TUC test for Labour leader

The TUC conference starting today, however, could hardly come at a worse time for the Labour leader. With his party’s anti-austerity rhetoric looking increasingly irrelevant in the face of economic recovery, Labour’s poll lead swiftly vanishing and senior figures questioning his leadership, Mr Miliband is now heading for a bruising confrontation with the unions whose votes propelled him into office three years ago.

Following the Falkirk fiasco, in which claims surfaced that Unite, Labour’s biggest union donor, tried to rig the selection of a parliamentary candidate, Mr Miliband is now facing claims of a cover-up after refusing to publish the report of a party investigation into the affair.

He insists, however, that he will persist with plans to loosen Labour’s ties with the unions despite the response of the GMB which announced last week that it would cut its donations to Labour by more than £1m.

Facing a rebellion by his party’s paymasters, then, as well as an increasing number of strike threats, Mr Miliband will step into the lions’ den tomorrow when he makes his speech to the TUC.

It is hard to escape the impression that Mr Miliband’s leadership is entering a defining period. Stand up to the unions, face down the strikes and press ahead with ending Labour’s union dependency and it will be impossible ever again to advance the charge that he is a weak leader. Fumble this confrontation, however, and it is likely that the 2015 election will become Mr Cameron’s to lose.

It is ironic that the trade unions, so desperate for a pliant Labour government, are doing everything possible to scupper that scenario. But, then again, they have rarely behaved otherwise.

Of course, a decisive victory over the unions would not provide automatic entry to Downing Street for a Labour leader who still lacks a coherent message for the wider electorate. But it would be a signal, at long last, that Mr Miliband’s leadership is not without purpose.

Make the case

TO his “unholy alliance” of high-speed rail sceptics, David Cameron can now add the Commons Public Accounts Committee
which accuses the Government today of failing to make a convincing case for HS2.

According to the MPs, the arguments for high-speed rail are based on outdated information and wrong assumptions with no evidence that it would aid regional economies rather than merely boost business in London.

The attacks on HS2 are now coming at such a pace that, unless the Government starts to make its case far more effectively, the project will wither on the vine and all commuters to London from the North will be driven “bloody crackers” by delays and cancellations – to quote Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin – for decades to come.

For the advantage of HS2, as Mr McLoughlin said yesterday, is not merely the sharp decrease in journey times, it is the huge 
increase in track capacity on the rest of the rail network that would result from construction of a new line.

The problem with the Government now starting to emphasise this, however, is that it makes Ministers look shifty, as if they have been defeated over the issue of journey times and have now dreamed up a different justification for HS2, as various opponents have already claimed.

Yet, in reality, both arguments are valid and both must continue to be pressed.

There is an abundance of evidence to show that the increase in journey times would bring real benefits to Yorkshire, effectively rebalancing a national economy that has become dangerously tilted towards London.

But HS2 is also essential
for the future of rail transport in this country, freeing up capacity for passengers and freight alike as the railways buckle under the present unprecedented demand and the delays of which Mr McLoughlin complains become steadily worse.

This is a clear, twin-track case for HS2 which is there to be made. It is now up to Ministers to go out and make it.

2020 vision

T WAS said to be too close to call, but in the end Tokyo was the clear winner of the right to host the 2020 Olympics.

The economic and security concerns that came with the Madrid and Istanbul bids have resulted in the International Olympic Committee plumping for the safe pair of hands of a nation with a track record of successfully hosting the big occasion.

With the Tokyo bid’s success carrying clear echoes of London 2012, not least in the way that the support of the Japanese people proved crucial, the hope now is that Tokyo – and, of course, Rio de Janeiro 2016 – can match the success of the London Games, not least in the success of Yorkshire athletes, the next generation of whom are now preparing to mount the world stage.