Labour and the Economy
If David Milliband had been elected Labour leader, thus keeping alive the concept of New Labour, the current economic posture of the Opposition would serve. The prospects of a return to power would be negligible.
But it was not David, but Ed, who was elected, signalling the end of New Labour, with all its skeletons, arrogance, inertia and spinning. The prospects for Labour are therefore much brighter, not because it will justify its past and offer more of the same, but because it will break with the past and offer something different. This is not happening with the economy. Alan Johnson is good on communication and voter empathy. He talks of worried families up and down the land and people nod. But there is no big idea. When he talks, we hear a man who has mugged up, not an innovator who has thought through. That big idea is out there. Alan Johnson needs to grasp it and make it his own.
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist