Writing a newspaper column means never having to be right:
May 5, 2015 column in the Independent
But some of that enthusiasm is positive, and for this Ed Miliband takes the credit. Regardless of who forms whatever kind of government (and assuming the opinion polls are accurate), Miliband will come out of this election cycle as the clear winner, and deservedly so. A sensational Opposition leader, he has steered his party clear of the widely anticipated internecine strife. Labour are now remarkably united, while the Tories face civil war if they scramble another coalition together. For five years David Cameron deftly walked the line between the Lib Dems and his own back-bench headbangers. If he clings to power, he will be at the mercy of his far right and will surely lose his footing.
Yet what makes Miliband so promising is something grander than a knack for party management. It is perspective. He was the first major politician to see the leftward shift in the political centre of gravity, which still remains invisible to the terminally obtuse. For all the policy vagueness and the campaign cross-dressing, he has acted on that vision to present a clear choice.
May 8, 2015 column in the Independent
The two countries to which we awoke seem to have nothing in common, nothing whatever to bind them. England, as those of us naive enough to have forgotten are reminded, is an essentially right-wing country which is happy to blind itself to the victimisation of the poor and disable. It feels older, tireder and more sclerotic than ever today.