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Ed Miliband plays the Poujadiste card
FT Editorial
A relaxed, fluent but ultimately disappointing speech
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In his conference speeches as Labour leader, Ed Miliband has portrayed himself as the defender of the little guy against powerful vested interests. Two years ago he promised to stand up for those being squeezed by what he termed “predatory” capitalists. In 2012 he said he would break up the banks in pursuit of a more equal society.
Mr Miliband’s critique of the state of Britain has not always been convincing and his policy proposals to date woefully thin, but his chosen line of attack has been astute.
The Tory leadership remains vulnerable to charges that it is out of touch. David Cameron and George Osborne have been described by one of their MPs(Member of Parliament) as “posh boys who don’t know the price of milk”. Nevertheless, it has been unclear how much substance lies behind Mr Miliband’s positioning.
The Labour leader’s conference speech in Brighton offered some answers. Speaking fluently without notes, he tried to fill in some of the gaps in Labour’s prospectus for government and his own credentials as a potential prime minister.
Mr Miliband portrayed himself as a risk taker. He cited his own actions in confronting Rupert Murdoch over phone hacking, standing against his brother for the party leadership and voting against the government on intervention in Syria as examples of a willingness to stand up for his beliefs.
Mr Miliband has certainly chanced his arm, but leadership is not just about striking bold attitudes. His interventions – as on Syria – have sometimes been rooted in political opportunism rather than principle. As a result, his electoral strategy has involved little more than concentrating on mobilising Labour’s core supporters while relying on the eurosceptic UK Independence party to split the rightwing vote.
Mr Miliband’s pitch in Brighton did not dispel the impression that he is a left-leaning leader keen to indulge his party and not challenge it. Still, there was plenty of detail for the first time on where he would lead the country. He promised to reverse coalition reforms of the National Health Service, there were spending pledges aplenty and he returned to his predators theme, promising to reverse a planned cut in corporation tax and target it at small businesses through a reduction in their rates. He also floated the idea of a more aggressive approach toward housing policy, threatening to strip developers of land banks if they failed to build on them. There is whiff of Poujadiste populism about all this.
But the centrepiece was Mr Miliband’s promise to freeze energy prices for two years from 2015 if Labour wins power. A former energy secretary under Gordon Brown, Mr Miliband claims that the market is broken. His charge is that energy companies are ratcheting up prices for consumers, ostensibly to fund investment in new power stations. The Labour leader believes public consent has frayed and is therefore calling for a new deal on regulation. But intervention reminiscent of 1970s-style price controls carries serious risks.
First, it sends a dangerous signal to investors about the predictability of policy. Second, it may run counter to Mr Miliband’s own promise to decarbonise Britain’s energy by 2030, a policy that means industry will require resources for investment. Third, based purely on existing investment needs, it raises the grim possibility of the lights going out.
As a leader, Mr Miliband took a step forward this week. But he is still too close to his soft-left comfort zone, and a fair way from the centre ground conquered so successfully by Tony Blair. His bet is that the public has moved left, but with a recovery, however fragile, now under way, it is a risky strategy. Mr Miliband said many times that “Britain can do better than this”. The same judgment might still be made of him.
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