Ed Who?

From a restricted and desperately poor field of candidates, Labour chose Ed Miliband as its leader last autumn: then he (and Labour) more or less disappeared.

Why? Because for all the efforts of a largely hostile media to portray him as some kind of left alternative to his brother and Gordon Brown, even (ludicrously) a tool of the trade unions, Labour’s Mr Ed is following the policy of the famous and more popular talking horse of the 1960s TV series: “Mr Ed will never speak unless he has something to say”.

Miliband is silent because the party’s leadership is still rotten to the core with the politics of Blair, Brown and New Labour. It accepts the grim logic of capitalism, largely accepts the ConDem government’s case for cuts, and has only sought to haggle over the pace and scale of some of the cuts.

Despite the resistance, so far led by the students, to the implementation of policies outlined by Labour and its appointees, Mr Ed has chosen to resist not the government, but calls for him to speak to rallies of students fighting a massive increase in fees, and almost every opportunity to build Labour’s support by simply opposing what the ConDems have been doing.

Instead the entire Labour leadership has adopted the tactic of saying nothing – and watching Labour imperceptibly take the lead in opinion polls as anger centres on the Tories and their pathetic LibDem hod-carriers.

They have now convinced themselves that Labour is a shoo-in at the next election, after Cameron’s Thatcherite policies have antagonised voters, laid waste public services and privatised any remaining profitable sectors.

And they seem to be already looking ahead to their own likely policies when they step back into office, with many of their own more extreme Blairite policies having been implemented by the Tory-led coalition.

While Cameron in opposition shamelessly lied, promising to stop hospital closures and protect the NHS, Labour’s leadership is trying to avoid taking a stand that might soon prove an embarrassment if they regain power and continue once again – with the same lines of policy as before.

They are determined not to change policy, now or later. They no longer hold any “old Labour” values or principles of commitment to the welfare state and public services. They support free markets and private provision just as much as Cameron-Clegg.

That’s why they will not join the popular opposition to devastating cuts in local government, health, higher education and elsewhere.

This passive stance is shared by the most bankrupt and servile layers of the trade union bureaucracy, for whom the affiliation to the Labour Party has become not so much a lever to shape Labour policy as a tool through which New Labour has neutered the unions.

Why else would public sector unions like UNISON be so inactive in opposing massive job cuts, so reluctant to mobilise their members or even alert them to the dangers of the coming NHS Bill and other ConDem measures? Why did they decide in the autumn to wait until March 26 for even a protest demonstration, after many of the cuts have been finalised and decisions taken?

Of course Mr Ed’s passive, cynical stance is not shared by all Labour Party members: that’s why it is vital that local campaigns fighting cuts and privatisation should welcome any Labour activists who wish to break ranks and join the resistance. Once they join in common action they will soon learn the extent to which their own party has paved the way for many of Cameron’s worst policies.

A genuinely broad and inclusive movement is also vital if the ConDem offensive is to be stopped and defeated, and to ensure that Mr Ed’s line of passive gesture politics is discredited and supplanted by politics of mass struggle for a genuinely progressive alternative.