Leaders: Ed Miliband’s milestone does him a power of good

BEFORE yesterday’s speech by Ed Miliband at the Labour conference, there were some in his party who were fearing the worst.

This, after all, was the politician widely ridiculed as “a geek”; a man supposedly with no popular touch; a man the polls suggest is not seen as prime ministerial material, and who lags behind David Cameron in terms of the public’s confidence in his ability to run the country.

Even with the bar set this low the speech – delivered without lectern or notes – was something of a revelation. There was a muscularity about the delivery and a clarity about the message that made this a milestone moment for Mr Miliband.

The next polls will tell if it has changed the public’s perception of him, but in the absence of that empirical evidence the judgment must be that he has answered many of his doubters.

The main message of the speech was perhaps predictable – what UK political leader’s speech this autumn will be complete without its mention of the spirit engendered by the London 
Olympics? But Mr Miliband spun from this a thread of argument to good political effect, contrasting the unifying effect of the Games with the divisiveness of much of the austerity programme deemed necessary by the Tory-led coalition to combat the recession.

In this context, George Osborne’s Budget decision to cut the 50p rate of tax for the very richest people in Britain was always going to be the gift that keeps on giving for Labour, and Mr Miliband milked it to the maximum.

There was only a passing reference to Scotland specifically. But the broader message – of Great Britain being at its best when its people work together with pride and confidence – is one with a resonance for the independence debate. The word “solidarity” is 
a potent one to those on the 
centre-left of the political spectrum, and Mr Miliband’s insistence that Labour’s sense of solidarity does not stop at the Border is sure to be one of the touchstone messages of the No campaign in the months to come.

So too will the main theme of Mr Miliband’s speech – his audacious bid to steal the spirit of Disraeli’s “One Nation” vision from the “One Nation Tories” with whom it is most closely associated. The co-opting of Disraeli is highly unusual – the historical figures usually cited by Labour leaders are far more likely to be Keir Hardie, James Maxton or Nye Bevan. But Disraeli – another politician born of Jewish parents who sought to unite a country divided into haves and have-nots – was a choice that reached out beyond the Labour Party to the soft Tory vote that New Labour won in 1997.

It is far too early to be making predictions about Mr Miliband’s chances of seizing the premiership. Serious questions remain about Labour’s readiness for power, not least what real distinctiveness it can offer on the economy. But Mr Miliband yesterday did his chances a great deal of good.

Act of madness over celebrations

ANYONE who has juggled with three remote controls to try to watch their television, or tried to change the language of their new smartphone from Japanese back to English, will know that technology can be as much of a curse as it can be an asset.

But when computerisation means that someone reaching the ripe old age of 100 is denied the customary congratulatory visit from their local lord provost, or when the same time-

honoured courtesy is denied a couple celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary, then technology has ceased to become our slave and has become our master.

The problem, it seems, is that data protection laws prohibit the handing over of such information from the official registers. This is seen as a potential invasion of privacy, and a contravention of our right not to have our official records abused.

Such safeguards are entirely sensible and necessary in a digital age. But should they really be used to prevent a 100-year-old great-great-grandmother from receiving a bouquet of flowers from her city or town’s first citizen? This would be most regrettable. A curiosity of this story is that the same data protection laws do not seems to have an effect on the traditional message a centenarian receives from the Queen. Is this because the Queen has some special get-out clause buried in the Data Protection Act? Who knows.

What we do know is that a courtesy call from one’s local civic leader is – while a touch quaint – a tradition well worth carrying on.

And it would be a sad day indeed if it should come to an end because – to adapt a phrase from the Little Britain TV series – “the computer laws say no”.