Ed Miliband's Success as Labour Leader

Today is traditionally seen as a time to look back on things, and what strikes me most about the past year is the realignment of politics.

The Tories appear to have got themselves in an election losing strategy of eternal austerity.  In doing so they have abandoned all the attempts at niceness, detoxification and so on that David Cameron originally based his leadership on.  Together with what looks like an increasingly dangerous threat from Nigel Farage, if I were a Tory I would be seriously worried by the next General Election.

Incidentally, although it tends to be the Political Right that bandies the term "class war", there is a strong argument that it is the aristocracy that has the strongest sense of class.  If one reads Lawrence Stone's classic The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641, this is one of his major points.  I recall being particularly struck by a short vignette of a ship wreck in the 1620s in that book where one of the gentleman held off the common crew from the only lifeboat with a drawn sword whilst allowing only his fellow aristocrats aboard.  Such an image might be considered emblematic of Mr Cameron's own approach.

Ed Miliband, in contrast, has had a remarkable year, especially in the second half.  He has managed to position Labour credibly on the economy, and crucially as on the side of ordinary people in terms of cost of living.  Even more remarkably, he managed to make the political weather in the Syria debate.  I cannot recall a parallel of the Leader of the Opposition effectively determining a major foreign policy decision in the way that Labour were able to stop military action in Syria.