Analysis: Miliband’s ‘cost of living’ tactic pays off
Ed Miliband’s focus on the cost of living gives him greater political room to manoeuvre while discrediting Conservative attacks.
By Ian Dunt
Ed Miliband’s much-belittled leadership of the Labour party tends to enjoy its best moments in relative obscurity. But quietly, the leader of the opposition is developing a smart, effective critique of the government’s performance.
Today’s press conference saw Miliband make good use of his previous efforts to establish a theme on the ‘cost of living’. This little-commented on change in Labour’s rhetoric is potentially highly effective. It accomplishes three things: It taps into a strong and widespread public sentiment, it offers considerable room for political manoeuvre and it works to counter government attacks on Labour.
The increasing cost of living stirs up public emotion more than public sector cuts do. Everyone suffers from inflation rising at twice the rate of pay. It’s the strongest emotional connection most voters have to our economic predicament. Most haven’t been made unemployed, and most do not work for the public sector. Most will be frankly unfussed by whether their local library stays open or not. But the price of bread and fuel affects everyone. It’s the politics of a trip to the supermarket.
The cost of living will only get worse over the year, with projections for RPI and CPI both making ugly reading. Miliband was wise and far-sighted to mark out his territory on the issue well before it’s been properly recognised by most political pundits.
The issue also offers considerable space on left and right. Witness the way Miliband was able to effortlessly attack the government on petrol prices today, promising to force a Commons vote on the subject on Wednesday in a bid to get the VAT rise cancelled. The idea that it could be paid for with a new bankers’ bonus was pure populism, of course, but no worse for it.
The rhetoric speaks to the lower middle classes – Daily Mail and Express readers – who foam at the mouth with each trip to the supermarket and then lose it entirely when they stop off at the gas station on the way out. With recent events in the Middle East and north Africa that phenomenon has gotten even worse, and Ed Balls was careful to frame his argument while admitting there’s very little David Cameron or George Osborne could do about that. But a pre-exiting ‘cost of living’ message allowed the opposition to ignore that unfortunate causal history. By politicising it away from international developments, Labour finds itself able to make political capital from a profoundly emotional and previously off-limits issue. All thanks to the focus on ‘cost of living’.
Most importantly, the agenda allows Miliband to offer a critique of the government without settling into his old Labour role of defending a large state. By defending the struggling voter, rather than merely opposing cuts, Miliband neatly sidesteps Tory criticism that he is an unreconstructed pro-state old Labourite. He also places himself on the side of the voter against a prime minister he will caricature as cold and arrogant.
In its own way, Miliband’s move resembles the reframing of Lib Dem policy under Nick Clegg before the election. Clegg’s commitment to taking the poorest out of income tax allowed him to brand his efforts ‘liberal redistribution’. Instead of Labour’s ‘authoritarian redistribution’, which merely invested in public services (effectively telling voters how to spend wisely) the Lib Dems promised to give the poorest more money and let them spend it as they saw fit. Little commented on at the time, it allowed Clegg to move to the right without alienating the left of the party.
It was through this sort of move that later support for Conservative spending plans could be framed as ideologically coherent compared with previous Liberal policies. Reframing distribution as the process of putting more money in people’s pockets rather than renewing investment in public services, opens a whole host of previously off-limit political areas without alienating the party’s core support.
‘Cost of living’ is smart stuff, implicitly changing Labour’s image, opening up new political space and connecting to a strongly-felt sense of injustice among most voters. It will come in very useful as Miliband seeks to make inroads on the coalition’s support this year.
