Poor Report Card
Here's another political commentator who gives Ed Miliband and his team a very poor report card and I don't think it her opinion has anything to do with the fact that Jenni Russell writes for the The Times, a News UK title from the Rupert Murdoch stable.
Some journalists are indeed political hacks who just write propaganda for their own side, but in my experience most of them are are thoughtful, willing to give their 'targets' a fair chance to set out their stall.
The problem for Ed Miliband is that people have listened to him carefully yet still have no idea what he's on about, beyond the vague notion that he wants to make the world a better place.
Ed and his team would be a disaster at No 10
By Jenni Russell - The Times
Uncharismatic, uninspiring, uninterested in others’ views, Miliband doesn’t look like a leader
Last week I watched as a vignette unfolded that revealed much of what’s going wrong for Ed Miliband. The scene was the Financial Times summer drinks party in the City. It was a concentration of financial and economic power. Businessmen, bankers, industrialists, politicians, PRs and journalists drank champagne, made connections and traded information.
By 8.30 most of the guests had left for the dinners in their busy diaries. Sometime later, with the party dying and the hall a fifth full, Ed Miliband arrived, with two aides at his side. One promptly disappeared. The other, a youngster, stood by helplessly as a handful of unknown inebriates spotted Ed, pinned him to the wall by the entrance and held pointless conversations. Ed, who is unfailingly polite, could not escape.
“I think he needs rescuing,” an Ed sympathiser said. The aide looked blankly around the emptying room. “Who do you think I should introduce him to?” she asked. “I don’t recognise anyone.”
Everything about this episode left me dumbfounded. In a year’s time Ed Miliband may be prime minister, yet he is overseeing an alarmingly unprofessional operation. This week he has been launching Labour’s growth and business policies, aimed at persuading the country that Labour would do a better job of running the economy than the coalition. Given that strategy, this party had been full of people worth talking to.
His office should have had him turning up at seven sharp, with knowledgeable aides to shield him, a target list of guests to meet and the FT communications team on hand to help. He should have been exuding authority. There should have been a sense of excitement about his arrival and a purpose to his presence. Instead, by arriving late, undefended and unbriefed, the impression he left was of bumbling chaos, and a lack of interest in building relationships with people who aren’t his natural allies.
The ability to wield power and hold people’s confidence is the single most important characteristic of a leader. Some people grow into it. Tony Blair was a charming sidekick to his more impressive wife until he won a seat. David Cameron appeared to be just another urbane, well-fed public-school product in the years when he was working for Carlton TV. Margaret Thatcher was regarded by her party as an unclubbable oddity at the time she became the compromise candidate to succeed Edward Heath.
When the Labour party found that it had elected Ed as leader, even the doubters hoped that he would be transformed from awkward chrysalis to confident butterfly. He hasn’t done it. Nearly four years on he stands taller and has private charm, but he doesn’t exude competence, and charisma eludes him. His personal ratings have ben falling steadily and now stand at -39, a record low. Only a fifth of voters think he is doing a good job; three fifths say he isn’t. Mr Cameron scores far better at -5.
These weaknesses would matter less if Mr Miliband were surrounded by a crack staff who could make up for his deficiencies. Instead they share them. Nobody outside the leader’s office has a good word to say about it. It is secretive and unresponsive, internally riven, bad at building alliances either inside or outside the party, and obsessed with hoarding its own power rather than building Labour’s influence. It creates widespread resentment. Even members of the shadow cabinet and Labour’s policy review chief confess to feeling excluded by it.
One senior Labour insider told me how depressed he is by what seems to be an arrogant indifference from both office and leader to other people or to challenging ideas. Grandees and civil servants recently held a conference to offer advice to all parties on preparing for government. The Tories and Lib Dems came; Labour didn’t bother. “Is that because they don’t expect to be in government, or because they assume they know it all already?” the insider asked.
Another senior figure despaired of the contrast between the stifling sterility of Mr Miliband’s lack of interest in discussions now, and the intellectual ferment before Mr Blair took power. “We were so hungry for ideas, we were talking to everyone from 1995 to ’97, taking so many people on board . . . But Ed’s not interested in reaching out. He thinks he’s right, so doesn’t expect to learn.”
