Labour party

There’s been a lot said about Ed Balls’ Observer piece on immigration. But the most striking thing about it to my mind is that it shows that Balls has made the transition to an opposition mindset.   Take his proposal that ‘Europe's leaders need to revisit the Free Movement Directive’. This is classic opposition politics; suggest something that sounds good but it practically impossible. The other EU member states are unlikely to agree to agree to renegotiating this directive. But the Tories can hardly point this out; emphasising the UK government’s impotence when it comes to changing the rules of the game would hardly go down well with the Tory base. So Balls gets to make the weather on this point.

Meet Ed Balls, the candidate for Mrs Duffy. As the race for nominations closes, the Labour leadership candidates are beginning to focus on party members. With varying degrees of conviction, the contenders have identified immigration as the issue the party must address if it is to reconnect with those voters who spurned it. Ed Balls is that analysis's most fervent advocate. He devoted an article in the Observer to the subject.  Balls argued that there has been too much migration from Eastern Europe, and it has caused economic and social ills in communities such as the one he represents. In hindsight, Britain should have accepted the transitional controls during the eastern bloc’s accession in 2004.

I wonder if the Labour leadership contenders worry that the previous generation’s forthcoming memoirs have created more excitement than them? I would be. The insipid campaign has laid bare the paucity of talent on Labour’s benches, and the party’s ideological exhaustion. No serving Cabinet minister lost their seat at the election; Tony Blair aside, the Milibands and Ed Balls are the best Labour has. That’s a grim prospect if your colour’s red. Ed Balls has the panache of a Vauxhall Zafira; and the two Milibands are trapped in a Beckettian whirl of meaningless jargon, convinced that using abstract nouns is a mark of vital intelligence. It isn’t; it’s irritating, and voters spurn it.

Harriet Harman is irresistibly attracted to the absurd. This morning, she has decreed that the shadow cabinet be split 50:50 between men and women. Naturally, she would pervert Labour party rules to ensure the quota was a statutory requirement. To be honest, I’ve lost track of Harman’s myriad ruses to increase the female presence in high politics; and to be equally honest I’m no longer interested. It’s Harman’s schtick, leave her to it. Speaking to the national Unite conference, Harman made some sensible points about Labour’s electoral failure.

There was a great sense of pathos after the election, when Jack Straw was the only Labour politician who could recall the shadow cabinet room’s location. It must have been surreal for those who knew only government. The loneliness of opposition would have struck at last week’s Queen’s Speech. The party must renew whilst avoiding the internecine struggle that condemned the Tories to 13 years in opposition. Fantasy politics won’t be sufficient. Introspection must yield a coherent and credible agenda, free from the undeliverable abstractions and the oscillation between arrogance and desperation that characterised the Brown government.

David Cameron's speech today was, in many respects, the one he needed to make: the clean-break speech, which trashed Labour's record on the economy while also outlining how the coalition would deliver us to the sunny uplands. As it happens, it was also quite effective: a blend of policy specifics and punchy rhetoric.  And while we'd heard many of those specifics before – corporation tax cuts, reduced regulation, carbon capture, etc. – they cohered here as they rarely have done before. The most earcatching apsect of the speech, though, was the emphasis Cameron placed on government intervention.  Yes, there was a solid core of small state fundamentals.

The stock response of many Coffee Housers will be ‘Who Cares?’ but surely Ed Balls will be nominated for the Labour leadership? Labour may recognise that a Balls leadership would likely end in Footian catastrophe but he will, in all certainty, proceed to the next round. Surely? Like Pete and Ben Brogan, I reckon Balls and David Miliband allowed their supporters to declare in a steady trickle, hoping to build momentum as the June 8 deadline neared. In which case it is telling that Miliband Major has changed his tactics in response to Miliband Minor’s sudden surge. David Miliband now has the backing of 48 MPs, a very significant advance on yesterday’s figure. By contrast, Ed Balls languishes on 15 nominations.

One of the mildly diverting features of the Labour leadership contest so far is this nominations counter on the party website.  Ed Miliband was the first to pass the crucial 33 nominations barrier yesterday, while David Miliband managed it earlier today.  Ed Balls is still lagging behind on 14, Andy Burnham has 8, and poor John McDonnell and Diane Abbott both have none.  Yep, the excitement is reaching fever pitch. There's one curious feature to it all, though, highlighted by Danny Finkelstein earlier.  Why have some of the candidates – or their nominators – been holding back on their nominations?  David Miliband, for instance, has considerably more than 37 backers, and could surely have crossed the 33 nominations mark days ago.