Ed Miliband goes from oddball to potential favourite as next PM

Δημοσιεύθηκε: 5 Μαΐου 2015 - 15:19

Gone are the twang and the goofy smile. Gone too is the trudge around the stage. The stance is wider, the gaze is firmer and the once staccato speech is no longer frightened by applause. Leaning on the lectern, he looks like the guy at the bar who knows he will be served next. He urges: "Change doesn't simply happen from politics. Change happens because people demand it". Who is this man and what has he done with Ed Miliband?

Cocooned in the serene confidence that comes with profound self-belief, Mr Miliband has surprised supporters and critics with his steeliness. Although the polls remain inconclusive, his personal ratings have recovered from their dire lows of months ago. Labour activists have started to mention his name on the doorstep, whereas David Cameron now merely refers to "my opponent". On social media #Milifandom has turned him into (almost) a paragon of geek cool. As the campaign has staggered on, the Labour leader, often considered aloof, has taken the abstract and made it concrete.

Here in Brighton the crowd responds fervently to his call to do all they can to put him in Number 10.

One of the 45-year-old's favourite books is Varieties of Capitalism, a series of essays that fired his conviction that Britain is a latent social democracy and that he can be a transformative politician in the mould of Attlee or Thatcher. Since his election, his opponents have offered Varieties of Miliband: awkward oddball, fratricidal operative and dangerous leftwinger. Now there is a new variety: some bookies' favourite to be the next prime minister.

If Mr Miliband were to enter Downing Street after Thursday's general election - and any tacit agreement with the SNP - it would mark an improbable rise. He won fewer member votes than his brother, David, in the Labour leadership election in 2010 (winning due to trade union ballots) and if polls prove accurate, his party will win fewer votes on Thursday than Mr Cameron's Conservatives. Less than a year ago he survived a possible coup. For most of his tenure, his approval ratings have been at record lows for an opposition leader.

Public difficulties have often reflected private doubts. Officials worry about his tendency to dwell on issues. Others about his occasional failures to empathise. Audiences from big companies often complain about lacklustre responses and of a failure to understand them.

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>Mr Miliband and the tight group of advisers with whom he surrounds himself says that he would have made it partly because of these challenges, rather than in spite of them. They add that his restraint and kindness are rarities among peacocking politicians. In the final days of the election, at stage-managed events to sympathetic audiences, the Labour leader has pitched himself as something unique in this age of postmodern cynicism: a thoroughly modern candidate who believes in the power of politics. In front of 2,000 community activists at the Citizens UK assembly in London on Monday, he breaks into a vibrant account of his "faith", telling the assembled crowd in his peroration that "your cause is my cause, your fight is my fight, your struggle is my struggle, your vision is my vision."

At times it looks as if Ed Miliband is the only person in Britain enjoying this election. The country is fractious, insular and knowingly cynical. But for a true believer in not only himself but also the healing potential of politics, the Labour leader is in a kind of stage-managed heaven. In speeches he addresses the audience as "friends", a message of solidarity which also reveals how the crowd is usually curated and sympathetic. It is easier to feel elated about politics when everyone you speak to agrees with your message.

Come Friday morning, if the parliamentary mathematics is ambiguous, this could prove a problem for the Labour leader. A lot has been asked of Mr Miliband but has he asked a lot of his party? In front of the audience in Brighton his exhortations to save the National Health Service, which Labour sees as one of the party's gifts to the nation, from imminent "privatisation" and "fragmentation", gees up activists already brimming with vim. But their energy is also a reminder that Mr Miliband has yet to win over perhaps two-thirds of voters.

For Mr Miliband is still some way from persuading the rest of the country that he can and should turn it leftward. He has united his party but unlike Tony Blair, much of whose legacy Mr Miliband rejects, the Labour leader has yet to persuade a broader constituency that he speaks for them, too. After the vote on Thursday he may find himself having to quickly make up for lost time.

Ed Miliband once said he was not a politician "from central casting". But after five weeks on the campaign trail - and some expensive coaching from advisers such as David Axelrod - he has the bearing of a prime minister. But looking prime ministerial and acting prime ministerial are not the same thing. If the vote on Thursday confirms that he needs others to govern, the biggest challenge for this unabashed lover of politics will have only just begun.

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