Leave Ed alone!

Poor Ed Miliband has been having a hard time of late. The right wing press have been going after him in a campaign of almost unprecedented hatred for some time, and it may be working. There was the incident of him "forgetting" to mention the deficit in his speech to the labour party conference. Then there was the shot of him giving money to a beggar, though the way it was photographed made him look like he wished he was a thousand miles away. Then that shot of him going in for a kiss with his wife, who was clearly not up for it. All this is to say nothing of the disgraceful piece in the Daily Mail filled with irrational vitriol, not about him, but his father! Then of course, there was the embarrassment of that teeshirt...


Fact is, there are issues about his presentation. He looks a little, well, odd; he speaks a little, well, oddly, and perhaps most importantly, the way politics has shifted in the last 20 years means his policies often look not wholly dissimilar to his opponents. In short, he comes over as awkward, louche and wholly unsuited for the high office he already holds, and even less worthy of the even higher office to which he aspires. All this, and more, has conspired to make him the most unpopular labour leader since Neil Kinnock on a bad day. Worse, we are told, he is seen as electoral cyanide to Labour's hopes of winning the next election.


But is it really true? I can't help feeling that much of this is indeed down to the right-wing gutter press, who don't want to see him, or any other labour figure, lead Labour into power next year. And thus they have mounted a highly successful hatchet job on someone who is actually a highly skilled operator whose heart is actually in the right place.


Today's politics is all about soundbites. But I have to say I liked his latest pronouncement. He said he wanted to see the end of zero hours contracts at one end of the economic spectrum, and the end of zero taxes at the other. If he and his mates really are going to do something substantive about those worst excesses of capitalism if they get into power next year, they'd have my vote, right there.