by Rob Marchant
The last week or so has undoubtedly set the biggest challenge of Miliband’s leadership, in the aftermath of the Falkirk selection fiasco. It is one to which he has risen.
We can dress it up how we like, but it was difficult to interpret Len McCluskey’s defiant denials – flying in the face of all kinds of inconvenient facts – as anything other an open challenge to his authority as leader.
As ever, it’s not so much what people say, it’s the subtext.
When the leader of Britain’s largest union is moved to tell us that Ed Miliband is leader of the Labour Party, you feel like saying “oh, thanks, Len, just as long as you’re sure. We’ll keep him on, then.” The damaging implication of the statement, of course, is that it might ever have been in question.
Much of the left blogosphere opted to play it down, with the best of intentions; but there is nothing that looks more obvious than a “move along, nothing to see” approach when your house is clearly on fire, and the rest of the world saw it.
Miliband, thankfully, if belatedly, also noticed his house was on fire.
He gave a dreadful, hesitant interview on Friday, where he talked about being “very clear” so often, as John Rentoul observed, that it sounded like what it was, playing for time.
But worse than that were the interventions from Harriet Harman and Owen Smith; which left you shouting “noooooo” at BBC News, because they left such a clear hostage to fortune in implying that “Falkirk was a one-off”.
But despite the poor start, yesterday confounded expectations: it was a political coup de grâce. Tory politicians and commentators were taken by surprise, and overreached in their criticisms, leaving them looking as if they had chewed on the sourest of grapes. And if you can manage to secure broad support from Tony Blair to Len McCluskey on the same day, you’ve clearly done something right.
Symbolism is something gets undervalued in life in general, probably rightly. But in politics, sometimes it’s not only desirable but essential. Clause four was all symbolism, and none the less important for that.
But this was different. The symbolism was not to make a break with the unions, something not even the most rightward-leaning party figures have any real intention of doing.
Indeed, many commentators failed to grasp that this struggle was not about right-left politics at all. The symbolism of yesterday was to make a break with the political equivalent of an abusive relationship, where power and accountability are uneven and twisted. And, as in that case, both partners need to take a step back and put it on a more healthy footing if it is to survive.
