As monotonous as this has become it seems that another post on Miliband is necessary. I had assumed that Ali’s original post on the matter effectively said all that there was to say but it seems that even he disagreed with me. Because we must now not only write on the article itself, but the drama surrounding it.

Curiously though, the two seem almost entirely disconnected. For all the furore the actual article in question is modest: heavy on the praise of New Labour achievements and vicious towards Cameron instead of Brown. This is no offensive, overt or otherwise.

So why have things reached the stage where Miliband is being called an “Immature, self-serving traitor”? Why has the once vaguely hazy and mildly distant prospect of a leadership contest become suddenly sharp, immediate? Why is Denis MacShane salivating?

So far as I can tell this is part the obvious: desire amongst the media for a story as we enter silly season, desire of marginal MPs to preserve their careers through whatever means necessary (desperate thrashings made especially pathetic by their obvious collective uncertainty as to what path, if any, will lead them towards salvation) and basic knives-out for Brown motion from his enemies and knives-out for Miliband from Brown’s allies.

But there is, perhaps, something more here: the shock to the system of somebody actually staging a decent counter attack against the Tories leaving a distracting but significant aftermath. For despite all the non sequiturious blather surrounding it his piece was in fact related to the Tories and how Labour could defeat them, rather than Brown and why he should be deposed. Miliband’s suggestions consisted of emphasising Cameron’s nature (personally I find him more mindless opportunist than instinctive conservative, but his case is convincing), emphasising Labour successes (such as they are) and finding a new platform to keep mutation of the Labour brand ahead of Tory antibodies.

Of these three methods only the final truly relates to the leadership at all. But together the three constitute a fine list of suggestions for destroying the Tories electorally. As the aforelinked MacShane suggests it could simply be a matter of contrast between the implicitly poor Brown and the masterfully executed rallying cries of Miliband (one wonders whether Denis has an eye on a new cabinet position, if so he has almost certainly calculated wisely) but I would suggest that Miliband’s tone is part of a distinctive and winning form of political dialogue: assertive leftism.

More shall be written on this point later but for now suffice it to say that Miliband has marshaled this technique in a fashion which the dreary present leader of the Labour Party and the harridan misandrist who is apparently going to become his challenger are streets behind on. It is just a pity that his skill has led to an ironic cloud of purely Labour related dust. The Tories should not grow complacent, though: they have escaped unscathed for now; but his attacks on them and refusal to accept their subtle agenda-setting are bound to draw eyes towards their grimy underbelly soon enough.

David Miliband is still hogging all of the airwaves.  In a constructive article, he essentially slapped Brown in the face and declared himself to be ready to lead a regicidal coup in the Labour party.  I wrote about my Miliband hypothesis this morning, but refained from further comment throughout the day because I was aware of the fast-changing nature of the narrative.  Things look slightly clearer in tomorrow’s papers, and I am of the opinion that Harriet Harman could well be feeling pretty happy with herself.

During the day, it became clear that David Miliband had hastily cancelled a trip to India in a few weeks’ time.  To begin with, it looked as if he was clearing his diary for a leadership race through Conference season.  Then we were told that he would be using that time for meetings with Cabinet colleagues.  Tomorrow’s Times has “David Miliband ordered to cancel trip as Gordon Brown seeks to restore authority“.  In other words, Mr Miliband will probably no longer be the Foreign Secretary by the end of the month.

At this point, it is worth suggesting that Brown’s salvage strategy might not be disastrous.  Our esteemed Chancellor is almost as dreadful as his next-door neighbour, and Miliband cannot be demoted.  We can probably expect Miliband to be given the poisoned chalice of Number 11, while the Foreign Office brief could perhaps be returned to Jack Straw to shut him up for a while.  Who can say?  One thing is certain: if the Labour party heads into the Conference with some fresh blood in its main arteries, some life could be pumped back into the party machine.  It is not entirely inconceivable that, if policy-heavy speeches from promoted ministers with fresh brief go down well, Brown could use his keynote speech to tell his party to prepare for an election.  Vitality and bravery, stemming the loss of seats.  The Tories are still not prepared for office, and they have not earned their place in the opinion polls.  Miliband would keep clean, and try for leadership once the dust of defeat had settled.  Brown’s (5th? 6th?) fightback attempt might just be the most sensible strategy for the moment.

