Ed Miliband should know it's not only in areas feeling the worst cuts that voters are seeing the damage around them
The political establishment needs shock treatment from time to time: a whiff of revolution from riot or electoral rebellion gives Westminster a defibrillator jump. Neither riots nor George Galloway's return are welcome news, but rebellions are reminders that people will burst out if pushed too far. And many are being pushed too far, here and right across Europe. Expect the unpredictable.
YouGov reports its highest "none of the above" score, with 17% choosing small parties; 68% think British politics is corrupt. The Westminster wars of "your fault", "you did it", "you're worst" sound like wasps in a bottle to those who say "they're all the same". One in nine who voted Tory last time would opt for Ukip now. SNP success in Scotland is part rebellion against Labour hegemony. A collapsing Lib Dem vote may turn to Labour – or skitter off to the Greens or doctor candidates. Elections for mayors and police commissioners are an open invitation to anti-establishment backlash, as in Doncaster or Hartlepool: the new has a brief veneer of authenticity. The tightening tourniquet of austerity round a stagnant economy must have political consequences.
Ed Miliband's bid to break out opened Labour's local election campaign today in Selly Oak with a speech my colleague Nicholas Watt (not given to hyperbole) reported as "a bravura performance". Read it to see Miliband potting every ball, though a blindfolded player could hardly miss: Osborne's catastrophic budget, NHS dismemberment starting at full tilt, zero growth, a million young jobless – and a £3bn tax cut for millionaires. On crime, he was refreshing, calling for restorative justice – a well-researched evidence-based policy for criminals to pay something back, devoid of New Labour's tendency to cheap and nasty eye-catchers.
A steady 10-point lead suggests Labour would win most seats now, despite gerrymandering of borders and bad new rules for election registers knocking off poorer Labour voters. No wonder the Daily Telegraph reports Tory backbench gnashing of teeth, calling for Osborne's removal from strategy: Norman Tebbit castigates Cameron's "government by chums". Good grief, Labour snatched council seats in Tory Southfields and Sevenoaks last week. Tories can see that vital 7.5% lead to form a majority next time is a horse galloping away from them over the Chipping Sodbury horizon. It stretches credulity to imagine them doing any better than their puny 36% last time, when Cameron was at his most charming, the nasty party least toxic, Gordon Brown in Downing Street and every European government executed by voters. Ahead lies only very much worse – 88% of cuts still to come. Cameron's -26 approval rating makes him less popular than Brown was before the 2010 election.
So if they are not going to win outright and escape coalition, what do they do about the Lib Dems? Tories always were the stupid party: had they backed the AV referendum, in a pact they could have named each other second choice in elections to secure a centre-right coalition. As it is, the Lib Dems must either merge so the Tories stand aside in some seats, or fight and lose most. Lib Dem failure to denounce email snooping today marked their demise: civil liberties was their last USP.
But as Labour surveys the wreckage of Bradford West, ripples of alarm pulse through "safe" seats: Tory unpopularity may not always mean Labour votes. However, Labour has been spring-cleaning it roots, its website is alive with campaigns it hosts, not all of its choosing, such as the Robin Hood tax. What matters most is the big message so foghorn loud and heard so often that everyone knows what Labour is for and why. That is what authenticity sounds like.
It's not quite there yet, with Labour still straddled between being a tarnished government and an insurgent opposition. But since the budget, blame for the past is receding; Tory finger-pointing is losing its poke. Labour's cautious tendency tugs back towards the centre-ground "where elections are won", but Bradford West shows over-caution has great dangers too. What's it to be: a fiscal straitjacket or a business-building, demand-stimulating, jobs-and-growth Keynesian answer to hyper-austerity? Some blend of the two is cooking. Labour is now only a tantalising 4four points behind the government on trust to run the economy – though that post-budget fillip may dip again: lost reputation for economic credibility is hardest to regain. Today Miliband's message was: "Labour is changing." How much change? Time now to draw a line under much that went before. Get ahead fast with a fair party funding offer this week.
Post office privatisation is a chance to say Labour was wrong to think of it, wrong because imprudent outsourcing wastes more money. As the NHS fragments to the private sector and the work programme threatens to collapse under the weight of companies struggling to profit from the unemployed, under-scrutinised taxpayer billions are wasted with A4E, KPMG and the rest. Hurry forward with policies in the making on house building, rent controls and universal good childcare, with costs accounted for. Labour shadow cabinet members each have their messages – usually in threes: "Anger, credibility and hope," said one.
This is a week for white-hot anger: on Thursday, the new financial year, a most devastating cut takes £74 a week in working tax credit from low-paid working families on £17,000 a year. Watch them flock to Trussell Trust food banks, new ones opening every week. Many won't know what's about to hit them. Lib Dems boast of their minor £126 a year gained by taking the low paid out of income tax, yet say not a word about this shocker. These are the "hard-working couples playing by the rules" that politicians keep praising, striving but failing to find longer working hours. With Liam Byrne off to bid for mayor of Birmingham, it's time to bring back Douglas Alexander to the work and pensions job he held, wasted in the wilderness as shadow foreign secretary. Labour needs to get brave on welfare: the cuts are only popular because few know the savagery done in their name under cover of a handful of "scrounger" anecdotes. Most would be shocked to know two thirds of disabled children soon lose large sums in disability living allowance.
If Bradford has a message, it's that Labour needs to get angrier: stricken towns devastated by unemployment and hopelessness need Labour and Labour needs them. But not just in those places. Enough voters everywhere see the damage done around them – yes, even voting Labour in Sevenoaks.
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