This is Miliband’s moment, and he should run as the ‘we screwed up’ challenger
It may be time to stop talking about whether David Miliband challenges Gordon Brown, and start talking about when. The young cabinet minister plainly contemplates the possibility — or why would he have been so conspicuously keeping his options open since speculation began? — and nothing has happened that makes a Miliband bid look less auspicious than it did at the outset. Indeed the Chancellor’s star is falling. If Mr Miliband doesn’t go for it now he’s a wimp — a no-show who, after a braver soul like John Hutton had gone to his political death in a doomed but heroic challenge to Mr Brown, and after Brown had lost the next general election, would find that the spotlight had moved away from the ones who didn’t dare. The Labour party would then be in a state of internal strife and looking for a unifying figure. My guess is that in the event that Brown did not stay on as leader, someone like Hilary Benn would be the choice.
So this is Miliband’s moment, and there’s a good chance he will seize it. Let’s assume he does so, in a few weeks’ time, after the May elections. How should his campaign for the leadership be conducted? I dare say he needs no advice from me, and some of what follows will be obvious to him; but it may not be obvious to the advance-guard of his supporters. For the advice is that he should spurn them.
On no account should David Miliband allow himself to be presented as the heir to Blair. He should run as the ‘we screwed up’ challenger. He should make clear that if more of the same is what Labour wants, then Brown’s their man.
This will be a wrench. It will be painful to Mr Blair. It may seem ungrateful to Miliband’s early and bravest supporters. But the two most dangerous criticisms that will be made of a Miliband bid for the leadership are, first, that he is a junior Cabinet minister with no experience of leading a political party, let alone a government; and second, that after the past ten years the last thing Labour needs is another so-called moderniser on the right of the party, still mouthing Blairite pieties, and seemingly unaware how badly things have gone wrong.
About the first criticism (that he is young and inexperienced) there is nothing Mr Miliband can do. It is the more important, therefore, that he anticipates and sharply corrects the second charge: that he is a post-Blair spear-carrier for Blairism. Here Miliband’s youth and innocence count in his favour, freeing him from too long or close an association with the story so far. He should trade on this.
The more so because to present himself as the candidate for change implicitly draws attention to the gravest of Gordon Brown’s weaknesses. The Chancellor and his friends have been (fitfully) given to hinting that none of the last decade has been anything to do with Mr Brown; that he has swallowed doubt after doubt; but that it will all be different once he’s in the driving seat. This is contemptible. He has been Chancellor throughout; he has had the keys to the cashregister. He has been able to exercise an effective veto on economic policy. If things have not gone as Labour has hoped, it is far too late for Mr Brown to distance himself from the conduct of the government of which he has been virtually co-leader. To suggest that there are any core policies of which he has deeply disapproved is to paint himself as at best feeble, at worst cowardly. Brown must choose his story: either that he has taken a back seat these last ten years, or that he shoulders responsibility for what has happened. The Chancellor’s preferred language — of ‘renewal’ — attempts a fudge between continuity and change. The fudge is unconvincing.
Miliband is luckier. He has not been in the Cabinet for long. He was not a foundermember of The Project. He does not need to be seen as part of the Byers-MilburnClarke-Mandelson gang — indeed he should not be seen at all with such men. They for their part need the humility and self-control to keep their distance, avoid patronising him, and withhold any conspicuous public approval of his candidature. Their touch can only poison him. Their wing of the party will vote for anyone but Gordon anyway.
The elements Mr Miliband needs to woo — both in the Parliamentary Labour Party and in the trades unions and among the grass roots (for do not forget that each of these estates has a one third say in the final choice) — are those many who have lost confidence in Blair’s version of New Labour, but who are not greatly impressed by Gordon Brown. They are waiting to hear from someone who shares their dislike of the Iraq adventure, their doubts about Private Finance Initiatives and their misgivings about endless eye-catching initiatives and pandering to the populist media. This is not easy territory for the present Chancellor. Miliband needs to occupy it unapologetically.
That last term, ‘unapologetically’, is important. ‘All or nothing’ must be Miliband’s motto. A half-hearted campaign in which, at the last moment, a reluctant pugilist emerges, protesting his huge admiration for the frontrunner but venturing to suggest that it would be a nice idea if there was at least a contest, will be doomed. Bin the ‘contest-for-contest’s-sake’ pretence. The reason to stand against Brown has to be that one doesn’t think he’s the right choice.
On balance I suppose Miliband would be unwise to pick a personal fight with the Chancellor — perhaps it would be best simply to refuse to talk about his rival at all, insisting that it is his own claim he is there to stake — but audiences should be left with no doubt that he is convinced he’s the better man.
This, for sure, will be to risk all. But for a bid for the top job to look like an undeclared bid for the chancellorship in a Brown cabinet would risk securing neither. David Miliband must burn bridges behind him if Britain and the Labour party are to believe the only honest basis for a challenge: that the present Chancellor is unsuited to lead the Labour party back from defeat.
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