This hypothesising is good fun, but otherwise worthless.  Recent history suggests that Gordon Brown’s strategy, with his apparent decades of honing his political acumen, is less robust than my rambling thoughts.  Let us deal instead, then, with what we can be reasonably certain of.  Gordon Brown will not last beyond spring 2010, and a leadership race will occur some time in the next 18 months as a result.  David Miliband doubtless knows that he stands in a strong place to win, and has this week essentially begun his campaign.  But there will be “I’m not Miliband” candidates, and there will be “anyone but Miliband” voters.  James Forsyth, on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, has suggested that Harriet Harman appears to be everything Miliband is not.  It could be Harriet by September, he argues: a sobering thought indeed.  As one D. Miliband would say “in six months’ time, people will be saying ‘I don’t like Harman, let’s have that Brown back’” - he’s prescient like that.

Harriet Harman will be sitting pretty tonight.  She knows that she emerged from recent speculation about leadership ambitions far more positively than Miliband is managing.  She also knows that she can win the support of the Labour Party, and has her useful husband as a strong tie to the Unions.  Miliband has never been tested by a national party election process, and is comfortably distant from the Unions.  What is more, Harriet Harman is seen as a bit of a joke - a loose cannon; a bit of an embarrassment.  Should she try for leadership and lose, she would benefit from the fact that few people take her seriously to begin with.  But she has proved that she is a force to be reckoned with.

Quentin Letts had a sketch in the Daily Mail today outlining his view of a Harman premiership.  In it, he disgracefully employs every mysogonistic quip about women in government and parodies Harman as a total lightweight.  He paints a picture of Harman as a disgusting man-hating feminist, who has Andy Burnam as the only man in her cabinet because of his nice eyelashes.  It is a truly horrendous piece.  But it plays right into Harriet’s hands.  Remember her awful trying-to-be-a-joke-but-even-the-row-of-allies-on-the-front-bench-were-cringing comment at PMQs the other week?  Asked to consider herself as prime minister, her reaction was some misplaced jibe about there not being enough airports in the country for all of the men who would emigrate.  A perfect opportunity to allow the pubic the opportunity to picture her as PM and she tells them how men hate her because she is a feminist.  This is the image she wants to be portrayed!  He colleagues cringe because gender warfare, like the class warfare of Crewe and Nantwich, has no place in modern politics.  But she wants to bring it back with a vengeance, and she hopes that the grassroots Labour party will support her aims to resurrect it in the coming leadership contest.

Miliband is looking to government; to policy, strategy, and legislating.  Harman is looking to get herself elected leader.  One strategy can yield short-term gain, but spells long-term disaster (for a recent historical reference, consult Mr. G. Brown).  The other is a thoughtful, sensible and wise approach to party leadership: not just getting there, but doing something valuable with it.  It was Brown’s downfall, and it is guaranteed to be Harman’s.  She might be smiling now, like Brown was in summer last year, but six months into her leadership and the wheels will be well and truly off the Labour Party’s ailing wagon.

David Miliband’s article in the Guardian yesterday was a reasonable attempt to get the Labour party off the back foot. Since October last year, the narrative has been all Tory ascendancy and Labour distress. Miliband is of the gang of ministers ready to take New Labour - a ’90s philosophy - into the second decade of the 21st century. He honestly believes in what he proposes, and honestly disapproves of Conservative policy.

