Ed Miliband fudges the union link, zero hours contracts and free schools

By Harry Phibbs
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It is difficult to say how anyone could regard the Labour leader Ed Miliband's speech to the TUC this morning as a triumph. How wasn't cheered enough - the reception was lacklustre. So he could not claim to be inspiring and motivated his core supporter.

But now was he booed enough either. This wasn't a Kinnock moment - of the type when his predecessor confronted the Militant Tendency.

The only really rousing point came when a questioner said he was confusing.

I got under way with a reference to the Conservative Prime Minister Lord Derby legalising the trade unions. He was the 14th Earl of Derby said Mr Miliband pointedly. (When you think about the Labour leader is the 14th Mr Miliband.) But Lord Derby name was Edward. Would he be called "Red Ed" today for saying trade unions should be legal. Er, no.

Miliband's defeat in the trade union battle threatens Labour's entire election strategy

By Mark Wallace
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Ed Miliband's increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the unions has many facets: the potential perverting of democracy, the gloomy prospects for Labour's finances, the insights into Miliband's weak character and weaker authority, the list goes on.

Left wing optimists would argue that in the long run it makes little difference to the electorate. "It's a Westminster bubble story", Owen Jones mutters to himself as he tries to sleep. 

That may be true in part. The story has many twists and turns, claims and counter-claims, and most people have more important things to do than follow it closely. However, Falkirk worried Miliband enough to try to tackle it, so even Labour think the issue has some cut through. By the same token, his failure in attempting to deal with the problem will reach some of the electorate and cause damage.

Whether people follow the detail or not, though, the symptoms of the row will reach everyone.

A clear, direct strategy is absolutely essential in any communications, but particularly in politics. Blair's New Labour strategy was written on one sparse page - from its overriding message to the tactical messages that flowed from it. Election winners tend to be able to sum up what they are about in one sentence - and that clarity means everyone else, friend or foe, can do so, too.

A clear strategy makes a campaign focused, concise and free of stumbling blocks.

The union row, and his failure to emerge from it victorious, means Miliband now cannot create and pursue such a strategy (even if he was capable of doing so in the first place).

He knows that for a strategy to be created in simplicity and to remain so when it is implemented, there must be a clear chain of command with one ultimate authority. His need to keep the union leaders happy, and the ever-present threat of them intervening publicly, makes such organisation impossible.

He knows that the messages used must be in keeping with the strategy and targeted at the right audiences. But his internal political and financial conflictsforce him to adopt messages that the public dislike, such as on welfare reform.

He knows that the troops implementing a strategy on the ground must be loyal to its architects and its aims. But Unite and others now boast of "their" MPs, and have reportedly tried to seize ever more influence within a number of Constituency Labour Parties.

There is an old military maxim: order plus counter-order equals disorder. Thanks to his failure to deal with Labour's trade union problem, Ed Miliband is about to demonstrate how true that saying is.

In July, Miliband said Falkirk was the dying "old politics". Now, he gives it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

By Paul Goodman
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The deal seems to be that Karie Murphy is reinstated as a Labour member (which pleases Len McCluskey), that she withdraws from the contest for the Party's Parliamentary candidacy in Falkirk (which pleases Ed Miliband) and that Labour says that there is no proof of wrongdoing either by them or Unite - which will delight McClusky and embarrass Miliband, who denounced Unite's behaviour in Falkirk as "a politics that was closed. A politics of the machine. A politics that is rightly hated. What we saw in Falkirk" - the Labour leader concluded, as recently as July - "is part of the death-throes of the old politics".

To which the only proper response can be that the old politics seems to be alive and well this morning.  Michael Crick's tweet at the top of this piece reports that witnesses to wrongdoing were allegedly persuaded to withdraw evidence under pressure: Miliband will be well aware of these claims.  He evidently decided that, with the TUC Conference looming next week, it was better for him to suffer a final embarrassment over Falkirk yesterday than remain exposed to it during the coming week. And as Dan Hodges points out, "the Falkirk constituency stays in special measures, McCluskey’s favoured candidate will not be contesting the seat".  So although Miliband is embarrassed by the deal, he isn't humiliated.

The problem for the Labour leader is that voters, in so far as they are following the Falkirk story at all, won't grasp the niceties: all they'll see is that Miliband said something was badly wrong in Falkirk...and that Labour has now told the world to move on - as far as Falkirk is concerned - and that there's nothing to see.  The whole sorry business doesn't exactly project an image of strength, exactly the quality Miliband will need to see his proposed union funding reform plans through; exactly the quality which, on immigration and welfare and Leveson and Syria, he hasn't convinced voters that he possesses.

GMB cuts its Labour affiliaton fees by 87% - and the balance of power shifts even further to Unite

By Mark Wallace
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It has now been two months since Ed Miliband made his big speech intended to nip in the bud the crisis over Labour's trade union funding.

We still don't have any answers to the many questions about how his reforms will work in detail - most notably whether he will reject money from unions who refuse to implement an opt-in and how Labour's constitution will be rewritten. 

But we can already see some of the fallout of his inept response to teh scandal.

In high dudgeon, the GMB have cut the affiliation fee paid to Labour from £1.2m to £150,000. Whereas the union previously automatically affiliated 420,000 people to Labour, it now estimates that those who would actually choose to affiliate only number 50,000.

The strange death of liberal interventionist Labour

By Harry Phibbs
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How would Tony Blair have voted on Thursday night had he still been an MP? Given his article in The Times one can only conclude that his only objection to the Government's motion would be that it was not stronger.

Several have noted that Mr Blair damaged his own cause of liberal intervention around the globe by exaggerating the evidence to go to war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. That is not to say that the war was unjustified. The difficulty was that Mr Blair used dishonest means to secure approval for that conflict. He felt the ends justified the means.

Yet it is still remarkable the extent to which that legacy has prompted the Labour Party's internationalist credentials to be abandoned. Not a single Labour MP voted for the Government's motion on Syria. I can only identify four - Ben Bradshaw, Meg Munn, John Woodcock and Ann Clywd - who were present for the debate but abstained on the Government's motion. The Labour MP Mike Gapes clearly believes a military strike would be the right thing to do - yet he voted against the Government.

The Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy is a member of the Henry Jackson Society advisory council. He surely believes that what David Cameron said was true. Mr Murphy could have resigned and voted with the Government. It might have made a difference. But he didn't. You don't really expect much from George Galloway. I can understand why Michael Gove directed his anger at Mr Murphy.

Ed Miliband should be delighted the Government are swearing about him - but events may soon spoil his mood

By Mark Wallace
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“No 10 and the Foreign Office think Miliband is a f****** c*** and a copper-bottomed s***..." said one Government source.

So reports the Times, about the Labour leader's decision to go back on his earlier agreement with the Government's strategy on Syria. It's not every day the Government brief newspapers that the Leader of the Opposition is a bleeping bleep and an absolute bleep.

Miliband should be over the moon - where once the Conservatives laughed about him, now they swear about him. I'm serious; it's a definite step up, from inspiring ridicule to disrupting the Government's plans enough to make them angry.

The more successful the Opposition, the more they frustrate the Government of the day.

The polls also suggest Ed's decision to wreck Cameron's approach has the agreement of the public, and in some circles he's being praised as a hero.

There are two reasons he should beware, though.

The first lies in events in Syria. While a week may be a long time in politics, it can be an aeon in war. Delaying any action against Assad might look good now, but the ball is effectively now back in the dictator's court - if he uses the extra time to massacre more civilians then the shine will swiftly wear off.

That isn't a party political point, it's a grim reality. There were plenty of politicians who were supposedly wise and sensible for staying out of Bosnia, until a genocide was so clearly underway that everyone suddenly started forgetting the role they played in allowing it to happen.

The second threat to Miliband's newfound momentum lies in the tale of why he so suddenly changed tack.

As Dan Hodges reports, Miliband definitely changed his mind between meeting David Cameron during Wednesday afternoon and 5.15pm, when he called the Prime Minister to withdraw his support. The question is why did he do so?

I severely doubt it was down to the protests of Diane Abbott or the Stop the War Coalition. Nor did any new facts come to light which might have led him to reverse his position. I suspect elements of the Shadow Cabinet simply refused to back him - and they were strong enough to force an about-turn.

Everyone's views on this will understandably be coloured in the short term by their opinion on whether Britain should or should not intervene. The uncomfortable fact for Ed Miliband is that, just as his eventual reputation is now in the hands of Bashar al-Assad, his decision-making may well not be under his control either.

Ed Miliband's back from holiday - which explains his welfare flip-flops

By Mark Wallace
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Remember Ed Miliband's "laser-like focus on welfare spending"? Or Ed Balls' sudden conversion to "iron discipline" on the budget?

How about Miliband's repeated insistence that his party wouldn't commit to reversing any cut in spending unless it was "fully funded".

I do, if only slightly, but it appears the Labour leader has completely forgotten them during the course of the summer holidays. In the heat, he's taken off his welfare cap and donned flip-flops instead.

The New Statesman reports that Miliband will pledge to reverse the so-called "bedroom tax" in the approach to the 2015 election - scrapping a welfare reform that saves over £450m a year. Apparently, this is an element of One Nation Labour - a nation united under debt.

Like Foot, Kinnock, Hague and Howard, Miliband fails the Capable Leader test. Is he doomed too?

By Paul Goodman
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As Tony Blair marched inexorably on towards his 1997 landslide victory, I and fellow members of the Daily Telegraph's leader writing team clung to a pathetic last hope, like the bedraggled remnants of a Native American tribe holding fast to its ghost dance.  No British political leader with less hair than his opponent, we solemnly reassured each other, had won a recent general election.  Remember Thatcher and Kinnock!  Wilson and Home! Macmillan and Gaitskell! John Major, with his mop of grey hair, would win out over that incipient baldy, Blair.

This desparate last hope turned out to be a pile of old horsefeathers (and isn't soundly based, in  any event: Edward Heath had more hair than Harold Wilson in 1974, and lost to him twice).  I mention this to give some context to the claim I mention next.  IPSOS-Mori has been asking the question "Who is the most capable Prime Minister?" for a very long time.  No party leader since Thatcher has emerged as Prime Minister after an election in which her opponent was judged as most capable.

Shapps's minions torment Labour over its "plans to increase borrowing by £2,960 for every working family".

By Paul Goodman
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Part of the horror of Opposition is that one is pronged by a Morton's Fork.  Make no policy commitments, and you've nothing to say.  But make policy commitments, and the Government will merrily tot them up and reach some terrifying total.

A freak storm strikes the Fabian Society library, scattering gobbledegook in its wake - it's David Miliband's Wonknado

By Mark Wallace
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Last night, one of the greatest so-bad-it's-good films ever made hit British television screens. In Sharknado, a freak tornado tears through the sea off Los Angeles, scattering sharks across the city.

It's even worse than it sounds, but it's ok because the special effects are awful, there are several washed-up former stars and the love scene involves characters cutting their way out of a Great White. With a chainsaw.

Never one to pass up a commercial opportunity, David Miliband has produced a sequel impressively quickly, though I'm not sure it will prove as big a hit.

In his latest New Statesman article, it seems a freak tornado has torn through the library of the Fabian Society, scattering technical gobbledegook across Westminster. In short, it's a Wonknado.