We may no longer be one nation, but Miliband can still harness the yes vote
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Version 0 of 1. When Ed Miliband first raised “one nation” as a banner over the Labour party he didn’t foresee uncertainty about which nation he had in mind. The speech to his party’s annual conference in October 2012 contained only a short passage on Scotland and the referendum that seemed then a distant prospect. A vote for independence, he said, would impoverish the soul of the United Kingdom. “I don’t believe solidarity stops at the border.” The common enemy was Toryism, depicted as a poison that spread division and inequality. Many Scots agree, but see separation from England as the antidote, which implies little confidence in Miliband as a healer. Veterans of past general election campaigns report a mood in Scotland unlike anything they have felt before. Some yes voters offer doorstep reassurances that they will vote Labour in a general election (which isn’t much use if Scottish seats are by then earmarked for history’s dustbin). More common is a rejection of the whole system that makes it hard to convince people that one Westminster party is different to another. “You can’t get anyone to acknowledge that we’ve done anything good,” complains one senior Labour figure. In the last week of the campaign, Labour has had to reconcile two contradictory imperatives: the avoidance of anything that looks like conspiracy with the Tories, and the need to coordinate an emergency package on devolution with Downing Street. One symptom of the confusion is conflicting accounts of Gordon Brown’s role in promoting a “home rule” offer to make “no” feel distinct from “more of the same”. Miliband’s office is happy for this to be perceived as a freelance intervention – the old clunking fist coming out of retirement and seizing the agenda. No 10 wants it to be known that Cameron, with statesman-like magnanimity, has been on the phone to his former nemesis. Labour and Liberal Democrat Scots who have toiled behind the scenes to get all the different sides to the same place on devolution bridle at portrayals of Brown as deus ex machina. Miliband aides mutter about “unhelpful” TV images showing the opposition leader falling in step behind the prime minister, but still negotiate joint newspaper declarations promising a new deal for Scotland. There won’t be a lot of credit to go around if the final result is a wafer thin no – how was it even allowed to get so close? – and there will be mountains of blame, enough to bury careers, if it’s a yes. So the leaders jostle for position discreetly, like unruly schoolboys lining up for the class photo. But anxiety on the Labour side has a deeper, more existential quality, because they know that the indifference of people they once counted as core voters is not unique to this campaign. “We don’t just have a Scotland problem,” says one shadow cabinet minister, “we have a Wales problem, a Yorkshire problem, an Essex problem …” This is why Labour has rushed through the selection of a candidate for the Manchester seat of Heywood and Middleton, left vacant by the death of MP Jim Dobbin, to make sure the vote can be held on 9 October. That is the day Douglas Carswell will be asking voters in Clacton to validate his defection to Ukip, which should keep Nigel Farage’s troops busy enough to stop them making mischief in Labour’s back yard. It is hardly a sign of confidence, but there is reason to be nervous. The Faragists may not be about to start toppling safe Labour seats, but they have come second in five northern English byelections so far this parliament. Nor is the problem confined to Ukip: George Galloway poached Bradford West for Respect in 2012. Labour candidates report leftwing protest voters flirting with the Greens. Whenever there is a chance to endorse an anti-government party that isn’t Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, thousands seem to take it. There are Labour MPs who blame the drift on Miliband and his circle of advisers, whom they deride as a glorified book club with political antennae that can’t pick up signals outside north London. “None of them have had a proper job,” grumbles one shadow minister. “When was the last time any of them knocked on any doors?” wonders a veteran backbencher. Another criticism is that Labour has been better at complaining about coalition wickedness than at looking like an alternative government, stoking the flames of implacable resentment that then burn any candidate who dares to admit – as any responsible opposition must – that there are no simple solutions. That clears the field for pedlars of quick-fix populism. So when Alex Salmond tries to frighten Scots with the prospect of a Tory government hell-bent on privatising the NHS, he finds his audience has been warmed up by a Labour saying little else about the health service for three years. With memories still fresh of Labour’s last stint in government, perhaps it is inevitable that disillusionment with politics finds alternative receptacles. Miliband’s friends say he knows that discontent is running down diverse channels, with blame splashing on to multiple scapegoats – London elites, Polish migrants, Brussels bureaucrats. The task he has set himself for his conference next week (presuming it isn’t overshadowed by the cataclysm of Scottish secession) is to show that all but Labour are false prophets; that the common root of frustration is the one he set out in that “one nation” speech – a broken economic model that allows the wealthy few to hoard the proceeds of growth while denying hope to the many. Miliband believes some of the energy driving people to vote yes in Scotland or Ukip in England may yet be harnessed to a Labour campaign for economic transformation. No one can accuse him of lacking ambition. Many Labour MPs doubt his capacity to pull it off. But they have a different consolation. It is that, if the UK is still in one piece on Friday, the biggest electoral coalition within it will be comprised of people who vote to avoid a Conservative government. It is the motive that unites young Scots who were born after Margaret Thatcher’s reign but blame her for industrial decline, and second-generation immigrants who were born after Enoch Powell but know about his “rivers of blood” speech. It links the habit of Old Labour allegiance in the north and the Midlands to ex-Lib Dem students who feel betrayed by Nick Clegg. Across the land, what really sustains Labour is its residual status as the default anyone-but-the-Tories party. It is one route to power. It is a long way from being one nation. |