One senses a mild feeling of frustration from Miliband. Here he is, cometh the hour, etc, and Brown is sending Labour’s last chance for electoral success down the drain. Gordon Brown cannot talk about the future. He can tell us how he is “getting on with the job”, and is the “right man to get us through these difficult times”. He portrays himself as the man of the hour, forgetting, perhaps, that he created the circumstances he now believes he should get us out of. Miliband, on the other hand, has been largely untainted by back-room squabbles under both Blair’s leadership and Brown’s. Indeed, the mere fact that commentators are asking whether the Foreign Secretary has enough experience for the Premiership is evidence enough that he gets his head down and gets on with the job. Who was David Cameron before 2005? Miliband is no lightweight.

What interests me most, though, is that Miliband has tried to critique the Tories. He is confident that, in a genuine battle of ideas, Labour would win. For denying the opportunity to have such a battle, Gordon Brown is to blame. David Miliband is careful to spell out Labour’s future, but is right to contrast it with that of the Conservatives. Just read from his much-discussed but little-read article yesterday:

The Tories overclaim for what they are against because they don’t know what they are for. I disagreed with Margaret Thatcher, but at least it was clear what she stood for. She sat uncomfortably within the Tory party because she was a radical, not a conservative. She wanted change and was prepared to take unpopular decisions to achieve it.

The problem with David Cameron is the reverse. His problem is he is a conservative, not a radical. He doesn’t share a restlessness for change. He may be likable and sometimes hard to disagree with, but he is empty. He is a politician of the status quo — even a status quo he consistently voted against — not change.

Find me a floating voter who does not agree with that. Miliband took some stick for writing an article about Labour’s future, but somebody had to start discussing it before it is too late. If the Labour party wants to salvage itself, policy strategists like Miliband should be ready to discuss policy strategy! Brown is as childish as he is selfish. If he will not resign, he should be deposed.

So, I ask, should the Tories be afraid of Miliband? If he were to become leader this autumn, and call a General Election within the month, he would send shockwaves through Westminster. But in the intense media storm of a snap election and new leader, he could push his policy and methods of government strongly. The Tories would be caught off-guard, and their flimsy policy would be open to as stringent study as is possible. Miliband would lose, certainly, but by small enough a margin to keep his role of leader for the coming Parliament, in which he would be a strong opponant to the limited Tory majority government. The Tory dream of a comfortable decade in power would be gone: they would be struggling five years down the line. The Tories should be very scared of this scenario. All that stands in its way is the fickleness of Gordon Brown’s unstable character.

“The Labour party never does mad things.”

David Miliband

Miliband makes me seem all prescient.

Not that this was what I was expecting. A seemingly non sequitorious reference to the admittedely influential expanding Indian and Chinese middle classes seems typical of him. He has clearly embraced his brief as foreign secretary. He has also demanded quite a substantial amount from the government, certainly more than it has delivered thus far and, as the article mentions, he has not stated that Brown is a figure the party is dependent upon.

No, Miliband desires that Labour find itself a new soul. This is crucial to his argument that Cameron can not defeat Labour fully: if Labour can alter itself away from New Labour, Miliband suggests, the Tories will remain one step behind. Of the two assessments of the situation I find his entirely superior to Harman’s. Miliband seems to recognise, or at least is the only member of the Labour Party willing to admit, that the damage done to his party is deep. Perhaps Harman is restricted through her forced smile after one smashing defeat after another became stuck (I always found it quite unkind how she was expected to do the PR mop-up on national television time and time again…) but she has expressed no concern as to Labour’s direction.

Miliband, meanwhile, is steets ahead of not only her but the rest of the Labour high rankers. In this article in April he outlined what he thought Labour had to become in order to surive: a creature distinct from its 2001 incarnation and instead on informed by radical liberals and social democrats, something which I found most pleasing seeing as these are my favourite forms of leftist in history. Perhaps as good he is conscious of the enormity of the task facing Britain if it is to do its part in averting environment catastrophe: what is required is not merely a shift in policy but an entirely new structure for the economy, in lieu of rampant engorgement on petrol.

Miliband’s vision is given a new urgency by the dire state that Labour has plunged into: now the party’s future effectively rests upon whether it can be convincingly and winningly realised. It would be a remarkable achievement were it accomplished, and I suspect that in private Miliband shares my severe doubt that Brown is the man to do as much. No, to implement the vision there is none better than the visionary.

