It made me giggle during the Labour leadership campaign that Ed Miliband’s offices were in the exact same building as the Cameron Campaign’s had been. Then he launched a bunch of policy groups to look at areas of policy rather than by department, with outside experts mingling with party figures. Then he said some things that – while entirely sensible – were not ‘traditional’ Labour things, and he made some surprising new noises about things that had been traditional Labour things but updated a bit.
So far, so Cameron. But it’s all a bit insubstantive – what, for example, is he actually proposing to DO about ‘predator’ companies? What would he do about a living wage? Does he seriously understand why people don’t trust Labour with their money? Does he really mean it on changing the way parties are funded?
I think there are some interesting lessons for both party leaders at the moment, but perhaps the most useful one is for David Cameron.
It is that, if there is an idea whose time seems come, get on with it. Take the initiative. Deliver your promises. Ed Miliband is proposing more or less the same as was proposed a few years ago on party funding, the union opt-in/out and caps and eligibility of donors. David Cameron should have gone ahead and abided by what he thought was the right structure – because it was inevitable there would be more trouble over the way politics is funded, and if you’re in government, it is really hard to avoid looking like the guilty party (as Gordon Brown found out over MPs’ expenses).
I’d suggest the party goes back into all its records on areas such as MPs’ pay and second jobs, funding of parties, lobbying, advisers, candidate selection… All those things that don’t matter to voters’ lives until they fall apart in public. We have some pretty good ideas, rooted in transparency and inclusiveness, and instead of waiting for something to go wrong with them we should take the high ground and get them right.
