Jolly well done on winning the leadership of the Labour Party.
Even I can see that it's a great achievement despite the fact that, as an evil Tory, I don't share your reverence for the Labour movement. I'm ashamed to admit I'm especially Philistine - I'll hear a Labourite waxing lyrical about the Party's concern for the common man and I'll think "What a load of self-serving cobblers," but then I'm boorish like that. I also have a tendency - which I know modern Labour abhors - to consider historical trends. They've rather put me off your lot too, what with the almost-but-not-really comical mishandling of the economy which has happened invariably under a Labour administration and, more recently, the flagrant lies and contempt for ordinary voters.
But I'm sure you will be different, Ed! How do I know this? Because you said so, incessantly, in your acceptance speech. I got the message loud and clear: change, change, change, change, we lost so we have to change, change, change, change. Powerful stuff. Dizzying.
In the spirit of co-operation (which is working rather well for your opponents - eek!) I thought I'd offer you some advice. It comes from a very lowly figure and not from a natural supporter, but I am a brother politico. Although I'm afraid I can't literally replace your brother. (Give him time Ed; he'll forgive and forget. Well, maybe. In fact you'd probably better dope him.) I can share some suggestions with you though!
Get a better speechwriter. I'm going to level with you here Ed. Your speech was platitudinous crap. The message needs to be clear, of course, but not asinine or a truism. It's time to ditch the "future fair for all", "our schools should be world-class", "murder for sport or profit is wrong" stating-the-incontestably-true-in-the-dismal-hope-it-sounds-profound schtick.
My lot only really made progress when they came up with some firm ideas. Far better to show the voters you've changed than to keep saying that you know you must change over and over and over like a sociopath trying to delude a jury.
I gather you're good on policy - why not prove it?
Everybody hates your mentor. Thought I'd better get this one off my chest now. Gordon Brown blocked the reforms that could have made New Labour a success, sulked for over a decade, and then when he did get the job which he thought was his birthright he made a ferocious hash of it.
DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN to conceal the fact that you basically agree with him on everything.
The unions are frightful. You've got the job now, just treat them as the useful idiots who put you there. It might feel funny at first, because you're their man as much as you're Gordon's, but trust me on this one. They're lead, in the main, by wildly irresponsible men who have little in common with their members but instead delight in hefty salaries, bullying people and wreaking havoc in a manner that would shame a drunk adolescent.
If you want to be Prime Minister (you do want that, don't you Ed?) then these people cannot be your friends any more.
Listen to everyday folk. Guardian leader writers and sociologists (no offence to your old man) are usually less sagacious than ordinary voters. Why not break with post-1997 tradition and ditch the palpable contempt? I'm not saying you should give Gillian Duffy a peerage, but don't stage manage every public meeting to ensure that you don't meet someone like her. It makes Labour look - oh what's the phrase - like enormous dreadful hypocrites who only exist to boss people around.
Be economically literate. Seriously Old Bean - you know full well that tax and spend is what got us into this mess and that tax and spend can't get us out of it. Gordon can't hurt you now - embrace fundamental truths instead of indulging in ivory tower fantasy.
For example: voters don't want to live like agrarian peasants, they can't all afford to shop at farmers' markets and just occasionally they'll want to escape Britain - even a Miliband Britain - so it's time to ditch the bourgeois environmental policies that you have hitherto championed.
You may not look like a grown-up yet but you can act like one.
Anyway Brother, GOOD LUCK. I'd offer my services, but I have an unwelcome yet insistently nagging hunch that you're going to end up doing a passable impression of an out-of-touch, union-dominated, unreconstructed Brownite leftie - and I'm not man enough to take the risk.
Best of British nonetheless, and don't forget to ENJOY IT. After all, it will be brutal at times - especially when the Prime Minister is wiping the floor with you PMQs and your colleagues are telling journalists that they made a hideous mistake.
Chin up, and try not to blink all the time like a little boy lost,
Tom
