Daily View: Are Labour a viable opposition?
After the Labour party conference drew to a close commentators are making their conclusions on the opposition.
that Labour are being unrealistically idealistic, or, as he put it, dreaming of a "world run by the good fairies and angels":
"This was a magical mystery tour through a nation that has been run by people with the wrong values for decades. The fault lies not with the people of Britain, who have the right values, British values, or with the previous Labour Government, of which Mr Miliband, who has the right values, is proud. A mysterious closed circle of bad people with the wrong values (MPs, asset strippers, phone hackers and predators) have turned the country to moral ruin by erecting a system to reward their wrong values rather than the right values of the people and Mr Miliband."
While Collins thinks Miliband has made himself irrelevant, . He says Ed Miliband has redefined the future of politics:
"The obsessive concentration on matters of overwhelming triviality has obscured the central point: that Miliband made an intellectually ambitious and admirable contribution to public debate. He sought to reshape the terms of political argument and so redefine the territory on which the general election will ultimately be fought. He has even made a tentative step towards tearing up the rules that have defined British economics for the past generation with his cautious critique of capitalism as it has been carried on here for the past 30 years. This was long overdue."
The with Peter Oborne that Ed Miliband has offered an alternative, reintroducing social democracy to British politics. But he is less sure if anyone will vote for it:
"Labour's move to the left can be, and has already been, exaggerated - by friend and foe alike.
Ìý
"Yet it has been a significant declaration by the party nonetheless. The coalition parties will undoubtedly respond, and not merely with abuse and caricature. Expect surprise moves that try to undermine Labour claims to ethical uniqueness.
Ìý
"Electorally, the danger for Labour is that the party will have convinced itself that it has rediscovered its own sense of ethical virtue without persuading sceptical voters that it can run the economy."
The now Mr Miliband has got his ideology sorted, now he needs to get the message out:
"Miliband has to improve his image - and fast. People need to see him up close and personal; he needs to get out of the conference centre and into the town hall. And he needs a new, more supportive shadow cabinet. For much of the past year, the Labour leader has been his own outrider, making a lonely case for change. He now needs his colleagues to start amplifying the arguments he made."
But Labour supporter Henry Mason isn't convinced in Political Betting. He says he could write 10,000 words on what went wrong at the Labour conference which only leaves him with one question:
"The key question is who is likely to replace him? What's clear to me after this conference is that it certainly won't be David Miliband. The only possible candidate who could unify MPs, party members and trade union members and take the fight to the Government is Yvette Cooper. The fixed term legislation buys the Labour Party time to sort this mess out. And what a mess it is."
