Richard North,
20/06/2012
It says something for the detachment of the political classes that Miliband sees in the crisis a party political opportunity.
Over the weekend, he was trying to capitalise on the success of Hollande, calling for a new centre-left alliance "to free Europe from the grip of austerity", pinning the blame for the travails of the euro firmly on Cameron and Merkel. But, far from offering a way out, the main aim was to portray the prime minister as "a weak statesman".
However, Miliband is now seeking to dress up this political opportunism in "intellectual" clothing. In the current edition of the Grauniad, he writes of the two economic crises of the 20th century being "the parents of dramatic changes in the political centre of gravity in western economies".
The 1930s, he says, spawned welfare capitalism – a new social contract in which full employment paid for public services and welfare benefits. The 1970s gave birth to the cocktail of monetarism, privatisation and deregulation that dominated the 1980s.
Crass though this may sound - and the slogan really does sound crass - this could be good tactics. Mr Cameron tends to look and sound ideology-lite, so an attempt at injecting some gravitas into the debate is superficially attractive, especially when he utters words such as: "The health of our democracy is not just a matter for politicians".
The leader of the opposition, though, will have to go a long way before he can convince the cynical majority that he has anything on offer other than words. Nevertheless, the rhetoric is interesting. The boy Miliband has been reading daddy's history books.
Nevertheless, he may well find that the country is not in the mood for party games, while events over the Channel mercilessly expose shallow opportunism. That, at the root of things, seems to be the only thing on the table.
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