Labour, Opinion Polls, and their New Leader

Since the election, it has been quite common to read that the Labour party is doing reasonably well in the opinion polls despite not having a leader. This is, of course, wrong; what is actually happening is that Labour have been doing ok in recent opinion polls because they don't have a leader. And come Saturday, that will change.

Leaders and figureheads act as shit magnets. As soon as a group has a leader or a figurehead, others can start making the muck stick. It is happening right now in the US with the Tea Party and the really rather dreadful Christine O'Donnell since her primary win. And it will happen with the Labour party once it has got itself a Nu Leader. Don't believe me? Try it. David Miliband - complicity in torture. Ed Miliband - wrote the electoral bromide that was the 2010 Labour manifesto. Ed Balls - Gordon Brown's mini-me. Andy Burnham - pro-ID cards. Diane Abbot - opinions on Finnish nurses. A leader taints his or her party with every ill-judged comment and/or policy they have ever made - regardless of whether those comments/policies are indicative of the organisation they represent.

There is a way around this, of course - you elect a charismatic leader, who can convince people to follow them despite their flaws. But since the Labour party is poised to elect a Miliband, that isn't going to happen. Instead, they will elect a charisma-less geek to go up against a still popular coalition. And then, slowly, their opinion poll ratings will start to suffer again as it becomes clear that the cosmetic change in leader is not the sort of far-reaching change the Labour party desperately needs in order to become electorally credible again.