The task for Ed Miliband at tonight’s Parliamentary Labour Party meeting, which ended a short while ago, was (in the words of one shadow cabinet minister) to “restore the morale” of MPs shaken by the near-defeat to Ukip in the Heywood and Middleton by-election.
He told those gathered in The Gladstone Room: “Four years ago, I came to the PLP and I said I would work every day to make sure Labour was a one-term opposition. We are seven months away, and that prospect, against many people’s predictions, is absolutely doable, it is within our sights. I am not going to let that opportunity slip away.” That Miliband felt the need to insist he would not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory suggests he recognises that some fear that is precisely what he is doing.
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