Weird and Wonderful

Although she is a bit unfair on Stephen Kinnock, and although she is wrong about drugs, Suzanne Moore writes:

Do you think Ed Miliband is … you know … a bit weird? What does this question, so beloved of pollsters, mean?

A lot, apparently, if the next election depends on perceptions of weirdness.

Personally I would like more weirdness to stop the interchangeable "normality" of the front benches. Politics is now so full to the brim of performative normality it hurts.

What is normal about Nick Clegg sitting beside David Cameron week after week with that haemorrhoid-advert face?

What is normal about Michael Gove thinking we want our children schooled by exhausted teachers approaching 70?

What is normal about a man like Nigel Farage, younger than me but with the worldview of my late grandad?

So when Miliband is urged to be less timid, to spell out what Labour is, he should clutch that nettle and make weird and wonderful soup.

He should do that weird thing of saying what he thinks.

He can stop with the thinktank code and its claggy abstraction and, with not much more than a year to go until the next election, spell it out.

Actually, not doing so is treating people as if they are stupid.

The outpouring of grief over Tony Benn and Bob Crow, even from those who disagreed with them, was surely to do with the fact that we knew who and what they stood for.

Labour, brought to power in 1997 by a coalition of different groups, now should not shy away from addressing class, age and gender. The recession brought that into sharp relief.

Labour has to get out of this holding pattern. As the economy is looking better, the party has to be direct. It also has to walk it like it talks it.

Why blab on about localism and then shunt into safe seats people like Stephen Kinnock for Aberavon in Wales?

He lives in London and is married to the prime minister of Denmark, so presumably does not hang around there much. Such patronage is a cross-party problem.

Miliband must communicate clearly where the faultlines in society are, and be open about these divisions.

The Tory budget was clearly aimed at older people, people who already have money and will now have more freedom to do what they like with it.

This was an absolute embodiment of Conservative ideology. It is old, encrusted in entitlement and it casts self-interest as the ultimate freedom.

Wealth once created must be hoarded. The cost of this is that younger people may never get to build wealth at all.

Who are the savers that George Osborne is freeing up? I don't know anyone under the age of 40 who has the barest chance of saving much.

Labour must surely stop worrying about the Spanxed-up middle and address the under-30s.

Tuition fees are a scandal and they have not worked even on their own terms. The selling on of loans has to stop. Rents have to be controlled.

The inflated housing bubble in the south has to be burst, so that younger people are not financially disenfranchised.

How to get them out to vote?

Well, Labour can look at what Barack Obama's team did and it can choose to appeal directly to this sector of the electorate.

They already feel the effects of the fake platitude that personal freedom (via money) trumps any notion of collective responsibility.

You are only free to pursue your dreams if certain things are shared and those things are: healthcare, education and childcare.

Women who have been punished so severely by this government need a hand up to get off benefits.

The only moralising we need around poverty is that it is wrong, that it is not a personal failing but a political one. Miliband should not be afraid to say this.

If the Tories continue to flaunt and entrench the wealth handed down to them, Labour has to make itself a party of the young, of the future.

Stop worrying about whether Ed looks prime ministerial. He doesn't, so give it up.

Just rewrite Gloria Steinem's line on being 50 and say: "This is what a prime minister looks like." A bit gonky.

Labour can be honest and say: "We can't do all the things we would like until the economy is in better shape, but we will save money where we can and share it out where we can."

Agreeing to the welfare cap is a signal to the haves that they will be "sensible" – and unfortunately this is the nature of the centre now – by penalising the have-nots.

Instead, it needs to spell out what it will do differently.

It can attack privatisation, because the public sees it does not deliver, whether on the railways or hospitals.

It can promise to end food banks.

It can propose to regulate the financial sector far more and stop regulating our private lives – from the criminalisation of drugs to endless daft health warnings.

It can reduce the defence budget to one suitable for a post-colonial power.

In short, Miliband need not be so scared of simple words such as "share".

Labour can say that future wealth and freedom will enable all young people, not just the lucky ones, to be able to learn, work, leave home and love as they choose.

If the opposition can't tackle this head on, can't even speak of a future where the public sector is as valuable as the private, then that really is weird.