election budget delivers tax cuts for the middle classes, a Conservative majority is the most likely outcome. If, however, the economy is still flat-lining in 2015 and people feel poorer than they did five years earlier, a Labour victory is probable. Policy and even personality is marginalised when the saliency of the economy is high. That the economy (over which Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and to an even greater extent Leaders of the Opposition have only a modest influence) trumps issues in terms of importance in elections, leads one to ponder whether one of the vital foundations of representative democracy is discredited, but that is an academic diversion.

There are murmurings in the Labour Party and the media about the performance of Ed Miliband. Some of the criticisms are fair and should be taken on board, most are unwarranted and mean-spirited. But in the battle between a person and a ghost, I’d always opt for the former, if for no other reason than a man (or woman) is better than a myth.