MANCHESTER: With his party ahead in opinion polls eight months before an election, opposition leader Ed Miliband could be Britain’s next prime minister. Yet his Labour party is in the odd position of trying to win power despite, not thanks to him.
An Opinium/Observer poll released yesterday after his party’s conference, the last before May’s national election, showed Labour’s lead over Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives had been cut to two percentage points, down six points in a fortnight, after Miliband forgot vital parts of his speech.
Derided by the press as a socially awkward nerd, Miliband, an Oxford-educated career politician with the demeanour of an academic, is seen by some in and around his party as an electoral liability rather than an asset.
“If they (Labour) win, they’re winning it in spite of him,” Peter Simpson, a worker for a non-governmental organisation who last week attended Labour’s annual conference in Manchester, northern England, said.
“Everyone is worried about real core issues like the National Health Service and the Conservatives being seen to be in the pockets of the rich. They’ll win it because of that, not because of Miliband. If anything he could lose it for them.”
Anxious to defuse his image problem, something that has dogged him since he won the party leadership in 2010, Miliband took the unusual step of publicly mocking his own image in July, saying he rejected “a politics driven by image”.
But Britons, and some in his own party, remain sceptical amid signs that a perception among some voters that he cannot be trusted to run the economy or to reduce immigration — two of the country’s biggest pre-election issues — could be an obstacle to his party winning office.
A protege of former prime minister Gordon Brown, Miliband presents himself as a heavyweight left-wing intellectual who has a 10-year plan to rebalance the economy in favour of low-wage workers and society’s most vulnerable.
Yet he frequently finds his policies overshadowed by his perceived presentational shortcomings with the press mercilessly poking fun at the way he looks, talks, walks, and even eats. That has kept his personal ratings low.
In a YouGov poll released last week, 63 percent said they thought Miliband wasn’t up to the job of being prime minister.
He polls much better when it comes to how closely people perceive him to be in touch with ordinary people, but poorly when it comes to leadership and economic competence.
His centre-left party, most recently in power from
1997-2010, is more popular than him. Polls give it a lead over the Conservatives of between 1 and 8 points. The same polls show Cameron is much more popular among voters than Miliband.
Cameron, a former public relations executive, is a polished speaker. He has his own image problems though - some voters regard him as too keen to protect the narrow interests of the privileged part of society he comes from.
Cameron, 47, often gets the better of Miliband, 44, in weekly question and answer sessions in parliament which are televised and shown on TV news bulletins.
Reuters
BIRMINGHAM: British Prime Minister David Cameron is bidding to rally his Conservatives for victory at next year’s general election at their annual conference yesterday, with the party reeling from a defection and a sex scandal.
Cameron admitted it had “not been an ideal start” to the gathering in Birmingham, after one lawmaker left the day before to join the eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party, then a junior minister quit after being caught out sending an explicit photograph of himself.
The centre-right Conservatives risk losing a handful of seats and thousands of votes to Ukip at the May general election — possibly enough to cost them victory.
Cameron told BBC television the defection of MP Mark Reckless to Ukip was “frustrating... counter-productive and rather senseless”. He said the aims Reckless claimed to be pursuing were “only” achievable through a Conservative government.
The conference comes a week before an election which could see Ukip land its first seat in the House of Commons at the Conservatives’ expense.
Douglas Carswell, the first Tory MP who switched sides to Ukip, is expected to be re-elected in the coastal town of Clacton, southeast England, on October 9, threatening a major embarrassment for Cameron.
The Conservatives currently govern Britain in a coalition with the smaller Liberal Democrats but are vying to win enough seats to govern alone in 2015.
If they do so, they have promised to hold a referendum in 2017 on whether Britain should continue to be a member of the European Union.
Europe has long been an open wound for the Tories, with many rank and file members wanting to leave the EU altogether. Cameron and other senior figures back continued membership, while reforming London’s relationship with Brussels.
Within hours of the defection, civil society minister Brooks Newmark, a 56-year-old married father of five, was exposed in the Sunday Mirror newspaper sending a graphic image of himself to an undercover male journalist posing as a young PR girl called Sophie.
He told ITV television he had been a “complete fool” who had “no-one to blame but myself,” adding: “I am so sorry.”
Cameron said ahead of the conference: “I have to admit, it’s not been an ideal start. “But the truth is, these things, frustrating as they are, they don’t change the fundamental choice at the election.”
Opinion polls put the main opposition Labour Party a few points ahead of the Conservatives, although Cameron’s personal ratings are higher than those of Labour leader Ed Miliband.
The conference opens with a debate about the state of the United Kingdom.
This comes after Scotland voted on September 18 to reject independence in a close race which has opened a debate about whether more powers should be devolved from London to other parts of Britain.
AFP
