ANALYSIS:ED MILIBAND stood yesterday before thousands of Labour delegates in Liverpool, confident of his abilities and direction, although many sitting in front of him believe that last year's election result, decided in the end by the trade union vote, delivered the wrong verdict.
Leaving the hall an hour later, some were even more convinced their doubts were justified following a speech leavened with humour at the beginning, but which was often vague, leaving his audience unsure of the road ahead.
Miliband has moved on, perhaps, beyond his battle with brother David for the leadership, if only because the British public has become bored with the media’s Cain and Abel-like obsession with the story. But he has yet to craft his own relationship with voters.
Since Sunday, the Labour Party conference in Liverpool – an expensive undertaking for a party that is broke, if good for the city’s hotels and restaurants – has lacked atmosphere. The reality of life in opposition is seeping into the party’s bones. Faced with a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition that is struggling with difficult times, Labour’s delegates could have met harbouring hopes that a crisis in government may provoke a snap election.
It could happen, of course; but the introduction of fixed-term parliament legislation in Britain, along with the Liberal Democrat leadership’s clear desire to avoid the judgment of voters for as long as possible, means the 2015 timetable for the next election will be adhered to.
In his speech yesterday, Miliband spoke of “a new bargain” with the British public, where those who “show responsibility” are helped first; not those who have learned to abuse the system for their own benefit, whether overpaid executives or welfare scroungers.
Predictably, bankers were vilified in the form of easy target ex-Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief executive, Fred Goodwin, along with rapacious energy companies. But “business” in general is “good” bar “asset-strippers” who succeed at the expense of others.
The rhetoric was fine. The difficulty is finding out what it means.
Miliband’s “New Bargain” is no easier to understand than Conservative prime minister David Cameron’s “Big Society”, with even some of Miliband’s own lieutenants struggling to put flesh on its bones.
For now, Miliband’s first task is to restore Labour’s reputation with voters on economic issues as he repeated mea culpas for some of the party’s record in office between 1997 and 2010.
He has much to do. Opinion polls still show the British public accepts that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat deficit reduction plans are necessary, if painful, though sentiment could change as the cuts bite ever deeper.
In the pursuit of economic credibility, Miliband has performed his first significant U-turn, abandoning pledges made during the leadership campaign to replace tuition fees with a graduate tax.
Instead, Miliband now promises, as a first step, to cut the £9,000 fee to £6,000-a-year – funded by scrapping corporation tax cuts for the banks, though, ironically, such a move would most benefit students who make the most money in the years after graduation.
As well as being seen by some voters as the ruthless younger sibling who destroyed his elder brother, even if such a characterisation is unfair, Miliband is also seen as a tool of the trade unions, given his dependence on them in last year’s contest.
This characterisation, too, is unfair, since Miliband exploited support where it was to be found, but he fluffed his chance of emulating Tony Blair’s Clause IV moment in the early 1990s by pulling away in recent days from plans to reduce the unions’ influence in deciding the next Labour leader. In the months ahead, he will be faced with endorsing, or backing away from, the expected round of public sector strikes scheduled for the autumn – ones that he has previously described as “a mistake”, to the fury of some of his own rank and file.
However, the political climate – one in which all but the very well off are feeling economic strains may give him room for manoeuvre, particularly if the unions box clever and avoid giving the Conservatives the opportunity to replay the union wars of the 1980s.
Miliband insists that he pays no attention to press coverage, which is just as well because the immediate reaction of the British press to yesterday’s speech was negative: “He’s not Iain Duncan-Smith, I’ve heard worse,” tweeted one correspondent, truly damning with faint praise.
However, Miliband does have to worry about the innards of opinion-poll research, which show a majority of voters do not warm to him, do not believe that he looks like a future prime minister, nor that he would be good in a crisis.
Some of the judgments are probably wrong, since he showed fine timing, if not bravery, before the summer in jumping slightly ahead of the bandwagon to get his retaliation in first against Rupert Murdoch and News International.
The Murdoch affair, he said, had taught him lessons: that leaders must take risks, “be willing to break the consensus, not succumb to it” and that they must “do things in their own way”.
For now, though, “Miliband’s way” is still a work in progress.
Barring a leadership challenge, unlikely any time soon, Miliband has time to hone his message, since he will have made three more such speeches before he leads his party into the next general election campaign.
For now, he does not look Britain’s next prime minister.
However, nearly every leader of the opposition in Britain, Ireland or elsewhere, is deemed a failure, until the moment comes when they are seen as a shoo-in for office: just ask the Taoiseach.