Jayne Dowle: Miliband has last chance to convince a nation

THIS is no time for hesitation. Ed Miliband needs to deliver the conference speech of his life. Tomorrow, he must summon up every single cell of conviction in his soul and tell us why he is qualified to run the country. If he fails to impress, he might as well pack up his little pull-along suitcase and head back to North London. Permanently.

The bars of Brighton will be full of conspirators this week. As they stir and spin, the Labour leader must accept that this time he really is drinking in the last chance saloon.

Does it matter what those conspirators say though? Politicos are paid to plot. The revelations about Gordon Brown’s friends and enemies in the new book by spin doctor Damian McBride prove that. Meanwhile, they forget that most of us don’t much care whose side anyone is on in the murky middle of a political party. Indeed, some of us wouldn’t even recognise individual politicians if they magically materialised in front of us in a bus queue.

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What none of us must forget though is that it is we who wield the power at the ballot box. We deserve leaders who can lead us. We deserve to know that our economy will prosper, our health service is safe, our children will be educated and that our country will be as secure as it possibly can be.

Is it too much to ask from a potential Prime Minister to convince us that he has all of the above covered? That there is a crack team behind him poised
and ready to deliver on those promises? I do wonder whether Ed Miliband has somehow forgotten such fundamentals.

Off the top of my head, I couldn’t 
tell you his view on how the NHS 
should be funded. I can’t readily bring to mind whether he thinks SATs tests for seven-year-olds are a good idea, a bad idea or just something he hasn’t quite got round to formulating a theory on yet. I don’t actually know how much he wants Britain to remain part of the European Union.

Perhaps he has told us his view on all these issues. But if he has, I can’t remember what he said without resorting to Google to check. This is not good. I should know. With just 18 months to go before a General Election we should all know, or at least be able to make an informed assumption.

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Watching him deliver a speech reminds me of being taught by my idealistic, left-leaning geography teacher. He talks a lot, points excitedly to stuff on a map, but when it comes to the complexities of putting across a difficult subject he simply cannot get the salient facts to stick.

When I talk to Miliband’s most loyal Labour Party followers, they assure me it’s all under control. They tell me to be patient, mention the “policy review” and point out that, such is the scale of Britain’s problems, the Opposition needs time and serious consideration to formulate its response. This I can accept. To a point.

Miliband has been in charge of his party for more than three years now. Potential voters need more from him than a principled stand on Syria and a clumsy approach to trade union reform which has probably caused more harm than good. What we don’t need – and I sincerely hope this isn’t what we’re in for tomorrow – are a series of knee-jerk reactions masquerading as a proper political philosophy.

I don’t much care, for instance, whether Labour in power would chuck every tipsy teenager falling over in the street into a drunk tank. Should Mr Miliband propose to put them all in the stocks and bombard them with rotten tomatoes, so what? Sure, it would be useful to have a steer on how tough a Labour government would be on anti-social behaviour, but I want it to be authentic. I don’t want every pronouncement to be a defensive rear-guard action against something someone else has said just to seize a few headlines.

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That kind of approach is entirely self-defeating. It sets no new agenda. It ignites no fresh fire in those who 
might vote for the first time or switch their allegiance. Being constantly on the back foot makes the Labour leader
look weak, and by association it weakens his Shadow Cabinet and his party too.

Whatever your political leanings, you have to agree that this does the country no favours whatsoever. He must take the fight to his foes, rather than reeling from blow after blow.

We deserve not only leaders who 
can lead, but debate that leads somewhere, honest challenges laid down in the open and a democracy that flourishes.

Otherwise there is no point in politics and there is certainly no point in party political conferences.

Tomorrow, it is Ed Miliband’s last chance to prove that there is.