Open Season on Ed Miliband

Miliband’s strategy feels like a 10-year programme which he is, understandably, trying to squeeze into five. It is hard enough for a politician to walk, chew gum and think deep thoughts all at the same time; harder still when you are struggling to shake off memories of the last government, to prove to the voters that you have changed and that your party has learned its lesson. In 1992, the Tories were still squeezing political juice out of the Winter of Discontent of 1978-79. In 2001, more than a decade after the fall of Margaret Thatcher, Labour unveiled a campaign poster of William Hague with her hair aside the slogan “Get out and vote. Or they get in.” In politics, negative sentiments — fear, distrust, contempt, loathing — are generally more entrenched and harder to shift than their positive counterparts.