Labour leader sets political weather by following in the footsteps of President Jed Bartlet who spoke from the heart
Share 129
inShare1
Ed Miliband is setting the political weather this week because he is following the example of President Jed Bartlet in the West Wing, played by Martin Sheen Photograph: Channel 4
A good leader of the opposition scores points off the government. A strong leader of the opposition sets the political weather.
Ed Miliband, largely written off as a weak leader for the past nine months, has gone from the first goal to the second in little more than a week.
Miliband's extraordinary rollercoaster of a ride over the past week will reach a new high on Wednesday when the Tories and the Liberal Democrats support a Labour motion calling on Rupert Murdoch to abandon his bid for BSkyB.
The vote may make no legal difference to the bid which is now being examined by the Competition Commission. But it will send an almighty signal to Murdoch who knows that it will be difficult for him to take full control of BSkyB if parliament says no.
For the first time Labour critics are uttering a thought they assumed would never enter their minds. This is that they cannot imagine David Miliband setting the agenda in the same decisive way as his younger brother has over the past week.
In a superb column in the Times on Tuesday, Rachel Sylvester wrote that Ed Miliband is living out one of the finest moments of the West Wing. Aides of the Labour leader are so delighted with his performance that they are ending meetings declaring:
Let Bartlet be Bartlet.
Miliband needs no reminder of what this means because he was studying at Harvard when US liberals, in despair at the presidency of George Bush, tuned in for their political fix of life under a fantasy Democrat president in the West Wing.
Aides to Bartlet coined the great phrase after a brain storming session as they worked out how to respond to a drubbing he had received in his first mid-term elections. They decided that the best strategy was to allow Bartlet to follow the famous advice of Polonius to be true to be himself. Their new strategy was designed to contrast with Bill Clinton who famously responded to the appalling mid-term results in 1994 by tacking to the right.
The strategy worked for Bartlet because the West Wing's consultants – former Clinton aide Dee Dee Myers and former Ronald Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan – wanted to show that voters tend to respond favourably to a sincere politician. Obviously West Wing fans gloss over the fact that Clinton's move to the right worked for him when he won a second term in 1996.
Miliband is doing well this week because he is following in the footsteps of Bartlet and is being true to himself. His attacks on News International ring true because he has never made much of an effort suck up to the Murdoch empire.
There were times during the Labour leadership contest when some fans of New Labour asked whether Miliband was concerned that he was alienating Murdoch. The future Labour leader said he didn't care and would speak his mind.
But the Labour leadership contest showed that Ed Miliband does not have a completely pure record. It emerged last September that David Miliband had been invited to dinner by James Murdoch. Rebekah Brooks was also due to attend the dinner. It turned out that Ed Miliband had been invited to dinner by Dominic Mohan, editor of the Sun. Brooks was also due to attend that dinner.
For the moment, though, Miliband is riding high. Downing Street will be taking stock. It will support Miliband's call for Rupert Murdoch to drop his bid for full control of BSkyB. But it is just a week since Downing Street sources were critical of Miliband for "betting the farm" on an outright assault on News International.