The Coalition Should Not Underestimate Ed Miliband

It looks as though Ed Miliband may well be on track to win the Labour leadership.  His odds have been slashed by all of the big bookies, making him a short priced favourite and Mike Smithson, over at Political Betting has called it for Ed.  This, along with the Labour pick of Ken Livingstone as London mayoral candidate has put a number of Conservative leaning commentators into a mood of ultra complacency.  This is what Iain Dale said on his blog:

I wonder whether the Labour Party isn’t indulging in a bit of 1980s nostalgia by selecting Ken Livingstone today to be their London mayoral candidate, and in all probablity ‘Red’ Ed Miliband tomorrow as their new leader. Perhaps they could form a Michael Foot tribute act, as suggested by one of my Twitter followers.

The fact that Ken Livingstone won by such a large margin (69-31) shows that he had the union vote totally stitched up. And they will no doubt be funding his campaign. And it’s a further sign that New Labour is well and truly dead. It has ceased to be.

Fraser Nelson has said that:

Ed Miliband wants to take Labour to the left, and back to the comfort zone of the hardcore remain members after 13 years. So he’s become ‘Red Ed’, embracing every lefty cause going. Even pretending that he was against the Iraq war seven years ago. His mates find this hilarious. Plenty Labour MPs were against the Iraq war, but no one can remember Ed giving so much as a wink of support. From raises taxes to upping the minimum wage, Ed is telling people what they want to hear. He sounds like David Cameron on a foreign trip. This ‘Red Ed’ act has brought his campaign a whack of cash from trade unions. Including Unite, the most powerful union of all. What do they want in return? What they’ve always wanted: to run the Labour Party and make it spout their voter-alienating nonsense

Tim Montgomerie tweeted this earlier:

Genuine excitement from every Tory I speak to at possibility of Ed Miliband winning #RedEdandKenDreamTicket

The undertone of such pieces is that ‘Red Ed’ will somehow be easy meat for the Conservatives or the coalition.  I beg to differ.

There is not a great deal that is particularly left wing about him (I would put him to the right of old Labour right wingers like Healey.)  He has been portrayed as some warmed up Bennite (ridiculously as I blogged here) to create some sense of difference between the major candidates.  He is not an old style left winger or a ‘commanding heights’ Socialist and some of his ‘left wing’ views, such as the Living Wage have support across the political spectrum (including from me).  Others are pure posturing in order to win a leadership election.  If anything, this leadership election has shown him to be an opportunist, rather than some kind of Trot.

And therein lies the fundamental point that many commentators are missing.  What this leadership election has shown is that Ed Miliband is shrewd enough and canny political operator to win, or come very close to winning, a leadership election when the odds were very much against him.  Of course, this has involved playing to the gallery in order to win his Party over.  Surely it is complacent in the extreme to say that this skill at playing the correct strategy to do will in elections is restricted to internal party elections.

There is little doubt that, if elected, Ed Miliband will fairly rapidly tack back to the centre, while probably throwing in a little bit of economic populism that is unlikely to do him any harm.  Don’t forget that Harold Wilson was elected as a candidate of the left, before turning himself into a moderate Gaitskellite after a few months.  Surely Ed Miliband has the nous and comprehension to work out that the kind of policies that win Labour leadership elections aren’t the kind of policies that win UK elections (particularly when the Conservatives are in the centre ground).

The coalition and the Conservatives shouldn’t let the ‘Red Ed’ rhetoric breed any kind of complacency.  Ed Miliband appears a canny and ruthless politician, who should not be underestimated.

Related posts:

1. Is David Miliband a Red Tory?
2. Miliband – Moribund!
3. Miliband and Cameron and international challenges