Political Parties: Ed Milliband is Just Gordon Brown 2.0

Ed Milliband’s speech to the Labour party faithful at the National Policy Forum is hopefully of use in a clue in how the Labour Party is shaping up in direction and policy.

In the Sunday Telegraph, Matthew D’Ancona argues that Ed Miliband is simply Gordon 2.0 Tony Blair really understood Mondeo Man, while Gordon Brown knew that he needed to sound like he did. In that, and in many other senses, Ed Miliband is much more like the latter than the former, says Matthew D’Ancona:

He writes: Blinking meaningfully, deploying the glottal stop that is the ex officio mark of the modern Labour leader, and pausing for effect when he came to the important bits, Ed Miliband yesterday delivered what was, in practice, his first party conference speech. Yes, the setting was actually Labour’s National Policy Forum in Gillingham, rather than its annual plenary gathering. But Ed’s speech to the party’s conference in September was a hastily written text delivered in a daze and overshadowed by the party’s astonishment that it had somehow contrived to elect the wrong brother. It scarcely counted.

Another useful article on the state of the Labut Party is in the Newstatesman, the vissiparous mouth piece of the left, which has a piece on ‘Labour’s new civil war’. Here Dan Hodges writes: ‘All is not well within the Labour Party. David Miliband’s backers are regrouping. The Ballsites are preparing. And Ed Miliband’s supporters are watching their enemies anxiously. How long can this uneasy peace hold?’