How much trouble is Ed Miliband in? The lead story in yesterday’s Sunday Times reported some grim findings from YouGov’s latest survey: that most voters think he is ineffective; they don’t know what he stands for; and David Miliband would have been a better Labour leader.
Other recent YouGov data point the same way. David Cameron is regarded as stronger, more decisive, more charismatic and – despite recent government u-turns on the NHS and prison sentencing policy – sticking to what he believes in. On only one of eight attributes we test regularly, being in touch with ordinary people, does the leader of the opposition lead the Prime Minister.
Ah, say some of Ed Miliband’s defenders, opposition leaders often score badly in the polls in their early months: Cameron took two years to establish himself in voters’ minds as a possible Prime Minister.
Up to a point. In August 2007, 20 months into his leadership of the Tory party, Cameron was thought to be doing well by just 29%, and badly by 55% - a net rating of minus 26. Today, just nine months into his leadership, Miliband’s rating is not quite so bad, at minus 23 (well 30%, badly 53%).
However, that is not the whole story. The August 2007 reading was exceptional. This was during Gordon Brown’s brief honeymoon as Prime Minister. Cameron’s rating took a pounding – but only for a short time. In April, shortly before Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister, Cameron’s rating was plus 23 (well 54%, badly 31%). By October, after Brown announced he would not call an early election, Cameron was back to plus 20 (well 54%, badly 34%).
In fact, Cameron had a positive ratings from his earliest weeks as party leader, Nine months into his leadership, in September 2006 – the same stage that Miliband has now reached – his rating was plus 16 (well 49%, badly 33%). So Cameron then was far more popular than Miliband is today.
Yet if we consider voting intentions, the story is very different. In the same poll that gave Cameron a rating of plus 16 (and Blair, the Prime Minister, a rating of minus 34), the Conservative lead over Labour was just four points. In our latest survey, the opposition’s lead over the government is almost identical: five points.
There are two ways to view these figures. The first is that elections count votes, not leadership ratings. By the measure that really matters, Labour under Miliband is doing just as well as the Conservatives were under Cameron at the same stage in his leadership. That is what Miliband’s supporters would argue.
The second view is that Cameron outpolled his party in opposition (and, indeed, does so today), while Miliband is lagging his party. If Labour were led by someone whom voters rated highly, its lead over the Tories would be far greater.
I suspect that is true; but it does not mean that a putsch to remove Ed Miliband would help Labour. The spectacle of a party tearing itself apart could be immensely damaging. In any event, even if Ed Miliband were to stand down voluntarily, there is no guarantee that a new leader would be any more popular. Remember Iain Duncan Smith? The Tories replaced him in 2003 with Michael Howard because they regarded Duncan Smith as a vote loser. A fat lot of good it did them – under Howard, the Tories still won fewer than 200 seats.
There is another factor. ANY Labour leader would find it hard to make a positive impact at the moment. Nine months after one of Labour’s worst election defeats is too soon for buyers’ remorse to set in. Conservative support remains pretty well where it was at last year’s election. The reason why Labour is now in the lead is because Lib Dem support has collapsed, and much of its left-of-centre vote has turned, or returned, to Labour. This cannot be relied on to remain solid: Labour has not sealed the deal with these ex-Lib Dem voters. (In 2006 Cameron was in a different position: the Tories had been out of power for nine years, and millions of voters had grown disenchanted with the government.)
Labour, then, should hold its nerve. Yes, Ed Miliband’s ratings are poor; but this is an interim judgement by voters who, by and large, are paying little attention to the Labour Party. The time that matters will be a year from now, when the government has been in power for two years and the impact of its policies, especially spending cuts, is being felt on the ground. If Labour fails to win back the London mayoralty and Miliband’s ratings are still weak, that will be the time for the party to think long and hard about how to win the next general election, and who should be party leader.
