The Labour leader took a risk today. There was a technical risk: he spoke without notes, which can go wrong in many ways. And the speech was long, which exponentially increases the danger of stumbling and losing the audience. But that is a small practical obstacle compared to the tactical gamble that his speech represented, which was – in effect – advertising itself as an audition before the country for the post of Prime Minister.
He didn’t set it out in quite those terms, but throughout the week his team has been allowing the idea to float around that this would be a defining piece of oration. The Miliband camp took the highly hazardous step of acknowledging that there had been flaws in the way their candidate presented himself and admitting that voters are under-whelmed by the Labour leader – or downright dismissive. So expectations were ramped up, which is the opposite of what usually happens. (The standard line at these conferences is “it’s only a speech, why is everyone so excited, of course it’s not a make or break moment.” Etc.)
So the Miliband operation set the bar high. Luckily for them, the Labour leader appears to have cleared it. He seemed much more confident than he has done on similar occasions in the past; much more in control of the mood in the room and much more assertive in delivering his message. He got a few good laughs in the right places. His theme – “One Nation” – was a pretty audacious raid on Tory language and, as a fusion of traditional left appeals to solidarity and a patriotic idiom more commonly associated with the right, it clearly has potential as a platform to reach out to a wide section of the electorate. His aides are busy now describing it as a radical vision. (That, of course, is something they always do.)
The obvious criticism was that Miliband is still travelling very light on policy and still skirts over the question of tricky spending pledges. It wasn’t exactly a macho demonstration of tough choices and a trampling of party shibboleths. (That really isn’t Miliband’s style.) He is wide open to the charge of policy flimsiness. No doubt the defence will come out that David Cameron was no more heavily freighted with practical policy at an equivalent point in his time in opposition. The mid-term challenge is to attract voters attention and sustain their interest in a way that makes them think they might be looking at their next Prime Minister. That was the explicit task that Ed Miliband set himself this week. Did he pass the audition? Too early to tell. But I suspect the party will come away more confident that they can talk about Prime Minister Miliband and the Conservatives will be a little bit less complacent in their assumption that no one is listening.
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