Opposition parties have a habit of picking the wrong leaders

When the Tories went into opposition after their historic defeat in 1997, they picked William Hague as leader. His election was a disaster with the Tories winning only 1 seat in the 2001 general election. Following their ejection by the electorate in 1979, the Labour party elected Michael Foot as leader. He went on the lead the Labour party to one of their worst defeats in the 1983 general election.

Notice a pattern here? Governing parties that are pushed into opposition tend to learn the wrong lessons of their election defeat. They take the electorate for granted and retreat into their own idealogical comfort zone. They get into a mindset that the electorate somehow got it all wrong and will eventually mend their ways and vote for them again. They find it very hard to absorb the fact that maybe their policies were wrong.

And so it is with Ed Miliband. The new Labour leader refuses to recognise that his party tested the theory of tax and spend to destruction and that we now have a massive deficit that is entirely Labour's fault. He is happy to dance to the tune of his union paymasters rather than appeal to the electorate as a whole. Labour never warmed to the new Labour project. It begrudgingly went along with Tony Blair because they were hungry for power after nearly two decades in opposition. The lesson they are now drawing from their election defeat is that the party was too Blairite (have they ever asked themselves why Blair won them three elections?).

Although my political sympathies are broadly centre right (I don't feel a strong affiliation to any political party), I'm sorry that David Milliband wasn't elected. Governing parties need a strong opposition to keep them on their toes, otherwise they get lazy and complacent (as Labour did when the Tories were in opposition). David Milliband understands the need to win over middle class voters and would have given the coalition government a run for its money. Under Ed Milliband, Labour runs the risk of slipping into insignificance just as the Tories did.