One of the most read pieces on this blog recently was this post, framing Ed Miliband’s recent speech in terms of the reception Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” received on its first showings.  I then suggested that our Red Ed might be turning himself into Ready Eddy.  Meanwhile, Eoin analyses data which suggests voters are happy – where the commentariat huff and puff – for Miliband to turn his back on Blair.  Then, going against the Labour grain perhaps but in line with the aforementioned commentariat, Dan Hodges, over at Labour Uncut, had this to say of Miliband’s week:

We have to understand. We need to grasp what has just happened to the Labour party.

Ed Miliband did not have a bad week. He had a grotesque, cataclysm of a week.

The conundrum gets more involved, though, with this latest research highlighted by Liberal Conspiracy, worth reading in full – and the conclusion to which runs as follows (the bold is mine):

There are two lessons here I think. First, bland centrism doesn’t necessarily mean you get elected. Second, the press is out of touch with public perception of where Ed Miliband and David Cameron politically stand.

As a tangential idea to keep up in the forefront of our erstwhile triangulating political minds, I also like this observation from the same article:

So does this all mean being centrist gets you elected? Not necessarily. The Libdems are placed broadly in the centre by voters, and yet they languish at 11-15% in the polls.
Why? Kellner says:

When we delve into the figures more closely, we see why. Conservative voters dislike him because they think he is left-of-centre – while Labour voters reject him as too far to the right for their taste. These attitudes cancel each other out in Clegg’s overall average.

And so we come to a final re-evaluation of what Ed Miliband might be up to – if, that is, he’s as intelligent and intentioned a politician as I believe he may be becoming.  Again from Labour Uncut – this time, from within the most inner place of Miliband’s own inner circle:

By contrast, and by coincidence, as I made my way out of the hall in Liverpool, I bumped into two very senior business figures. One is a longstanding Labour supporter, who has made millions in private industry. The other has only recently joined the party, having retired from business after decades of running multi-million pound commercial enterprises. Both thought the speech was very good. They enthused about not only its thoughtfulness, but in particular its emphasis on the importance of business as a “wealth creator”, a line used repeatedly in Ed Miliband’s speech.

The author of this latter post – Michael Dugher, Ed Miliband’s own parliamentary private secretary – goes on to argue that:

The truth is it is not “anti-business” to criticise Fred Goodwin or to condemn what a private equity firm did to Southern Cross care homes. Neither is it “anti-business” to say a future Labour government should challenge the big vested interests like the energy companies ripping off consumers. It is the right thing to do.

There is, then, I think sufficient evidence laid out in my post this morning to suggest that:

1. we are, as in Thatcher’s time, seeing the definitive political downsides of the fearsomely amoral act of triangulation;
2. Ed Miliband perhaps realises this – and perhaps better than the rest of us right now;
3. Ed Miliband is getting to the point where we need to seriously re-evaluate his potential as diviner of political dynamics;
4. the mainstream press and their hangers-on are not necessarily best placed to catch the fluctuating public mood;

For the last point, after all, is precisely why we have politicians in the first place – to capture that public mood accurately and, in the end, democratically.

Politicians can only make their way and their reputations in that fragile conjoining of events and personal actions that is the body politic as a whole.

Which, essentially, means we can only wait and see.

Even as we do our very best to do so with what should be a generous as well as inquiring intelligence.

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