Harman has joined the chorus in favour of Brown remaining in power, that consists most notably of Straw and Prescott. In other words, everyone that is important save Miliband. No major Labour MP has moved against Brown, with a pair of back-benchers speaking out in favour of him leaving but any movement against Brown seemingly having no leader and limited support. Not least because a less than negligible number of Labour MPs would lose their seats were present polls correct.

My prediction is that nothing will come of any plots that may be bubbling at present towards the end of deposing Brown. However, the political oblivion which faced the Labour Party will be even more difficult to avert with a lame duck seated as its leader. The best than can be hoped for is Brown somehow manages to turn around Labour’s fortune and that the next two years see an economic upturn little short of miraculous.

The recent policies announced by Brown were a good start: although they’ll doubtless agitate business, insisting as they do that they stop exploiting workers as thoroughly as they were once allowed to, they reduce the amount of ageism mildly (although not enough) and reduced some of the absurdity of PFI schemes in hospitals. More of this would be welcome and although it is almost certainly too late now that Brown is effectively free he can focus upon leaving a pleasing legacy behind him.

I don’t know whether this was intentional, but Brown remaining in power suddenly became far less appealing.

Brown is clearly at severe risk and when even some of the unions are baying for blood (or at least a Major style “Put up or shut up” confrontation). This is hardly surprising, but what has taken me aback is the pathos extracted from his weary, bloated face.

It is essential that we remind ourselves that this is the man who demanded the state be able to imprison the innocent for six weeks, who allied himself and bribed far-right foul bigots to ensure that the act was past, who demanded cannabis be declassified despite this directly disregarding the conclusions of a panel of experts reporting on the issue, who taxed the poor to give minuscule breaks to the moderately affluent, who now plans benefits reforms reminiscent of prison workforces and who has performed a plethora of other idiotic moves in his short reign.

Brown’s beleaguered state is richly deserved. His “Phantom Election” is much touted as his grandest folly but had the economy which he had been charged with for over a decade as Chancellor been kept in a better state the likelihood of the crash being as severe as the one we have actually experienced is small. Without the economic downturn Brown would be in a far better, perhaps even unassailable, position. Without his constant stream of policy that irks his natural base he would have held far stronger against the Tories than he has.

Brown has served as his own gravedigger.

But as for the alternatives? Cameron speaks sense in places but is about as worthy of trust with power as a ferret with a rabbit den. So far as can be determined none save the Blairites (Clarke & Co) are willing to step into the actual position of Prime Minister (and given the conditions surrounding that chalice can they be blamed?) At least one other writer for this blog agrees with me over backing Miliband to the hilt, but he has proven (understandably) wary of the prospect. It would take a politician of nothing short of Messianic proportions to redeem the Labour Party now.

But there can be only so much waiting: at the present rate of erosion it seems likely that there will be precious little Labour Party left to inherit for whoever takes over after Brown. If it were to be done then it would be better that it were done quickly. Each day which the present order remains in place appears to be another step by the Labour Party towards oblivion.

I’ve had to wait a few years for it but finally there’s another proper exchange between two of my favourite writers. Further to what I had to say on the matter they’ve both said their piece here and here. Riddled with reformism though it unforgivably is Seymour is easily the victor here. This is because Hari suffers from his usual, crippling flaw: rather than argue critically each point as it comes he constantly references his thoughts to the looming and increasingly inevitable prospect of what the Conservatives would do. So his view of Labour policy is only condemnatory to an extent sharply restrained by his disdain towards the Tories. This is a highly limiting constraint for any writer. Consider this:

In the Labour model, you will never be cut off, provided you are willing to work. In Wisconsin, you can only receive benefits for two years in your entire life, and every week you claim, the clock is ticking. Once you hit your two years, that’s it: your benefits are severed forever…In the Labour proposals, you don’t have to go to work until your youngest child is seven. In the Wisconsin model, you are forced to leave your baby at three months old.

