New year’s resolutions for Ed, Nick and Dave
Follow our take on what each of the party leaders should have on their to-do lists for 2011.
By Peter Wozniak
The leaders of the three big parties will all need to take up some new year’s resolutions in 2011. Perhaps more controversially, they’ll have to follow them through. Ill-fated promises to visit the gym three times per week and to start tackling that interminable list of ‘things to do before you die’ won’t quite cut the mustard. Here’s our take on how Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband should turn over a new leaf this year.
David Cameron
1: Keep the backbench beasts at bay
The prime minister has had a good year, but his enthusiasm for coalition and making concessions to the Liberal Democrats has not gone down well with people like the 1922 committee. Cameron has some serious bellies to rub in all the right nationalist, Thatcherite places.
The backbench beasts of the Tory party have been relatively quiescent until now, but won’t be for long. David Davis is already kicking up even more of a fuss than usual, while rumblings are growing about Ken Clarke’s “inner liberal” popping out.
If there’s one resolution the PM needs to keep to in 2011, it’s to pay more attention to his own party. That doesn’t mean he should kowtow to the restless right, but he’ll have to manage it a lot more effectively this year if the exquisite expressions of distaste which pass over senior righties’ faces during his love-ins with Clegg are anything to go by.
2: Stop being needlessly combative in PMQs
It’s a small point, but could have a crucial impact for years to come. With Ed Miliband as a relatively unknown quantity in the Commons, the PM has time and again resorted to contemptuous bluster.
To be fair some of the lines he’s had have been rather good during recent PMQs clashes and the government benches have lapped it up.
But what plays well in the chamber doesn’t travel well. Cameron’s penchant for being unimaginatively combative won’t help him in the long run. He is far more effective playing the understanding statesman, appearing to acknowledge opposition concerns without saying very much at all.
So far he’s been helped by a series of mediocre performances from Miliband, but he can’t count on that for long.
Ultimately, PMQs doesn’t have nearly as much impact in the real world as politicians like to think. Narrative matters, however. The impression on the public of the ritual sight of watching Gordon Brown being swatted mercilessly week after week by Cameron in previous years should not now escape the prime minister’s mind.
3: Do not, under any circumstances, put a vanity photographer on the public payroll
Probably an easy one to fulfil. Cameron won’t be forgetting the fallout from that U-turn in a hurry. It does however, feed into a narrative that he must make huge efforts this coming year to suppress as the country waits anxiously for the impact of the spending review.
Labour will, unless they suffer some kind of collective lobotomy, ceaselessly hammer away at the prime minister for his patrician background while the country suffers from the business end of cuts.
Cameron did a god job of banishing the impression of him as a policy-lite vacuum. He’ll have to make a much better effort this year to head off the image of him as ‘out of step’ with the plight of the public.
Nick Clegg:
1: Start kicking up more of a fuss in the coalition – and shake off the label of Conservative stooge.
You only had to listen to the chants outside parliament as MPs voted through a trebling of tuition fees: ‘Tory scum’. Only, it wasn’t only directed at the Conservative party, but at Nick Clegg, who has seen such a catastrophic fall in his reputation that we had better make this a five-year, rather than just a new year, resolution.
The Lib Dem leader will have his work cut out to him to start rescuing his own battered image. Re-igniting the fires of Cleggmania will not happen overnight.
For a start he’ll need to begin tackling his image as a superfluous appendage of David Cameron. In his favour, he has the fact that the two worst issues for the Lib Dems – the economy and tuition fees – have already passed through parliament.
His previous messianic status may not be recoverable, but Clegg can begin the work by kicking up more of a fuss, encouraging Tory ministers to take more of the flak – and make a far better fist of demonstrating Lib Dem influence on government.
2: Survive
More specifically, avoid a complete electoral wipe-out in May. The coalition will last regardless of the result, contrary to popular belief, but Clegg can make it an awful lot easier for his party if he can secure anything better than a horrific result.
Local and devolved elections will see the loss of huge swathes of sandal-wearing Lib Dem councillors, but there is plenty of scope for damage limitation, if Clegg hits 2011 running. Well, maybe sprinting.
Even more critical for Clegg is the AV referendum in May. Parties can recover quite happily from local election disasters as Labour is now demonstrating after its catastrophic demolition in 2009. But if Clegg can’t point to a victory on constitutional reform by June, the chance for his party will be gone for considerably longer than that – and his backbenchers will only grow more and more restless.
3: If you get asked to sign a cast-iron, unambiguous pledge on a flagship piece of Lib Dem policy…
Do not, under any circumstances, do so. I’ve a feeling this is one resolution Clegg will be taking on board for 2011 – and well beyond.
Ed Miliband:
1: Fill in the blank sheet – quickly
Railing against the ‘Conservative-led government’ is all very well. But shouting “not fair” from the opposition front bench won’t do for long.
The Labour leader has so far been content to leave the party in a languid policy review process. He seems to be under the impression that he has time to burn coming out of his ears.
He doesn’t, unfortunately. Without credible alternative policies, the coalition narrative of ‘Ed’s blank page’ will become more and more effective.
Miliband seems more concerned for the moment with remaking the Labour party than playing the part of HM loyal opposition. Four months into the job, that’s still understandable – for now.
2: Bury the ghosts of Blair and Brown, properly this time
Filling his Cabinet with more than a few New Labour old-bloods, particularly giving economically illiterate Alan Johnson the critical post of shadow chancellor, was Miliband’s way of acknowledging that he won the leadership of his party without the support of his MPs or his members.
He has an awful lot of ground to make up. He went some way with an effective conference speech, but the Blair-Brown factions which have dominated Labour since time immemorial will not be swept under the carpet so easily.
But this year, his rhetoric of a ‘new generation’ will need a lot of resolve to carry through into reality. The ghosts of his predecessors linger. It will take quite something to bury them once and for all, or the poisonous battles that blighted the party for 13 years will threaten to tear the party apart once more.
3: Make up with David
The manner of Ed Miliband’s victory over his brother must leave a sour taste in the mouth. Though David retreated to the backbenches with a modicum of dignity, he will not stay there forever.
Ed needs to be a bit more aware of this fact this year -and should make the first moves towards bringing his brother back into the fold of frontline politics.
Given the Machiavellian way in which the younger sibling spoiled David’s party in 2010, it’s a new year’s resolution that may take some serious task to fulfil.
But if he doesn’t do it, future discontent with the Labour leader among the Blairites will inevitably coalesce around the banner of the former foreign secretary.
Ed would do well to head off the possibility of yet another sibling drama before it’s too late.
