I wondered if I should have borrowed the Royal Doulton from my mum, as the sloganeering mugs from old Labour Party conferences seemed a bit embarrassing for a dignitary. “Don’t worry”, the organiser of the meeting told me. “It looks more authentic”.
The time was mid-morning and mid-week. The occasion was me having allowed my front room to be the venue for a campaign visit from Labour leadership hopeful David Miliband, with Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s chief political correspondent, and a camera crew in tow.
This was not a normal day. The possible police involvement (which never actually materialised) was being discussed because, as a former Foreign Secretary, the elder Miliband has continuing Special Branch protection and its officers sometimes like to scope out his surroundings. In the event, there was nothing to fear from the normal terraced street he came to visit or the ordinary party members he met.
Once Labour’s protracted leadership contest concludes, by the end of September, perhaps we can return to normal politics. Unfortunately, being in opposition for the first time in 13 years is the new normal for Labour.
Perhaps normality as a personal attribute will be a new currency in politics. When he replaced Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown declared that people had fallen out of love with celebrity culture – although subsequently he sometimes behaved as if they had not.
Now, in the tussle to succeed Brown as Labour leader, we are told David is the Miliband nicknamed “Brains”, while brother Ed is the more relaxed of the two. Andy Burnham’s major pitch seems to be that he has northern grit and comes from a background outside the elite London liberal intelligentsia. We know Diane Abbott is a single mother from an immigrant background and that Ed Balls had a childhood stammer. All this detail is designed to make these putative leaders appear more normal.
Abbott implied that her rivals were young men in a hurry when she referred to them as “geeks in suits”, yet all the candidates show tendencies of being outside the normal curve – however that may be constituted.
In the other Labour contest raging right now (although “raging” might be putting it a bit strongly), whatever else you might think of the pair vying for the party’s London mayoral nomination, Ken Livingstone and Oona King, to their joint credit, can both do “normal” – in other words, appear empathetic to the average voter.
It is now being said in rush-released political memoirs from insiders that, despite numerous visits to supermarkets and voters’ houses during the general election campaign, Gordon Brown couldn’t convince the electorate that he was on their wavelength.
The measure of normality is subjective. Labour attacks on the Tory candidate in the Crew and Nantwich by-election as a toff in a top hat backfired. The Conservative in question won and was re-elected at the general election. Similarly, Boris Johnson’s upper-class buffoonery may actually have helped him to become London Mayor.
The campaign websites of both David Miliband and Oona King have a section where you can click to host a house meeting. My one was arranged at short notice to tie in with some other campaign visits nearby on he same day organised by the self-styled “David Miliband Movement For Change”, which is working closely in conjunction with the London Citizens campaign group. The way some traditional politicians are learning from grassroots activists is encouraging – London Citizens’ policies include support for a living wage and an amnesty for illegal immigrants.
In the United States, the right-wing convenors of tea parties are threatening to sink Barack Obama’s presidency. In Britain, where tea is the national drink (despite the fact that it comes from India and China), David Miliband’s willingness to engage in a small-scale domesticated setting with members over tea is a significant change from the noisy and disorganised meetings of trade union “brothers” that used to constitute paying your dues. He even adhered to the house rule of removing footwear.
Tony Blair was once accused of cliquey, sofa government associated with “jobs for the boys”. Our David Miliband meeting was held in the type of environment in which many women, in particular, feel comfortable – rather more so than in a pub, where party meetings have often tended to take place.
Dunking HobNobs is all very well, but serious policies are urgently needed. Rather than introspection, the new normal must mean adjusting to being in opposition and resisting the awful Con-Dem administration is vigorously as we can.
Let’s hope the normality of the past 13 years – a Labour government in power – can be restored at the first available opportunity.
