Kath Raymond Hinton

Suddenly, belatedly, Labour is panicking. It’s about time.
An outburst of openness might be just what’s needed to jolt a faltering Opposition back on to the tracks
Uncritical silence is its own form of disloyalty.
Ed Miliband, a truly clever but still unsteady leader, will be nourished by unblinking candour, not by flattery. And certainly not by the bad-tempered, corrosive backroom chatter of recent months.
Light on hard policy, shadow ministers and backbenchers alike have struggled to define Miliband’s leadership and what Labour – post-Blair, post-Brown – stands for.
Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ mantra doesn’t cut it as a slogan, let alone as a narrative. And of the handful of policies seemingly in place – on schools, welfare and immigration – many sound incoherent and look ill-considered.
This, combined with a “deafening silence” from shadow ministers – as Labour MP Graham Stringer put it yesterday – and a soft and shortened lead in the opinion polls, has created a maelstrom of anxiety.
The private angst first went public ten days ago when Leeds East MP George Mudie complained that he didn’t really understand his own party’s policies. At the weekend, bigger guns stepped in.
It might have been easy enough for Miliband to shrug off former party fund-raiser Michael Levy’s criticisms in The Daily Telegraph, but it’s harder to dismiss shadow health minister Andy Burnham. He told The Guardian that unless Labour comes up with bold policies by next spring, it would run out of time to regain public support.
It’s not that Miliband’s ideology isn’t well considered or that it’s even wrong. In some respects, he’s probably the cleverest leader Labour has had in a generation.
At times, he has seemed to adopt that famous Napoleonic approach: never interrupt your enemy when he’s making mistakes. But this has become inoperable. Cameron hasn’t looked this good since the first months of the Coalition.
Simply chucking rocks from the back is a perfectly sound strategy during the early years of Opposition. Bashing the posh Tory boys and girls and the “elites” of Britain is fun, but cheap class-war tactics don’t work for long in the 21st century; people have far more important things to worry about.
Miliband needs now to shape the party properly. Despairing supporters and wavering voters need to understand that Labour is a much better choice than this fractious, phony Coalition.
Britain’s biggest problems dwell on the doorsteps of Labour MPs. They can see in their neighborhoods the impact of unemployment, poor healthcare, crime, housing shortages, and deteriorating schools.
But not only must Labour demonstrate that it can and will tackle these issues in government, it urgently needs to reconnect with the middle-class anxieties it understood so well back in 1997.
After months of pent-up anxiety Labour is at a cross roads – yet again. It can succumb either to a mood of defeatism, or be possessed by a renewed determination. The question now is which will it be.
Can Ed Miliband turn things around in just 21 months? I hope so. I think so. I can see Labour winning a majority and him as Prime Minister. But only if I narrow my eyes and squint really hard. He could be brilliant, but he really does need to get a move on.