When Ed Miliband peaks, he really knows how to do it. His speech at last autumn’s Labour conference was magnificent. Given the pressure on him to convince the unions to back his reforms to their links to the Labour party, you’d expect he’d have picked today’s address to the Trades Union Congress conference to deliver another blinder. Sadly today was not a peak in the range of Miliband speeches.
Sure, he produced a vaguely funny joke about a chap called ‘Red Ed’ who was in fact the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Stanley. Miliband told the conference that Stanley was ‘the man who first legislated to allow trade unions in this country’. But it felt as though he was scaling a hill as he told this story without ever managing to reach the top. The conference listened, and chuckled and clapped at his joke. But its reception was more like the applause that accompanies a bad father of the bride speech at a wedding.
The clever section of his speech was the way he pitted himself against the Tories to paint himself as the friend of the unions.
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