Fortunately, I didn’t get to watch Ed Miliband’s leader’s speech. I kept up with it by reading live news feeds: looking at the content as opposed to how a speech is presented generally is preferable. However, matters started off badly even before the speech began: I’m not sure who Ed has advising him, but the slogan that adorned the podium, “A New Generation for Change”, was particularly dire. It was as if someone had spliced the 1980′s Pepsi advertisement, “A Choice for a New Generation” with a riff from Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. This proximity to commercial forms of marketing does nothing to detoxify the Labour brand: rather, it suggests that the spin doctors are still in control, trying to find a magic formula by which the party’s fortunes may be instantly revived.

True, Labour’s poll ratings have improved. However since Labour is the largest receptacle of dissatisfaction at the moment, they shouldn’t find this particularly comforting. Yes, the Conservatives have misfired by referring to Mr. Miliband as “Red Ed”. His message was decidedly centrist: there was no challenge to the present conventions regarding cuts, no fire and brimstone rhetoric about market failure, rather he talked about nurturing small business. As opposed to “Red Ed”, the spectacle was of “Peachy Ed”, policies that have a warm pink-ish hue, unthreatening, and could never be incorporated into a song of defiance. “The Peachy Flag is the People’s Flag” will never be a stirring hymn sung from Lothian to Hackney, overall Labour is now more Bakewell Tart than Real Ale. It has been this way since 1997.

I suggest that being “peachy” doesn’t make matters any better for the Labour Party. “We agree that the government has to do what it’s doing, but we don’t agree with how they do it” is hardly a battle cry that sets the pulse racing. Cuts will be opposed, kind of. The changes in public service provision will be reviled, sort of. The government’s plans need revision to care for the most vulnerable, that’s all. I would like to think these intellectual constraints are due to some sort of moral problem, whereby Labour finds it difficult to oppose changes that they would have made had they been returned to power. However their present tone smacks of a desperation to climb back into government, and to be seen as “responsible” in order to facilitate that return to office. Being “responsible” in this instance implies doing whatever the markets tell them to do, and not disrupting the existing order too much.

How peachy. It won’t work, however. I suggest it’s because despite Blair, Brown and Mandelson now being confined to the back benches or within the oak panelled chambers of gentlemen’s clubs, they still haven’t rid themselves of the menace of “the eye-catching initiative”. This phrase, which was used in a Blairite strategy document towards the end of Tony’s reign, summarises not only their approach on how to deal with the public, but also the way they make policy.

While working for my university, I have experienced how destructive and pointless this can be. A directive would come down from on-high, or from below, considering where Mandelson was likely sitting. We’d be told one year that we were to direct all our research effort on the subject of “digital economy”, for example. We were informed that money would be allocated for that endeavour. We were also told that the future prosperity of Britain depended upon our success. So we in the university would do our best to arrange the researchers, facilities and projects to match the government’s priorities. By the time we got everything together, the focus changed: “energy” being a leading example. After responding again, the cycle would at that point repeat. My understanding is that this approach has been utilised in many government departments, particularly in the National Health Service. Compared to this mindless hyperactivity, the Coalition’s slow poison is almost refreshing. The wider public probably agrees.

However, Peachy Ed himself is yet another “eye-catching initiative”. The Labour membership decided to pick the youngest, freshest candidate: yes, by his very youth and energy, he will get attention, they thought, and we will be loved again! Little do they realise that most successful endeavours require long, steady and patient effort. The Tories know this all too well: by picking the Boy Hague in 1997, they fell into the “flashy” trap, and were duly punished for it in 2001. As it turned out, only the detergent of time cleansed them sufficiently in the public’s imagination. Even then, it took a slapdash, meandering Labour Government for the Conservatives to be given another opportunity. In light of the 2010 defeat, Labour could have opted for complete re-invention on the basis of shunning marketing for substance and by issuing a challenge to the nation. They could have said: we were wrong, things have not worked, the gap between rich and poor has grown, we should have put in place greater balance between the market and the state, we should never, ever be “intensely relaxed” about the super-rich and their antics again. Instead, we got a pale, peach-coloured imitation of those statements, not enough to actually cause the bond traders and bankers to shake in their Church’s wingtips. Indeed, the unions were told off more severely than those who are largely responsible for our present economic woes.

Yet, Labour loyalists seem happy. They have their eye-catching leader with his Obama / Pepsi slogan and had about 30 seconds worth of positive media attention before it reverted to talking about the fraternal tensions between Ed and Dave once more. David no doubt will tread the well-worn path to Brussels and be given a lucrative sinecure there. No doubt as cuts bite, Labour’s poll rating will continue to rise. I suggest this will be temporary, particularly when the economy shows signs of improvement as it inevitably will: few things last forever, even really bad spells. Peachy Ed then may go the way of William Hague and end up being seen as a jump to a new generation that was made too quickly for his good and that of his party, and one which offered too little change and not enough hope. Perhaps the experience will cure Labour of its addiction to the transient. However, given the average learning curve of British political parties, I doubt it: it may take a decade for them to figure it out.