During his bid for the party leadership in 2010, Ed Miliband named Clement Attlee as the politician he most admired – something he repeated in an interview in June this year. His definition of Labour’s “one nation” mantra also contains a nod to the “spirit” of the transformative Attlee government elected in 1945. Yet the “one nation” theme is, of course, taken from the Conservative Party. And it was not to any Labour greats that Miliband turned in his 10 September speech to the TUC conference, but to two 19th-century Conservative prime ministers. The first was the Earl of Derby, who legalised trade unions in 1867. The second was Benjamin Disraeli.
According to Miliband, David Cameron has governed in the interests of a privileged few and thereby failed to meet the standards set by his Disraelian forebears. Whether or not this message is starting to get through to the electorate, it is an unusual standard for a Labour leader to set. In truth, the act of scavenging in Tory history shows something else – which is that the Labour Party has a tortured relationship with its own past, particularly with those who have delivered its greatest successes.
Content from our partners
