There are 22 months to go, and Mr Miliband is still heading steadily for Downing Street

“It’s real leadership, this” – A.C.L. Blair  9.7.2013

It is tempting, since the Devil apparently lies in the detail, to call for the abolition of detail. Some in the media have made a bit of progress with that project. But serious people know that detail matters. Which is why it is too soon to declare Ed Miliband’s speech today either a triumph or a disaster, or anything too specific in between.

Not that the hype machine was given the morning off. The speech was to be a huge gamble, it was said. Perhaps it really was. A normally sane and rational Labour veteran told me on Twitter (in a DM) that Ed Miliband was about to commit (political) suicide.

Fortunately, maturity ruled the day. The sight of Len McCluskey amiably expressing support for the speech on the news channels, even after Tony Blair had, too, hailed Miliband’s boldness and strong leadership, was pretty remarkable. It is unlikely that both Blair and McCluskey will be happy with the eventual outcome. But the fact that both made positive interventions on the same day suggests that Miliband has at least got his initial pitch about right.

The discussion about making an opt-in affiliation system work is for another day – the immediate future. For now let us simply note the danger of a potentially massive shortfall in Labour party funding, and move on.

Today something bigger and simpler is worth saying. It is that, once again, Ed Miliband has confounded the sceptics, the sneerers and the jeerers who say he cannot lead and lacks some mysterious X factor that all potential prime ministers should possess. Only minutes before he got up to speak the conventional wisdom was that he would fail to convince, and would unleash (or exacerbate) a “civil war”. Listening to some distinguished broadcasters struggling to explain where their civil war had gone this lunchtime was highly entertaining, and almost worth the price of a licence fee alone.

Even if he had not originally planned to launch a debate on reforming the trade union link, Miliband has shown that fortune favours the brave. He has said things that Labour leaders were not supposed to be able to say. There was, I think, unfeigned admiration and respect in Tony Blair’s voice as he congratulated the party leader on his initiative. Today’s intervention shifts the terms of debate, and has immediately put the Conservatives onto the defensive on the issues of party funding and well-paid second jobs for MPs.

Of course, it is true that this debate is a distraction from what the Labour party should be talking about right now: squeezed and falling living standards, low pay, the shortage of good jobs, and the calamity befalling the NHS. I think Ed Miliband knows that perfectly well. But this initiative has changed the mood. He has re-established the space in which to go on the attack again.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a piece here on the “misunderestimated Mr Miliband” . A Westminster lobby that, by and large, refuses or is unable to see his qualities continues to misunderestimate him. But he is getting there. There are 22 months to go, and Mr Miliband is still heading steadily for Downing Street.