There’s no spring in Ed Miliband’s step at the moment. Instead, there’s a slight limp.
This is not a reflection of his political fortunes – but the result of stitches in his knee after a nasty fall on a coastal path in Devon.
The fall also broke the Labour leader’s wrist, for which he had an operation under general anaesthetic. Miliband set up a makeshift desk over his hospital bed so that he could work on his correspondence as he recovered.
This Stakhanovite behaviour reflects the fact he knows that, in two months, he’ll have to make a choice. Will he or won’t he sign up to the Coalition’s spending plans for 2015-16? If he does, he will be conceding that Labour will not – at least straightaway – reverse the changes that the Coalition has made and it has so bitterly opposed.
These numbers will be announced to the Commons by George Osborne on June 26. From that moment, there will be intense pressure on Labour to say what it will do. As one Miliband confidant tells me, this is a debate Labour can’t afford to duck: if it wins the next Election, they would be in the firing line when the cuts are being implemented.
There is no risk-free option. If he signs up to the plans, he will infuriate the austerity-hating Left. He’ll also undercut his own claims of radicalism. Politicians who want to end a 30-year consensus don’t come to office promising to continue their opponent’s policies.
But if he rejects them, he will be opening himself up to attack from both Coalition parties. The Tories, in particular, will claim this is proof Labour has not learnt anything from the financial crisis. That its only answer is to spend money the country doesn’t have.
One senior Labour figure concedes that the question is: ‘How much more spending can we argue for when Labour isn’t trusted on spending?’
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Ed Balls, the shadow Chancellor, wants to leave a decision on this until as close to the Election as possible. His view is that Labour needs to know about the state of the economy in 2015 before it says what it will do.
It is how he and Gordon Brown handled this question before the 1997 Election, when Brown left it as late as possible to announce that Labour would follow Tory spending plans for the first two years of the Parliament.
And that infuriates some senior figures: they complain Balls’ reaction to any problem is to point to what he and Brown did before the Election, and then propose to do exactly the same again.
Announcement: George Osborne will announce the Coalition's spending plans for 2015-16 on June 26Those closest to Miliband indicate that the Labour leader’s current thinking is to announce sooner rather than later that Labour won’t sign up to the Coalition plan.
Although, there will be no announcement on June 26, they hint that Miliband will make it clear by this autumn that Labour isn’t going to go along with the Coalition’s plans.
In Miliband’s circle, they want to avoid everything they say on the economy being overshadowed by this ‘will they, won’t they’ question. They also know that Miliband can’t decry what the Coalition is doing while keeping open the option of copying them.
This decision, which will be the biggest of Miliband’s leadership so far, is based on the belief that the voters won’t think that the deficit is the biggest issue in 2015. The Milibandites think they will be much more interested in the cost of living.
Miliband himself also wants to run a big Election campaign, making the case for radical economic change. He won’t be able to do that if he spends months refusing to say whether he will accept Osborne’s spending numbers.
If Miliband does go down this route, he’ll be in for a fight. Both Coalition parties believe, with some justification, that the public still doesn’t trust Labour not to spend too much.
One senior Downing Street figure declares that ‘the screw is going to come down on them hard’. They will attack Labour for wanting to repeat Brown’s mistakes.
Miliband has only two years to go from being Leader of the Opposition to a credible, alternative leader of the country: something that only a quarter of voters currently think he is. If Miliband is going to make this leap, he is going to have to get this call on spending right.
Tories shaping up for a spot of judge bashing Battle: The Government is on a collision course with the courts. Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, pictured, will on Tuesday announce plans to tighten up the rules around applying for a reviewThe Government is on a collision course with the courts.
Tory Cabinet Ministers are ‘intensely frustrated’ by how judicial reviews are being used to hold up their decisions and say they are being used as a power grab by the judiciary.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling will on Tuesday announce plans to tighten up the rules around applying for a review. One plan is a radical increase in the cost of applying in order to end frivolous applications.
Grayling wants to go further. He thinks it wrong that illegal immigrants are using these reviews to hold up their deportation.
Any Bill, however, will have to overcome Liberal Democrat opposition.
There is also the problem that, as long as the Human Rights Act remains in place – which it will as long as the Lib Dems are in government – there are huge numbers of grounds on which a judicial review can be applied for.
In this, as in many other areas, David Cameron is going to need a majority to make the changes he wants.
This country has never devised a technical qualification anywhere near as respected as A-levels.
The Coalition hopes to remedy this with its announcement tomorrow of a Technical Baccalaureate.
It will be open to only those who get at least a C in GCSE maths. They’ll then be required to pass a course equivalent to A-level maths and obtain a profession-specific qualification.
The aim is that it will be demanding enough to command the respect of employers and students alike. The Coalition will also be hoping that it trumps Ed Miliband’s own proposals for a Tech Bacc.
James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator
