Lessons from the leadership election: Taking stock

By Joe Caluori / @Croslandite

As the ballot papers plop through letter boxes, it’s worth taking stock in what we’ve learned through this leadership election.

Firstly, the right of the party have to work harder than ever for victories now. David Miliband, unlike Alan Johnson, has actually run a campaign rather than merely turn up to the hustings and have a website. His hyperactivity and profile speaks to his strategic need to establish an unassailable first round lead. Despite early mistakes in appearing to be the “Continuity New Labour” candidate, he relaxed into his stride and settled into a script that worked for him. The ‘oven ready’ candidate.

Secondly, play the ball, not the man. Ed Balls has done himself great credit. Not only has his aggressive but forensic opposition to ConDem education policy made the case for a clear and prominent role for him in the shadow cabinet, but it has also helped throw off some of the associations of being a bullying machine politician. We need more Shadow Ministers like Ed Balls in opposition, and his early successes deserve a decent showing in the final tally.

Thirdly, if you’re on the left, talk about the future. Jon Cruddas very effectively changed the 2007 deputy leadership election by talking about future policy on housing and taxtation. In contrast, Diane Abbott will, I suspect, have disappointed many of her supporters with her non-campaign and it now seems that putting Diane on the ballot paper was a misplaced act of charity by Harriet. This election needed a sparky ideas-based campaign from the left to make the other candidates clarify their positions and refine their approaches, but it didn’t get it. Instead Diane Abbott played a role that was half modern historian and half media commentator. She was obsessed with her ‘I told you so’ messages, and never presented a vision for the future.

However, after 2007 members are now wise to the electoral system and many will give her a first preference, for a mixture of sisterhood and protest against the centre, transferring to their real choice for leader afterwards. At the beginning of the campaign I felt this might be enough to hand Diane third place in the first round. Now I’m not so sure.

Fourthly, there’s no real political space for a true believer New Labour campaign. Andy Burnham started well early on when he majored on his previous brief of the NHS, but like Hazel Blears in 2007 Andy’s campaign started to fall apart as his support level ossified and he increasingly painted himself into a corner, with aggressive and divisive public statements. I suppose if his campaign was about carrying the torch for the angry right of the party into the shadow cabinet, then it may well tick that box, but he was never in the race, even for the top three.

I supported Ed Miliband from the get-go, both on the grounds of his politics and likeability. Win or lose, he has emerged with great credit from this campaign. His greatest flaw in many critics’ eyes seems to be failing to appear as much the ‘politician’ as his brother. It’s a fair comment to make, but far from being a problem, it’s what tipped myself and many others who would perhaps have been expected to back David Miliband to support his brother instead.

Through his humble demeanor and well thought out public statments, Ed Miliband has emerged as Clark Kent to a hitherto unrealised Superman, and that’s a thought that continues to excite many. Depending on his first round performance, transfers from Abbott and Balls could yet push him over the line.

There can be little doubt that David Miliband would make an excellent leader, but given the luxury of voting for a candidate who represents a paradigm shift from two dimensional American style presidential leaders to a fuller, more human leadership, I would always put my mark by Ed Miliband’s name. Every time good friends tell me that David is the smarter vote on the grounds of his smoothness and presentability, rather than his policies, I feel a straitjacket tightening around our political discourse, and I wonder about where, or perhaps when, pragmatism ends and we strive for the higher ground.