Can Britain learn to love Ed Miliband?

Seven out of ten people think the Labour Party are not fit for government. This week pressure is growing on their leader to persuade us they are

It has been a curious first year for the Labour leader who pulled off the political shock of 2010 by beating his elder brother David in the race to succeed Gordon Brown.

At first glance, things are looking OK. Labour heads the Conservatives in the polls. Miliband has had a good summer, especially over the phone hacking scandal, when he led the pack in chasing down Rupert Murdoch’s News International. Meanwhile, he has in his sights an unpopular coalition government imposing the kind of cuts on public services never seen in years. Eight out of ten people think the economy is going down the pan. Prior to last year’s general election, Bank of England governor Mervyn King reputedly told a friend that whoever won it would then “be out of power for a whole generation”. On that thesis, Miliband can sit back and wait for power to come.

If only it were so simple. Disgruntled voters are not leaping out of the Coalition’s arms and straight into Miliband’s. Far from it; they still blame Labour too for the state the country is in. And while Ed Miliband told his party last year that he “gets it”, it so far appears that the public does not get him; in the ‘best prime minister’ ratings, Miliband is currently 14 points behind David Cameron. “A f***ing disaster,” was the short assessment of one rebellious Labour MP last week when asked to sum up Miliband’s first year. Do enough voters yet envisage Ed Miliband on the steps of Downing Street, and gain reassurance at the thought? The clear answer is no.

Tony Blair’s former speech writer, Phil Collins, wrote wittily last week that so many different colours of Miliband had got mixed together – from Green Ed to Red Ed – that he has ended up looking a mushy brown, just like his former mentor. But while many have already written this week’s conference off as the kind of bore-fest Miliband himself lamented earlier this summer, the man himself is promising to make this the occasion when he finally nails his colours to the mast. Coming from a man who looks set to take Labour into the next general election, that makes it a significant occasion. Boring? Perhaps not.

Screw it, just do it, goes Richard Branson’s motto. And, in a slightly different way, so goes Ed Miliband’s own mantra this week. The phrase tripping off the tongue of shadow cabinet ministers and in pre-conference interviews from the leader himself this weekend is “ripping up the rule-book”. A lot of this talk builds on Miliband’s experience from the phone hacking saga in July, which is now taking on a Damascene level of importance for the Miliband project. It is largely forgotten now – although Miliband is now keen to remind people – that in the first few days of the scandal, after it emerged that the News of the World had been hacking into the phone of Milly Dowler, that Miliband stuck out his neck – insisting that News International’s chief executive Rebekah Wade should resign. This was not the “Done Thing” – after all, only weeks earlier Miliband had been enjoying Wade’s canapés at the firm’s summer get-together. In an interview with the New Statesman this weekend, Miliband describes the experience as “very instructive”. The News International hierarchy were “people whose power had never been challenged and who thought they were untouchable… that’s why you’ve got to rip up the rule book,” he added.

This conference comes at a tipping point in wider society, says the Miliband team. The economic crisis is shaking people’s fundamental belief that the country will continue to grow; the English riots having shaken people’s belief in society; and the expenses and hacking affairs have eroded trust in institutions still further. “There are moments in politics when the common sense of the time is up for grabs,” said Douglas Alexander yesterday. Labour also senses that they are beginning to get a foot back in the economic debate, with George Osborne’s fiscal plans coming under increasing pressure as global growth and instability goes on longer than expected. This all provides an opening for offering something completely different. And, bolstered by his experience with News International, Miliband appears to be keen to start shooting from the hip. The Established Order is in his sights.

Miliband’s argument this week will be along the lines that old-fashioned British values of responsibility, fairness and decency are no longer being rewarded; and that the established economic order is ripping the country off, leading to greater inequality, and making life even tougher for the “squeezed middle”. This is highly influenced by the so-called “Blue Labour” movement, defined by Labour peer Lord Glasman, which harks back to a nostalgic social order as a way to combat the rampant economic liberalism that has dominated politics for the last 30 years. A clear steer of the new way of thinking came in an influential article last week by Jon Trickett, Miliband’s shadow cabinet minister. “For too long, our economy has been run in a way that doesn’t reflect these decent British values or reward the people who uphold them,” Trickett noted. He went on to list several targets: the banks and financial institutions (obviously), but also the six power companies which dominate the energy sector, and supermarkets like Tesco which, he declared “threaten” local shops and the cohesion of local communities. Miliband can be expected this week to take forward this communitarian tirade against the “big battalions”. Yesterday, the party briefed on two specific targets. Labour will attack rail companies for “rigging” price rises, and will argue for such firms to be disqualified from renewing their franchises if they don’t stop. Miliband will also lay into the energy firms, demanding that they pool their energy centrally, in a move he claims will cut bills for 80 per cent of homes. This isn’t, Miliband insists, an attack on business per se; in a significant speech earlier this summer, he told entrepreneurs and business people who deserve top salaries “I’m not just relaxed about you getting rich, I applaud you”. Rather, Miliband has in his sights cosy corporatism and ‘vested interests’. Just to show he isn’t attacking business alone, Miliband balanced out his attack on the irresponsibility of bankers earlier this summer with a critique of irresponsibility in the benefits system. “We need to take on some of the powerful vested interests in our country,” he writes this weekend.

So much for the analysis, what about the hard detail though? That quote comes from a foreword Miliband writes in a new book published this week at conference entitled The Purple Book. Contributors include modernisers in the party such as Liam Byrne, Douglas Alexander, Alan Milburn, Andrew Adonis and Tessa Jowell. The title is a nod to the Orange Book published by reformers in the Lib Dems a few years ago. Policies being put forward include support for devolving more power from Whitehall, bringing in new providers where schools are thought to be failing, giving parents the choice to move their children to other schools, and support for allocating social housing on the basis of rewarding good tenants. “All Tory ideas,” hit out left-winger Michael Meacher on Friday. Will Miliband back these post-Blairite ideas? Where exactly does he stand? Nick Clegg last week issued a fierce attack on Miliband himself being in hock to the party’s union interests. It was the unions, after all, which backed Ed Miliband last year, pushing him ahead of his brother David. And yet, earlier this month, Miliband was heckled at the TUC conference. Furthermore, he refuses at present to say whether he would back the likely strike by public sector workers planned for 30 November on the grounds it is still “hypothetical”. Pulled one way by his party’s interests and another by fears he could get labelled, potentially fatally, as “Red Ed”, Miliband lacks definition. A poll yesterday found that only 5 per cent consider him to be a natural leader. Seven out of ten people meanwhile think his party is not fit for government. The pressure is on Miliband to show what he is about this week.

The crucial issue remains the economy. Party strategists such as Alexander say the party needs to first explain what it got wrong and what it got right in handling the economic crash. Then it needs to explain more about how to get the economy growing. And then, it needs to explain how Labour can deliver its programme at a time when everyone knows that the money isn’t there any more. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls yesterday made a none-too-subtle dig at unions who “according to their placards, would like us to stop all the cuts”. Balls will drive home the case this week for tackling the deficit in a “balanced way” and for getting growth going. Somehow Miliband has to convince the public that, despite the rhetoric from Messers Clegg and Cameron, There Is An Alternative.

“This week isn’t about Ed’s leadership,” says one close colleague. And despite a bumpy patch in the spring, it does seem that Miliband’s effective summer outing on the hacking scandal has ensured that the conference this week will not be the usual “make or break”. Instead, this week looks like the moment when Miliband will get the chance to tell the British public exactly what kind of prime minister he hopes to be.