The sight and sound of Miliband Minor in Prime Ministers Questions today urging the Government to abandon its "cuts" or defecit reduction programme in favour of Labour's tried and failed borrow and spend policy of buying growth at the cost of burgeoning long term debt and interest payments was a wonder to behold.
Only eight months ago the two Eds, both members of Gordon Brown's famously profligate government followed their master after his final walk down Downing Street. He had a plane to catch to Scotland. Unfortunately they are both London based and had no planes to catch so are still there and in business even if seated on the opposite side of the house. Both appear to be in a state of deep denial that anything other than bankers misbehaving was awry and that the structural defecit which started to build from 2000 onwards was anything to do with Labour,- and notably their own,- policies.
The effect of the spending reductions, VAT increases and reduction in civil service and council staff numbers has only just begun. It was bound to bring an initial period of inflation and no or even negative growth before the economy adjusted and bottomed out. There will be many more months of gloomy figures before a real recovery starts and during this time we can expect the two Eds to continue to howl the same message to the moon.
For their part, the coalition have extraordinarily so far omitted to spell out the basic philosophy (a smaller State) from which their vision flows. Unlike any sensible business embarking on a major change programme ,they have failed to paint in bold, clear,and simple terms how they intend to get from the current state left behind by Labour to the new one or even what the new one really is. How can they the expect people to buy the concept and be prepared to take the short term pain involved? It is a major failure of understanding of how to treat an adult electorate whose trust in politics and politicians is low. It also leaves the Opposition with easy targets.
The shouting from the Labour benches is likely to increase in both volume and frequency now Ed Balls is installed in Number 11. Miliband knows Balls is naturally and aggressively noisy and is likely to fear being overshadowed and appearing weak if he takes a more considered and less high profile approach. Sensibly Miliband would let Balls blow himself out but that would require a lot of confident maturity which he does not appear to have. The new neighbour will worry him and is likely to make him wobble and engage in rowdy street fighting based on denial rather than face the reality of the mess they left behind so recently. The next General Election is most probably four years away and there is no urgency to quickly get back into short term sound and fury on every issue.The Labour Party needs to genuinely reflect and rebuild itself brick by brick and figure out a new future and how to escape rather than return to its union paymasters. Until they come to the same conclusion the rest of us have to put up with the noise while they head back to their seriously outdated roots. It's getting tedious already.
