This has been a terrible week for the Labour leader – truly, bone-crunchingly awful. Inevitable comparisons have been made with the IDS era of the Tory wilderness years, but this is different because it is Labour. Conservative leaders are trophies, symbols of the best or worst the party can aspire to at any given time. But Labour leaders are expected to embody hopes and dreams: they are pragmatic Utopianism made flesh. If all political careers end in failure, then Labour leaders always fail better. Could Ed Miliband fail best of all?
Patrick O’Flynn of the Express tweeted this week that the Labour Party’s irritation at their ideas on executive pay being poached by the government reminded him of how the Lib Dems used to behave. I think he is on to something. It took the Tories a long time to learn how to do opposition after they lost power in 1997.
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