Labour types are in an aggressive mood this morning. Why are the newspapers and the BBC setting such store by just two MPs who apparently want their leader gone when the Tory party has around ten times that number of committed malcontents, they grumble? Peter Hain was particularly defensive this morning, suggesting that all Ed Miliband’s supposed woes are actually part of a plot by the Daily Mail.
First, here’s an attempt to explain the media excitement about the threat to Miliband. Both main parties are glum at the moment, partly because the polls suggest voters aren’t particularly inspired by either of them, and partly because they recognise that anti-politics parties such as Ukip, the SNP and the Greens are managing to attract voters they’d previously banked as ‘theirs’ without either big party really knowing how to deal with this threat. The bad feeling within each party ebbs and flows, and at least Labourites can look forward to the Rochester by-election on 20 November, where the Tories look set to lose a seat they were previously swaggeringly confident they could hold.
But the reason just two grumpy MPs apparently actively agitating for the leadership has received so much coverage is that for months journalists have been talking off the record to Labourites who are privately increasingly unhappy – and increasing numbers of them feel this way.
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