This strategy might just win Mr Miliband the election, but it is a hopeless strategy for government. A leader who can’t inspire confidence, build alliances or enthuse his colleagues will fall apart in No 10. One shadow minister told me that there was little time left to change. He was afraid of losing, but winning might be worse.
“What some of us fear is that we’re going to win, but Ed could be such a terrible leader we’ll be out for a generation after that.”
Uncharismatic, uninspiring, uninterested in others’ views, Miliband doesn’t look like a leader
Last week I watched as a vignette unfolded that revealed much of what’s going wrong for Ed Miliband. The scene was the Financial Times summer drinks party in the City. It was a concentration of financial and economic power. Businessmen, bankers, industrialists, politicians, PRs and journalists drank champagne, made connections and traded information.
By 8.30 most of the guests had left for the dinners in their busy diaries. Sometime later, with the party dying and the hall a fifth full, Ed Miliband arrived, with two aides at his side. One promptly disappeared. The other, a youngster, stood by helplessly as a handful of unknown inebriates spotted Ed, pinned him to the wall by the entrance and held pointless conversations. Ed, who is unfailingly polite, could not escape.
“I think he needs rescuing,” an Ed sympathiser said. The aide looked blankly around the emptying room. “Who do you think I should introduce him to?” she asked. “I don’t recognise anyone.”
Everything about this episode left me dumbfounded. In a year’s time Ed Miliband may be prime minister, yet he is overseeing an alarmingly unprofessional operation. This week he has been launching Labour’s growth and business policies, aimed at persuading the country that Labour would do a better job of running the economy than the coalition. Given that strategy, this party had been full of people worth talking to.
His office should have had him turning up at seven sharp, with knowledgeable aides to shield him, a target list of guests to meet and the FT communications team on hand to help. He should have been exuding authority. There should have been a sense of excitement about his arrival and a purpose to his presence. Instead, by arriving late, undefended and unbriefed, the impression he left was of bumbling chaos, and a lack of interest in building relationships with people who aren’t his natural allies.
The ability to wield power and hold people’s confidence is the single most important characteristic of a leader. Some people grow into it. Tony Blair was a charming sidekick to his more impressive wife until he won a seat. David Cameron appeared to be just another urbane, well-fed public-school product in the years when he was working for Carlton TV. Margaret Thatcher was regarded by her party as an unclubbable oddity at the time she became the compromise candidate to succeed Edward Heath.
When the Labour party found that it had elected Ed as leader, even the doubters hoped that he would be transformed from awkward chrysalis to confident butterfly. He hasn’t done it. Nearly four years on he stands taller and has private charm, but he doesn’t exude competence, and charisma eludes him. His personal ratings have ben falling steadily and now stand at -39, a record low. Only a fifth of voters think he is doing a good job; three fifths say he isn’t. Mr Cameron scores far better at -5.
These weaknesses would matter less if Mr Miliband were surrounded by a crack staff who could make up for his deficiencies. Instead they share them. Nobody outside the leader’s office has a good word to say about it. It is secretive and unresponsive, internally riven, bad at building alliances either inside or outside the party, and obsessed with hoarding its own power rather than building Labour’s influence. It creates widespread resentment. Even members of the shadow cabinet and Labour’s policy review chief confess to feeling excluded by it.
One senior Labour insider told me how depressed he is by what seems to be an arrogant indifference from both office and leader to other people or to challenging ideas. Grandees and civil servants recently held a conference to offer advice to all parties on preparing for government. The Tories and Lib Dems came; Labour didn’t bother. “Is that because they don’t expect to be in government, or because they assume they know it all already?” the insider asked.
Another senior figure despaired of the contrast between the stifling sterility of Mr Miliband’s lack of interest in discussions now, and the intellectual ferment before Mr Blair took power. “We were so hungry for ideas, we were talking to everyone from 1995 to ’97, taking so many people on board . . . But Ed’s not interested in reaching out. He thinks he’s right, so doesn’t expect to learn.”
This strategy might just win Mr Miliband the election, but it is a hopeless strategy for government. A leader who can’t inspire confidence, build alliances or enthuse his colleagues will fall apart in No 10. One shadow minister told me that there was little time left to change. He was afraid of losing, but winning might be worse.
“What some of us fear is that we’re going to win, but Ed could be such a terrible leader we’ll be out for a generation after that.”
