Ed Miliband must be dropped for Labour to stand a chance

LEADERS of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition have to put up with all sorts of indignities, but John Humphrys's insinuation last week that Ed Miliband's looks might hamper his hopes of becoming prime minister must take the biscuit.
 
As it happens, Miliband's appearance is by no means his weakest card. According to a YouGov poll in The Sunday Times, only one in ten voters believes he is too ugly for the job. His real problem is that 70 per cent think he does not look or sound like a prime minister.

Last week I discussed this with a leading pollster who was adamant that, whatever Miliband does, it is an impression that he is stuck with. The Labour leader has had his successes, notably his attacks on New International and "predatory" capitalism. But the public, the pollster explained, pay far less attention to the ups and downs of politics than politicians suppose.

As both William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith discovered when they were opposition leaders, if you cannot persuade the voters within your first few months that you are prime ministerial material, you never will.
 
So would Labour be in with a chance, I ventured, if it dumped Miliband? That, the pollster replied, depended on what the party did about its economic policies. Asked who they blame for the financial crisis, voters list first the bankers, followed by Labour for borrowing and spending too freely in the good times. Some way further down comes the euro and finally, trailing in fourth place, the coalition's cuts and deficit reduction programme.
 
Labour can only hope to move on if it is prepared to acknowledge that it got things wrong when it was in power. Both Miliband and his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, did finally accept at the weekend that the party cannot promise to reverse the current government's fiscal squeeze. But while that was a step in the right direction, they are still a long way from really facing up to past errors.

If all this sounds bleak for Labour, it is. But it is easy to forget that, following the formation of the coalition, it has picked up probably half the Lib Dem vote, giving it a steady 40 or so per cent in the polls. Even with Miliband as leader, this puts it either level-pegging with the Tories or slightly ahead.
 
It is also by no means impossible that Labour might change its leader - and its shadow chancellor, too. Under the coalition's new Fixed Term Parliament Act, the next election, barring a big political accident, will not be until May 2015, so time is on its side. In theory, the party could move to replace Miliband in 2013, and still have two years to bed a new team in.

I say in theory, because at this point family considerations come into play. Bizarrely, the two front-runners to succeed Miliband are either his own brother David, whom he famously elbowed aside to become leader, or Yvette Cooper, who also happens to be Mrs Ed Balls.
 
Faced with these Shakespearean complications, perhaps the best thing Labour could do is not have a leader at all while its two leading families sort themselves out. Since that is not an option, the next best would seem to be to stick with the leader it has for a year or two, and use the space to look for someone credible who is neither a Balls nor a Miliband.

Rachel Reeves, Ed Ball's deputy, is often mentioned as a future leader, as is the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna. But they have only been MPs since the last election, so for both it is early days.

In the meantime, the dark horse might yet turn out to be Alistair Darling. This may sound counter-intuitive, given that he was Gordon Brown's chancellor. Unlike Ed Balls, however, Darling urged that spending be reined back before the last election, and was one of the ministers to emerge from the ruins of the Brown era with his reputation intact. He now looks likely to play a key role in the No campaign in the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence.
 
Darling did not want the leader's job last time round. But he will only be 61 in May 2015 and he might be tempted, particularly if Labour is still at 40 per cent in the polls. Once he has seen off Alex Salmond and saved the union, Darling could be just the man to give David Cameron a run for his money. ·