Playing the long game: Ed Miliband shuns quick fixes in first 100 days
How the Labour leader intends to woo back lost supporters, while taking the fight to the 'Tory-led' government
Just before Christmas Ed Miliband turned up at Billingsgate fish market, the vast warehouse in London's East End, improbably as cool as the ice-locker temperatures outside. At 6.30am, he had come to talk to the porters who were worried that the City of London corporation intend to revoke their hard-won licences and bring cheaper labourin.
The issue could be emblematic of how Miliband intends to stand up for social capital against financial capital, one that could help define him in the eyes of the public. But Miliband came without TV cameras or a travelling press pack. The only photo was of the leader of the opposition holding a large salmon, taken by a member of the public with their mobile phone.
This approach has been typical of Miliband's leadership of the Labour party so far, which notches up its first 100 days today. There has been no attempt to serve up leadership-defining images. Or to do what Tony Blair and David Cameron did so successfully: pick fights with their own party to try to show they were on the public's side.
Miliband wants to be on the centre ground too, but his disposition and experience watching Blair take on Labour's left has left him with a distaste for a process of rebranding self against party. The Labour party, he thinks, has been hectored and bullied aplenty. That playbook is a quick fix. Only a lick of paint, say those closest to him. Instead, he's trying to do something more tricky.
He intends to take his time allowing lost supporters to possibly feel able to return – some 50,000 new members have already – and strategically buying himself maximum room for manoeuvre through five years in opposition.
His brother David, it is said, ran in the leadership campaign with one eye on actually leading – up on his HQ wall there were strategic and policy landmarks stretching months ahead and he was supposed to keep a copy on his phone to consult, like a kind of leadership app. Ed Miliband is not thought to have plotted out winning.
Looking back on the 100 days lived without any such app, Miliband could be said to have been really good when it was clear he was really concentrating, but not, so far, reliably good.
In his very early days he made high-profile personnel decisions swiftly and deftly – Nick Brown was barred from continuing as chief whip, Ed Balls was not allowed to dominate the economics brief; but lower down the ranks, he did not think sufficiently about the consequences of appointing the legally troubled Phil Woolas to a front-bench position.
Similarly, he has been effective and victorious in prime minister's questions when all eyes are on him – such as his first PMQs, and then another when his authority was in question. But he can fumble things when he is not focusing – like thinking he had duffed up Cameron by calling him a "child of Thatcher" when it was obvious the prime minister would shoot back he was the "son of Brown". This allows the grumbling from supporters of other candidates to start all over again.
The opposition has secured U-turns on school sports and books for the young (with some funding reinstated), but the coalition has painted the economic downturn as Brown's, and so Ed Miliband's, fault. His best was excellent, but his average was becoming too average. By his own admission, it was ill-advised to insist Labour party policy was a "blank piece of paper". It was meant to encourage contributions to the two-year policy review process but ended up encouraging ridicule. His detractors have come up with a whole host of unflattering comparisons, from Basil Brush, to Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit), to Iain Duncan Smith as Tory leader. And when he took paternity leave after the birth of his son Samuel, morale in his team plummeted. His brother began to be seen again in Portcullis House; anonymous shadow cabinet ministers told reporters of "drift" and bolder ones such as his shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, openly defied him on two key policy issues – commitment to a 50p tax rate and graduate tax.
In early December one member of staff reported turning up at the office and finding themselves to be the only one in until just before 11. When Miliband came back he struggled to restore grip. Two days after his return to work he stood and looked out at the students trooping beneath his office window to the tuition fees demonstration. He asked aloud to any members of staff listening: "Why don't I just go out and talk to them?" When he thought the same thought aloud on the Today programme the next day, he was hammered.
But then the concentration appeared to return. Team Miliband started to get some things right. Johnson miraculously came round to agree with his boss and back a graduate tax and Miliband was able to announce that a Liberal Democrat who had written that party's manifesto in 2001 would now be working with Labour.
Critically, the new leader hired some strategic and communications hands and in the last 14 days of his 100 he has rarely been off the bulletins. Journalists working over Christmas got more attention from them than both parties in the coalition combined. They immediately instituted a language change that grumpy Labour backbenchers were impressed by. It was to be referred to as a "Tory-led government" not the more cuddly "coalition". The VAT rise, attacked as the "wrong tax, wrong time", allows the Labour leader to open up the economic argument in a way that appeals to families feeling the squeeze. Labour plans to be toe to toe on all the issues the coalition plans to focus on in January.
Shadow cabinet members say every issue will be approached through a three-pronged rubric – its effects on the economy, social mobility and the new politics. Discussion includes issues that will particularly discomfort Tory and Lib Dem MPs in the south. Miliband believes the coalition has vacated much space and opposition can be waged from the centre ground, but does not see this as the same as Blairite "triangulation".
There is also a plan to subvert the coalition's own attacks. So, as the government has sought to pin wasting money on the Labour party, Labour is trying to pin waste back on the government, for instance pointing out that the higher levels of unemployment that the Office for Budget Responsibility predicts will lead to higher dole bills.
Travelling around Billingsgate with the Labour leader were the MP Jon Cruddas, newly ennobled Lord Glasman and Miliband's new head of strategy, Tom Baldwin. His court is expanding gradually and they are persuading him to experiment. There's a plan to make more such visits, some more extended than others and on an ambitious scale but always maximum exposure to the public. And still: no photos.
Miliband's kitchen cabinet
Lord (Stewart) Wood Longtime friend, now shadow minister without portfolio
Greg Beales Head of policy, former No 10 aide and self-described "Blairite"
Torsten Henricson-Bell Beales's deputy, runs the rule over economic pronouncements, one-time adviser to Alistair Darling
Lucy Powell Deputy chief of staff, Labour candidate at last election
Tom Baldwin Director of strategy and communications, quick-witted former chief reporter of the Times
Bob Roberts Labour's head of press, former Daily Mirror political editor, cerebral streetfighter
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