How Labour Will Make Or Break The General Election 2015

With Labour's lead in the polls wavering recently and perhaps in threat of disappearing, unless the opposition makes a serious gaffe, the realisation that the party is in need of figures far less vacuous than Ed and Ed has become cemented. Without figures who represent integrity the Miliband-led party must face the possibility of failure and continuing a nomadic life out in the political wilderness.

A leader who rejects the "Thatcherism with a human face" would certainly strike a chord with the swathes who feel encircled by austerity for the middle and working classes and tax cuts for the richest few, all in a climate of skyrocketing economic inequality in the West. For these many people a prominent politician refusing to pander to the climate of austerity could be a sign of hope, the feeling that the richest have gained too much power while the middle and working classes have been left downtrodden is palpable. The rising support for the Green Party in the polls (frequently ahead of the Liberal Democrats) is again a sign that a search for a bolder, less centrist, less half-hearted, more socialist Labour Party is taking place and is perhaps not in vain. The Greens biggest potential achievement in the future could be to revive a streak in the Labour Party centered around social justice and environmentalism. From 2008-2010 Ed Miliband was perhaps the most progressive Energy and Climate Change Secretary for a long while, a fact which should be utilised by Miliband to criticise Cameron`s effective u-turn on his promise of the "greenest government ever". The Green`s success is also a sign that Ed Miliband's shift away from the ideas of New Labour has been mostly illusive - an exercise in crowd pleasing and disassociation. With the parties current "One Nation" slogan borrowed from Benjamin Disraeli and used by Boris Johnson as well as in the past by the likes of Ted Heath it is little surprise that the party of today is frequently hard to differentiate from the Tories. The fact that the parties recent conference has already been labelled "timid" by John Prescott, one of the key architects of New Labour's centrism speaks volumes. Again this is why the party is in need of a figure capable of setting Labour apart from their opposition, of breaking out of a mould of uniformity. The alternative is allowing the party to drift through a phase of bland conformity in which Labour risks becoming part of a single monolithic political entity with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

To take on this role with charisma is a difficult but equally significant task but one which makes all of the difference at the ballot box. The memo that "being a leader gives you charisma" has yet to reach "Red Ed" and while policy with substance can do much to cover for this issue, meaningful policies for a Labour government have been few and far between. While some might have hoped that a guaranteed living wage may have entered the inventory of party policies, Miliband's promise of £8 an hour by 2020 is unlikely to be anything but below the living wage by the time it is achieved due to inflation. Furthermore the higher cost of living in the capital and the large number of low income employees in London suggests a more dramatic approach is needed. The kind of approach we might expect of Labour's old lion Tony Benn or Nye Bevan (the creator of the NHS) would be far more effective. The party's refusal to reduce tuition fees any further than £6000, a full double of the maximum fees prior to 2010, again says a great deal about weakness and suggests a lack of strength of character.

This scarcity of courage, would not be found in the Labour governments of the `40s and `60s. In the weeks leading up to the General Election this lack of courage is the most likely factor to cost Labour the election