Things just haven't gone Labour's way in the last couple of years, have they? Ever since, well, 2005, it's just been one disappointment after another. There wasn't exactly a mighty fanfare Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, and since then the party has been locked into a cycle of electoral defeats and bitter in-fighting. After the 2010 electoral disaster, which everyone and his dog had seen coming at least two years previously, Labour were meant to move on. It was time for a fresh new start, an end to the Brown/Blair bickering, to the ideological divide at the heart of the party.
Well, that didn't exactly go to plan, did it?
The latest revelations, namely the apparent Treachery of Balls, have now been followed by Ed trying rather lamely to shift a bit of the blame onto the Tories. Ed really doesn't have much of a defence; he's been caught red handed with his hand on the knife, for once, so he's just going to have to take this one on the chin. Good news, perhaps, for his boss Ed Miliband, who can stop looking over his shoulder and wearing that kevlar stab-vest around Westminster - for a couple of weeks at least. The description of Gordon Brown as a Volvo couldn't have been more spot on, though. That was masterful.
I mean, come on Ed, you're not really helping yourself here. "Yeah, well, I can't deny any of it, but it was the Tories wot leaked it!" That just makes you look like such a...such a...a politician. And nobody likes politicians! That's why they all strive to play the "I'm just a normal guy, just like you, yeah?" card. Well, except Ken Clarke. There is no accounting for Ken Clarke.
Although,Ed does have a smidgeon of a point - this is really an excellent time for these letters to be released from a Conservative perspective. David Cameron has found himself pulled to and fro in an increasingly ideological contest at the heart of the coalition government and indeed his own party, and was beginning to struggle to appear above it all - an image he strives to maintain at all times. So just when it looked as if he was going to get drawn into the left-wing right-wing grubbing, all of a sudden there are these papers that make Labour look infinitely more grubby! Underlining nicely the left/right divide that was at the heart of New Labour and which echoes through the fractured Ed Miliband camp like a death knell.
That's the most damaging thing about these leaks - they remind us that despite the absence of the two men themselves, Labour are still utterly dominated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. We saw it when Ed was elected instead of his brother David. We saw it in Ed's first shadow cabinet, the desperate attempts to keep both sides happy. And we saw it when Ed Balls rose to the shadow cabinet brief after the affairs of the Johnson family suddenly became public knowledge. Really, the current Labour leadership need to grow up, move on and form their own identity - Ed's staunch refusal to build any kind of a policy base isn't helping - or they're going to be in opposition for a long, long time. Which is a frankly ludicrous position to be in, given how utterly rubbish and equally divided the parties in government are...
