Steve Richards: Can Miliband Lead Like Thatcher Did?
[Steve Richards has been The Independent’s chief political commentator since 2000.]
The election of a new leader can generate a sense of outward looking optimism in a party or introspective anxiety. So far Labour's weird and subdued conference looks inward.
Questions rage about the two brothers, the future of David and the suitability of Ed to meet the titanic demands ahead of him. Today in his first big speech as leader Miliband has the chance to guide his bewildered troops towards the wider electorate, voters that seek more from a party than the staging of another bizarre and sad psychodrama. One of the great clichés in political journalism is to suggest that a leader's conference speech is the most important in his or her life. In the case of Miliband today the cliché applies.
Some of the questions asked of the younger Miliband are absurd and easily addressed. Sneering Blairites and their allies in the media wonder whether Ed is Neil Kinnock who failed to win an election. Others suggest he is Labour's Iain Duncan Smith who did not even contest an election. Miliband will not be like either of them. In an otherwise unpredictable situation that is certain. He acquires the crown in a very different and more benevolent context.
Neil Kinnock had never experienced power when he became Labour leader. Government was a distant land, one he feared he would never reach. Already Miliband has more experience of power than most of the current cabinet, having been part of the Treasury team after 1997 that formed an alternative government to Blair's. He has been a cabinet minister. Power is not seen as impossibly elusive to those who have tasted it. Nor is Miliband the equivalent of a Tory leader after 1997 seeking to make a pitch against a landslide government. He leads in a hung parliament. The last Leader of the Opposition in a hung parliament was Margaret Thatcher. She won the 1979 election that followed...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
The election of a new leader can generate a sense of outward looking optimism in a party or introspective anxiety. So far Labour's weird and subdued conference looks inward.
Questions rage about the two brothers, the future of David and the suitability of Ed to meet the titanic demands ahead of him. Today in his first big speech as leader Miliband has the chance to guide his bewildered troops towards the wider electorate, voters that seek more from a party than the staging of another bizarre and sad psychodrama. One of the great clichés in political journalism is to suggest that a leader's conference speech is the most important in his or her life. In the case of Miliband today the cliché applies.
Some of the questions asked of the younger Miliband are absurd and easily addressed. Sneering Blairites and their allies in the media wonder whether Ed is Neil Kinnock who failed to win an election. Others suggest he is Labour's Iain Duncan Smith who did not even contest an election. Miliband will not be like either of them. In an otherwise unpredictable situation that is certain. He acquires the crown in a very different and more benevolent context.
Neil Kinnock had never experienced power when he became Labour leader. Government was a distant land, one he feared he would never reach. Already Miliband has more experience of power than most of the current cabinet, having been part of the Treasury team after 1997 that formed an alternative government to Blair's. He has been a cabinet minister. Power is not seen as impossibly elusive to those who have tasted it. Nor is Miliband the equivalent of a Tory leader after 1997 seeking to make a pitch against a landslide government. He leads in a hung parliament. The last Leader of the Opposition in a hung parliament was Margaret Thatcher. She won the 1979 election that followed...