Doubts about Ed Miliband are not unreasonable, but the last thing Labour needs is another leadership election
Many questions nag in many minds at the start of 2012 about Ed Miliband, and by no means only at Westminster. But be clear about this. The last thing that the Labour party needs in 2012 is another leadership election. What Labour does need, however, is more consistent and effective leadership than it got in 2011. Since succeeding Gordon Brown, Mr Miliband has sometimes shown the steel of which he speaks so proudly in today's Guardian interview. However, that toughness has only been intermittent – the audacity to challenge his brother for Labour's top job, the boldness to take on News International over phone hacking, the readiness to flag up producer capitalism in contrast to the predator variety – these steelier moments stand out because they are relatively rare. What is needed now is a more unremittingly forceful strategic approach, and preferably the right one.
Doubts about Mr Miliband's leadership are certainly not unreasonable. His poll ratings are poor, and he has not had the start to the year he would have chosen, with Lord Glasman's criticism and Diane Abbott's foolishness to distract him, and Jim Murphy posing controversial questions about the party's public spending stance. However, Mr Miliband is entitled to stress, as he does in his interview, that he has long been on the same side of the spending argument as Mr Murphy. He can also say with truth that Labour's poll numbers have risen by around 10 points since he replaced Mr Brown. He can point to byelection successes too, and now to a Labour poll recovery since David Cameron's late 2011 Brussels boost. And it would be a trivialisation to pretend that Labour's relatively stodgy poll performance when the government is doing such unpopular things is all the leader's fault. The national jury is out on Labour as well as Mr Miliband. It is not clear that Labour would do better under anyone else. Even if it was, another contest would provide entertainment but would probably damage Labour, not strengthen it.
The broad framework of Mr Miliband's approach is nevertheless the right one, even though the detail needs filling in soon. The most important thing for an opposition leader, Mr Miliband says, is a clear sense of what is wrong in the country and what needs to change. That is true and it cannot be rushed – all the more so in the unyielding economic circumstances which mean that a pledge made in 2011 may be unsustainable by 2015. There is also much more to the task than embracing strict fiscal disciplines, which Mr Miliband gives a clear hint in the interview that he will, and imagining that this equates with credibility. Credibility is also about articulating an alternative and persuading sceptical voters that it is robust and achievable. All this needs much more urgency.
These are the hard yards of opposition, the Labour leader says. Fair enough. But Mr Miliband cannot expect to be cut as much slack in 2012 as he was last year. If he is going to stand up for an alternative, more responsible capitalism, as he began to do in his 2011 conference speech, he must grip that subject as Labour's own far more energetically and practically. If he doesn't, then the coalition parties have signalled that they will try to seize it from him. Mr Miliband may find it incredible that David Cameron or Nick Clegg can make a plausible pitch for a more responsible capitalism. It does not follow that voters will share his incredulity. That's why Mr Miliband needs to be out there every week, in small and big businesses, in the City of London too, and perhaps also in more balanced economies like Germany, with business leaders at his side, showing what this really means. He also needs to show what it means not just for Labour positioning and social democratic theory, but also for the voter and the voter's job and family. Fail to do that and the leadership question, still so premature today, might even become truly threatening one day.