This does indeed demonstrate that the Wisconsin system is horrific in terms of impact and folly to consider worthy of an introduction. But it is in no way a defence of the Labour system to say that it doesn’t go horribly awry in the way that the American model Cameron wishes to adopt would. A piece of public policy should not be doing such perverse things anyway and the fact that it doesn’t is what we should expect.

As I have said before what this policy amounts to is a low-cost version of social democracy, that has the unfortunate end result of a model more akin to prison earning than state employment. If this is the sort of relationship which wariness towards statism left unchecked leads to then we are left with scanty improvement on outright opposition to the welfare state. So long as you are willing to work as the near slaves of the government, runs the line, you shall continue to be granted state cash.

A perverse outcome, and what a pity that Hari’s binary vision has him so distracted with the outright hostility towards the poor on offer from the Tories that he can not witness the idiocy being planned and plotted by the present party of power.

As regular readers will know, we at Scribo Ergo Sum have taken the time to consider some of the potential future leaders of the Labour Party. David Milliband, of course, is often mooted as a strong candidate: he knows policy-making inside-out, and has an air of competence about him. I am of the opinion that James Purnell would be very good as a party leader: he has confidence and passion, but also an air of naturalness that makes him seem like a normal person, not a Westminster monster.

But, given recent headlines, what of Harriet Harman? She seems to have been conducting surveys of local party associations, and has been very well spoken of by colleagues. She was not really expected to win the deputy leadership contest (probably because she was Brown’s choice…) but she came through convincingly. She was denied a DPM job, but given at least half a dozen other responsibilities that have given her a hand in many different areas. She is Leader of the Commons, Minister for Women and Equality, Lord privy Seal, as well as being Labour’s deputy leader and party chair. Credit must be given where it is due - she has been reasonably successful in cementing her position and shaking off ridicule when necessary. She has proven herself in a recent election within the Labour Party - something Gordon Brown ensured he did not need to do.

Harriet Harman could conceivably be the next leader of the Labour Party. It seems as if she is planning for the opportunity, and is ready to jump when it emerges. She cannot be written off as punching above her weight: her position has strengthened since she became the holder of Labour’s highest elected position. Let’s not forget that Labour will choose its next leader, not the electorate.

To ask whether she would be any good, we must distinguish between Harman as the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Harman as First Lord of the Treasury.

Harman would be brilliant for Labour in opposition. A leader of the party base to try to gather the pieces from a humiliating defeat, and begin the road to recovery swiftly. A leader to challenge the new Tory administration without looking sour. A leader who never tried to become Prime Minister, but instead stood up to take the party forward in its first stint out of office for a dozen years. A leader who specialises in flimsy policy of the politically-correct sort that knocks the Tories off their feet. In four years, she could do what William Hague failed to do for the Tories and stem the bleeding from her beleaguered party. In 2010, when Brown loses the election, it is very difficult to see him returning to Parliament to ask questions of Cameron on a Wednesday afternoon: if he resigns his position immediately, and Harman becomes acting leader, she will be given the publicity to push her leadership bid like no other candidate. Milliband, Purnell et al can wait until government looks likely again: that is what they specialise in.

But Harriet Harman as Prime Minister? I cannot imagine a candidate I would less like to run the legislative agenda. She believes in “positive” discrimination, the the point of wanting all-woman shortlists for Parliamentary seats. She wants every citizen of the United Kingdom to own an identity card, to use them for traveling, purchasing goods and even for voting. She is the most big-government interventionist the Labour party has to offer: the last thing the country needs. She talks at the electorate, not with them, and has no idea what issues people actually feel are important. She has such a deep-rooted hatred of the Conservative party that any cross-party consensus would go out of the window. She does not debate her own policy, but slurs the Tories and misrepresents theirs. Of every possible candidate to take Number 10 from Brown, she is the single most loathsome choice. And it is a matter of deep concern that she seems a likely choice should the position become available.

In 2010, Harman is the dream choice for the Labour Party. Before then, she is this nation’s worst nightmare.