What’s the point of Ed Miliband?

By Carina O’Reilly / @carinaoreilly

Recent weeks have seen a number of blog posts and commentaries complaining that Ed Miliband has been guilty of letting the Labour Party ‘drift’. The gist of these is that the party’s job in opposition is to oppose, and it should be doing more of it. Such critics argue that Labour should be actively harnessing the anger visible in student protests up and down the country to seize momentum and ride the wave of fury visible on the streets.

There is a deep and understandable frustration among many party activists that Labour is still navel-gazing, and that the process of rebuilding the party put in train by Ed is likely to not only take years but seems to preclude the direct engagement many are hungry for. However, there are a number of factors which mean that Ed’s approach is probably the right one.

Firstly, the coalition will almost certainly last the full five years. For it to fall apart, one party would have to pull out because it feared that remaining in the coalition would critically damage it even more than an early election. Given the current unpopularity of the Liberal Democrats, and the likely pain about to be inflicted on the electorate by four years of cuts, such a move would be suicidal, and therefore only likely to be brought about by a party already in its death throes. Currently, this applies to neither the Lib Dems or the Tories.

The truth is that opposition parties rarely win elections. Governments lose them. Challenging and even overtaking the coalition in the opinion polls is infinitely satisfying so early in the current term, but with a fixed five years ahead, means little. The Labour Party has to play the long game and make damned sure it’s well ahead in the polls – preferably well ahead of both parties put together – by the time the coalition’s five years is up.

With many of the upcoming policy decisions excruciating for left-wing Liberal Democrats, and both boundary changes and a potential change in the voting system, we may find we’re facing a very different electoral landscape by the end of this term. Indeed, the proposed changes could be deeply damaging to Labour unless it is able to be lithe and flexible in the way it responds, and in particular, the party may need to secure every one of those left-wing votes and every one of those potential defectors from the Liberal Democrats. This is a time to watch carefully the enormous changes that are taking shape – not to retrench to known positions and fill the sandbags.

Secondly, let’s not forget what state we were in. Opposition for the Labour Party, unlike the Tories, appears to give us a new lease of life. Of course it does, we have something to fight against. But it’s no good sticking lipstick on a pig. We were a mess in May. We were divided, apathetic, campaigning out of habit, half the time listless even in the face of policies that we hated.

The party had centralised and taught itself discipline as a reaction to its inability to get elected in the 80s and 90s, and didn’t we do well? But in the process we lost touch with a fundamental spirit that runs through the Labour Party and which is intrinsically understood by anyone who’s ever been to a branch meeting; we like to talk. We want to chew over everything, have an opinion, make ourselves heard, think about the issues. To call the Labour Party a broad church is to call the Atlantic an expanse of water – it covers the basics but barely plumbs the depths.

What New Labour became was a machine to get a centre-left government elected, and by God it was good at it. And I won’t for a second argue that we would have been better off without it – one only needs to glance up at the latest coalition headlines to have that indulgence exposed for what it is. But New Labour won the argument, and that’s what the right of the party don’t yet understand. The right remains terrified of Labour becoming unelectable again if it allows its verbose, argumentative, spirited and plural nature to overcome that imposed discipline. But they’re wrong; they’ve already won.

We know how to fight elections now. We know how to produce coherent and co-ordinated literature. We even have parties off to the left of us to absorb the more militant among us who can’t stand the compromises necessary for electability. We don’t have to be terrified any longer of being ourselves.

And that’s what Ed is for. Had David won, we might be more visible in the Westminster village that is also home to many politics editors. But as a party, out in the sticks, in endless GC meetings in freezing halls, in branch meetings in suburban living rooms, there would still be too many chairs and not enough members as people looked at the coalition and then looked for an alternative and couldn’t find one in which they felt at home. Many of those chairs that are filling up are occupied by returning members – not just new campaigners but people who are already skilled and experienced and passionate. Ed is allowing the party to come together again, in a way it hasn’t been for many years, certainly since before Iraq.

This is enormously, game-changingly important for us. For the first time in a very long time, it’s we that have the active, growing membership base, with the eager door-knockers, and all the benefits of opposition. And we have time on our side. We know with a great deal of confidence that we have at least one and maybe as many as four sets of local polls before the next general election. Without even touching national policy, whether that be quantifying our preferred austerity measures or finally finding a fair funding method for higher education, that simple equation of feet on the ground can make serious, damaging inroads into the opposition, especially the Liberal Democrats, at a local level.

This matters because the Liberal Democrats are dependent on their local strength much more than we or the Tories are. Taking control of a few city councils will attack the very basis of the party. Angry and dispirited local Liberal Democrat constituency parties can make disturbances within the coalition that we cannot hope to match from the outside. Oppositions don’t win elections; governments lose them, and they often lose them by being divided. Sowing discord within the coalition by attacking the Liberal Democrats on the ground, with rejuvenated local CLPs, is a no-brainer, and costs us nothing but enthusiasm and some cold, wet Saturdays.

In the meantime, we can get on with talking, and arguing, and debating, and arguing, and trying to work out who we want to be, and how we can make sure that we don’t lose sight of that again – while retaining what we learnt from New Labour, which was how to win elections. And we start here: reading blogs, thinking, planning campaigns, getting on the doorstep. What happens in Westminster is not our priority right now. It will be again, but not now – and that’s why Ed’s approval rating doesn’t matter. Frankly, right now, nor do we. It’s all about the coalition right now, and the next election is theirs to lose. In the meantime, we have time, and we should use it.