As the Tories revolt, Ed is given an easy ride

Mr Blair also rightly identified that with money being tight – what with the
return of the cycle of boom and bust that he used to boast about having
abolished – a Labour government would have to make less money go further.
Logically, that should mean reform of the public services, which implies
more competition and less reliance on state monopolies.

Markets may be demonised by some of Mr Miliband's friends, but at root they
are a mechanism for allocating scarce resources more efficiently. This is
Blairite territory, on which Mr Miliband is not remotely comfortable. His
inclinations are thoroughly anti-market – and he is almost always for
spending more money that the country does not have.

When he attempts to deal with the financial situation, in speeches or
interviews, he tends to go round in circles. Mr Miliband would borrow even
more than the Government (from the financial markets he does not like) and
spend it in ways which he says would "create growth", although it is never
clear how. He says he is for lower taxes (except on bankers), higher
spending and much higher wages. At this rate, motherhood and apple pie will
also feature prominently in the manifesto.

It is not just on the economy and public spending that Mr Miliband is getting
away with it. If Labour has any substantial policies on crime or justice, it
is keeping them top secret. The party wants more police, naturally, which
can only mean yet more spending. Immigration, which increased so
dramatically on Labour's watch, is simply noted; the party's spokesmen also
oppose every single attempt to bring order to the country's out-of-control
welfare budget.

The Labour leadership's European policy is equally thin. The party opposes a
referendum and relies heavily on invoking "the national interest" – that
most vapid of slogans, used down the decades to validate all sorts of
horrors, from appeasement to our proposed membership of the single currency.
Mr Miliband cannot, or will not, explain what he would do or argue for
beyond vague references to wanting the reform of the EU. He says he wants
the UK to be "in the room", although what its representatives would be
saying in the room is never specified.

On this threadbare basis – and with the Conservative Party preoccupied by its
own troubles – the Labour leader stands a good chance of winning the next
election. It should not be forgotten that he starts with a tremendous
advantage, in that those voters who deserted Labour after the Iraq war have
returned in numbers sufficient to rebuild the core vote to a level much
higher than when Gordon Brown had finished his work. Thanks to the bias of
the electoral system, Mr Miliband does not need much on top of that to get
across the threshold of No 10.

If he really is to be prime minister, or if he is to be stopped, the Labour
leader is sorely in need of testing. For as it stands, Ed Miliband is
drifting towards Downing Street.

Source:
http://www.news.ezonearticle.com/2013/02/03/as-the-tories-revolt-ed-is-given-an-easy-ride/