There is no May Day “M’aidez” – but Miliband still needs help from his Shadow Cabinet

Today is May 1st. International Workers Day. A time to celebrate the hard won gains of the labour movement, to think of the battles still to be won and in some countries, a national holiday. Alas in Britain we have to wait until next Monday, but that doesn’t make today any less special.

A common error – and one I used to make myself before living in France five years ago – was to confuse and conflate the name of this great day with the French term “M’aidez”. Alas when sailors, pilots and others reach for their radios and put out a signal to the outside world, they are saying “help me” in French – not commemorating the international struggle of generations of working people.

It’s an easy mistake to confuse the two – honest.

So on this May Day, let us embrace that etymological confusion, and talk about someone in need of a little help – Ed Miliband.

The Labour leader has certainly had better periods than the last few weeks. His poll lead has narrowed (only slightly and within the margin of error), and he’s faced uncomfortable interventions from both Tony Blair and Len McClusky. And whilst his WATO interview on Monday wasn’t the unmitigated disaster some of his enemies have sought to paint it as, it certainly wasn’t good.

And yet there is no sense of panic on the good ship Miliband as it steers through choppy waters. His leadership remains secure, regardless of the results of tomorrow’s elections (which is a position the Prime Minister perhaps wishes he were in), and there are certainly no distress signals being pumped out into the ether. For the usually calm Mr Miliband, it’s steady as she goes. There is no May Day M’aidez. But he could certainly do with some of his colleagues stepping up to the plate and aiding him, all the same.

On Sunday the Observer reported that a Labour reshuffle is on the cards – a story that we brought to you back in February. The gist of both my initial report and the Observer’s was that Miliband has told several members of his Shadow Cabinet that they need to up their game. There is a chronic lack of visibility from many (or most) of the Shadow Cabinet. Few have anything that could be reasonably considered a media profile. For some this is by design, but for others, this is a result of accident, ineptitude or inability. Far too often the Labour leader is his own outrider, and the lack of already well known “grey beards” in the shadow team means that few others are currently able to gain even a fraction of the traction that a Mili-media hit will achieve.

And considering Miliband isn’t “cutting through” to the general public well enough yet, that’s quite a problem.

Even hard working and popular shadow cabinet members are discovering this problem. Take Andy Burnham for example. He’s widely considered to be doing a good job as Shadow Health Secretary, and has gained considerable credit for his campaign against Tory NHS reforms and privatisation. Yet his keynote speech to the King’s Fund back in January outlining a “whole person care” strategy to merge Social Care and the NHS received little coverage in the mainstream media. The press only began to sit up and take notice last week when Miliband effectively re-announced the policy.

If Andy Burnham – a former health secretary, leadership candidate, popular, smart, thoughtful – can’t get media traction with a significant plan for the future of health and social care, what hope for the less well-known, the less talented, and the less experienced?

This is not to criticise Burnham (quite the opposite, I’m not sure what he could have done differently) but to show the scale of Labour’s problem. Ed Miliband is one of a very small number of Labour politicians that the media appear to pay serious attention to – and that’s something that Miliband needs to have at the forefront of his mind when his upcoming, and increasingly gossiped about, reshuffle comes. Who are the people sat behind him on those green benches who have the ability to not only be innovative ministers, but who can also punch through the morass of media chit chat to get their message across?

Ed Miliband can’t be the sole focus of Labour’s campaigning efforts forever. It’s unsustainable. And he needs the rest of his team to move out of his shadow and make the case for a better Britain.

Otherwise on May Day 2015, when we need to be at our strongest, we may well be saying M’aidez after all…