Bernard Ingham: Come on Mr Miliband, it’s time to see your conviction

Those of you who keep abreast of today’s news know what another political leader – Ed Miliband – has to endure. Almost daily he is given unflattering public advice by Labour MPs old and new on what he should be doing. It never seems to occur to them just to tell it to him face to face. And nobody not born yesterday will be taken in by the claim by Peter Hain and John Denham, in throwing in their two penn’orth, that all the signs point to Miliband becoming Prime Minister. If the omens are so propitious, why intervene? In short, loyalty is in short supply in politics. Only a masochist would become a party leader.

It is a great pity that Labour did not take its cue from Miliband and shut up for the holiday. The Tories may have been hyperactive, even to the point of David Cameron stripping on the beach to reveal his bulges, but they have not said much. They are preoccupied with lights, camera, action – any old action however lacking in substance.

Which brings me to Ed Miliband’s problems – and opportunity. For the last 34 years British politics have been in a profound state of turmoil. The culprit is – or was – Margaret Thatcher. She smashed Clement Attlee’s post-war pale pink political consensus that put a suicidal trade union movement in the driving seat, though the CBI and Government were also supposed to have a tripartite hand on the wheel.

Her impact was so great that first John Smith, then Neil Kinnock and finally Tony Blair had to fight hard to save their party from the loony Left and make it electable again. When they did, they highlighted the Tories’ political bankruptcy after 18 years in office with a swift succession of four leaders – William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard and Cameron.

The party became pre-occupied with being “nice” instead of purposefully for Britain and its people. It is still pretty mixed up, even if parts of it are working in the national interest – for-example on education, welfare reform, curbing immigration and crime, finding a way for the NHS to cope and eventually putting Europe to the test.

But there is no over-arching philosophy – still less passion – that enabled Thatcher to convert millions to her essentially patriotic cause. In these circumstances, Miliband has a wonderful opportunity in the next 20 months. Can he develop a so far unsuspected passion for policies that appeal to the electors and make the Tories, however well-meaning, look bland?

Any betting man would look at the odds and walk away. After all, Miliband is a creature of the trade unions and, worse still, of Unite, which, given half a chance, would take him back to loony tunes.

He is all over the show about Labour’s legacy of a £156bn budget deficit and the future conduct of the economy and has that arch-liability, Ed Balls, around his neck as Shadow Chancellor.

He seems incapable of facing up to the social and economic consequences of Labour’s opening up our borders to immigrants and is at the moment running a mile from endorsing a referendum on Britain’s EU membership.

All this – and a party probably as split as the Tories on many issues – is not exactly what a new Prime Minister is made of in 2015. He has also had three years to sort himself out with frustratingly little effect. Hence the rush of his supposed supporters into critical print.

But it is not too late for an inspired big man to rise above all this and point the nation to disciplined self-government aimed at securing steady growth, rising prosperity, public services that should be an example to the world and an affordable view of a cautious global role in which ambition is tempered by the British national interest.

This means that the coming month, with the TUC and Labour Party conferences, is Ed Miliband’s big test. Either he surprises us all or he writes off his chances of entering No 10.

Margaret Thatcher showed what conviction can do for you. So, come on, Ed, show us some 
of yours.