MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10,2014
It seems the knives may finally be out for Ed Miliband as the Labour Party political machine again considers the chances of being led to victory in May 2015 by the man considered by many to be a PR disaster,
In a week where we saw the #webackEd twitter campaign championing the Labour leader the party faithful will have woken this morning to articles deriding his leadership and questioning his position as the man to take them to victory in 2015. Sources in support of Miliband have been quoted suggesting the number of Labour MPs unhappy with his tenure is less than those in the Conseravtive Party unhappy with that of David Cameron; if this is the best support he can muster then surely there is cause for concern.
I believe that Ed Miliband is failing the Labour Party in his role as its figurehead but far more importantly the Labour Party as a whole is failing in it's role as opposition to a coalition government peddling austerity. You'd think that a Conservative government slashing public spending while living standards fall, inflation outstrips wages and the housing crisis rumbles on would be music to the ears of a Labour opposition; but they are failing. They are failing for precisely the reason that Mr Miliband is struggling at the top and that is a lack of courage along side a chronic absence of policy pluralism. Politics is operating within an acute spectrum of fear & hate thy neighbour mongering alongside a race to the bottom with UKIP; aspirational Labour policies of hope and building for the future could be a shining light amidst the mire. To call this a labour opposition is laughable. TTIP, monetary reform, electoral reform, austerity; on all of these issues Labour tows the line.
The problem, for Ed Miliband, is that when politics is so acutely homogenised through a prism of Thatcherite neoliberalism then there is nothing to choose between the parties. Faced with a lack of policy pluralism voters will make decisions based on people; unfortunately for the Labour Party the face of the party is that of Mr Miliband and it doesn't look like it will be winning them an election any time soon.
It seems that Ed may be backed into a corner.
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