Miliband’s election bid in dram fine mess

Ed Miliband could be forgiven for wanting to down the contents of the whisky bottle used to launch the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.

He was in Scotland for the second time in a week to witness the ceremonial launch on Friday. It was good timing as his party in Scotland sneaked ahead in the Holyrood polls last week for the first time in a long while.

Back in Westminster, Labour still lead the Tories as they have for more than two years now. Yet the party’s operations north and south of the Border are bedevilled by in-fighting and the Labour leader’s General Election chances are increasingly written off. Even Labour MPs aren’t exactly sure why or how it happened but the private doubts they’d all harboured about the leader have somehow leaked out of their heads and into the public domain. The party’s poor showing at the Euro elections seems to have been the trigger.

Another theory is that Ukip’s good result at the same polls made the right-wing press realise that a Miliband win in 2015 is a real possibility and he needed to be traduced. He doesn’t leave critics short of ammunition.

At a speech last week he began by saying “Let me relate a story”. Normal people would surely say “tell” rather than “relate” and it’s little things like that now being picked up that illustrate the Labour leader’s weakness.

The speech at the Science Museum in London was part of Labour’s business week. Hurt by claims that they are not business friendly the party set out to convince the money men that they are not a threat.

The City has been spooked by Red Ed’s talk of interfering with the market. The most high-profile example of that is the Labour pledge to freeze energy prices that would hit the fuel firm’s multi-billion pound profits. Policies like the fuel price freeze that are popular with the punters and not so welcome in Britain’s boardrooms.

And the same is true in reverse. Industry likes Labour’s policy of not having an in/out referendum on Europe but the people appear to want a poll. That Europe policy was wheeled out time and again at Labour’s business events as evidence the party believes in long-termism rather than short-term political gain. That’s worthy, but Ed may learn in the coming months that eschewing short-term political gain makes for short-term political careers.

Business week saw big names for Labour attempt to charm the titans of industry. Ed Balls organised something called an Inclusive Prosperity Conference proving Labour can certainly talk the same nonsensical management-speak heard in boardrooms and on corporate away days across the UK.

Lord Adonis unveiled a far-sighted industrial policy aimed at restoring the regions to the powerhouse status they had under the Victorians. Andrew Adonis remains a beacon of all that is wrong with British politics. He is wise and willing to work across the parties to get things done but he sits in the Lords because he couldn’t get elected. Meanwhile, George Osborne, the man in charge of the nation’s finances but who refused to answer when a small child asked him to solve the sum 7×8 last week, has a massive majority.

Chuka Umuna, the smooth-headed and smooth-talking shadow business secretary, even went as far as to serenade the business community. On a visit to Worcester he managed to mangle his words and pronounce the town’s name as Wichita, as in Glen Campbell’s classic tune Wichita Lineman.

Perhaps he thought that song’s refrain rather sums up Labour’s relationship with big business “And I need you more than want you . . . ”