Richard Heller: It’s time for some horse sense from the silent Mr Ed

That puts him one up on his namesake, now leading the Labour Party. Ed Miliband was lucky that Liberal Democrat disasters buried a mass of bad news for him on election night. He failed to convert or even interest his party on the Alternative Vote. He made almost no headway in England against the Tories. He lost Labour’s heartland in Scotland. This performance was achieved against a confused, bickering government after a year of deep economic pain. It was a penalty for leadership which has left the British people with almost no idea what he stands for. The present Government’s programme entails cuts in jobs, public services and living standards on a scale unknown in living memory. The British people deserve to hear an alternative. They are not getting it from the person they actually pay to provide it – the Leader of the Opposition.

Where does Ed Miliband stand on spending cuts? Or taxes? Or banking policy? Or welfare reform? Or education, crime, defence, foreign policy, pensions, the future of the NHS?

It may be unfair to expect him to offer detailed policy on all these issues. But people ought to know the principles he would apply to them and the objectives and interests he would try to advance. All of these are opaque.

Seven months into his leadership, it is a mystery why he actually wanted it. Ed Miliband ran against his own brother. No one takes such a decision lightly. What major issue divided them and made Ed decide – for the country’s sake – that he must beat David?

I hate to agree with Peter Mandelson, a very conceited person with a great deal to be modest about, but he was right to say that Ed Miliband never defined that issue in the leadership contest and no one is any the wiser now.

In his characteristic condescending style, Mandelson offers Ed Miliband tepid praise in a newly-written chapter of his memoirs. That says a lot. A strong leader would have induced Mandelson either to purr with content, or (preferably) to spit with rage. He would either have kept faith with New Labour or booted it into history’s well-filled dustbin.

To be fair to Ed Miliband, he genuinely wants to create a different agenda for his party and break free from the long-running battles between Old Labour and New. He has a guru to help him do this, but his choice is not encouraging. It is the newly-ennobled academic Maurice Glasman, who seeks to create a “Blue Labour” coalition around communal values of family, faith and flag. Religious politics are a scourge to any country, and the last thing any political leader should encourage. Maurice Glasman has a lot to say about relationships and communities, and some genuine campaigning achievements, but his Blue Labour project has so far offered no economic agenda.

In these hard times, voters simply do not need another politician babbling bromides about family and flag. They have heard these a million times over, and they have long ago stopped believing them or even listening to them.

Ed Miliband has forgotten the first job of an opposition leader – to be interesting. Harold Wilson and Tony Blair did this brilliantly as Labour leaders in opposition.

They commanded attention from voters, which is more important than popularity. Mrs Thatcher was never popular as opposition leader: she was consistently outpolled by Labour’s Prime Minister Jim Callaghan. But she got voters’ attention, and she made them believe that there was another way to govern the country.

Ed Miliband has still got time to do this but not much. He needs to show that he has better proposals for handling immediate issues than David Cameron and Nick Clegg. So far these have been few and far-between. He did offer an idea before the Budget but it was a really bad one: taxing bank bonuses to fund jobs and housebuilding. This repeats a basic error of New Labour in office – relying on speculative profits in the financial sector to pay for essential public spending.

Apart from better instant ideas, he also needs to present some long-term vision of how this country can make a decent living for all its people. We can no longer depend on the uncontrolled greed of the financial sector to power a successful economy, but there is no alternative on offer from this government – or from “Blue Labour.” Has Ed Miliband got a better idea? Without it his leadership is in real trouble.

It is bad enough for Labour to imagine that they might have chosen another Miliband. It is even worse for them to think that they might be better off with another Mr Ed.

* Richard Heller was an adviser to Denis healey.