EVEN if Ed Miliband and other champions of the alternative vote (AV) fail to persuade Britons to change their electoral system on May 5th, it is likely to be a good day for the leader of the opposition. In local elections held concurrently with the AV referendum, his Labour Party is likely to make gains at the expense of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, especially in the north of England. It may also return to power in Scotland and win enough seats to govern alone in Wales.

These triumphs may be par for the course; after all, the government is as unpopular as incumbents in dismal economic times tend to be. But they will not be the only examples of progress made by Mr Miliband since his slim and surprising victory over his brother, David, for the Labour leadership last September.

After some batterings at the hands of David Cameron, he is now a solid parliamentary performer, often riling the prime minister. His kitchen cabinet has been improved by the addition of some tenacious journalists, who have augmented his public profile and sharpened his attacks on the coalition. His shadow cabinet looks better than it did before a reshuffle in January: Ed Balls is a combative shadow chancellor; Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, has an eye for the centre ground.

Above all, the divisions that many thought would afflict Labour have not materialised. True, MPs on the Blairite wing of the party, who backed the elder Miliband, voice the popular criticisms of their leader: too left-wing, chronically adenoidal, tainted by association with Gordon Brown, the former chancellor and prime minister whom he served as an aide and ally. But they do so privately. A party that gave Neil Kinnock two cracks at winning a general election is unlikely to cashier Mr Miliband before he contests one.

That election is probably four years away. Mr Miliband has few policies—those are being hatched in a series of reviews under the watch of Liam Byrne, a shadow cabinet member—but he has a clearer political strategy than he is given credit for. His advisers point out that most of the votes Labour lost during its 13 years in power were from low- and middle-income earners, not the better-off folk who sometimes unduly captivated New Labour. So what critics disparage as left-wing pandering—such as Mr Miliband's opposition to spending cuts, and his enthusiasm for higher taxes on the rich—is in fact a pragmatic pitch to the “squeezed middle”.

Despite all this, members of the coalition who smiled when Mr Miliband became Labour leader remain eminently relaxed about their opponent. For all the government's recent agonies, Labour has a poll lead in the single figures (see chart), and as low as two percentage points in some surveys. The Lib Dems have recovered a bit from their nadir of last autumn, and the Tories have hardly fallen from the 36% they won at last May's election.

Two main criticisms continue to dog Mr Miliband. The first is that he really is “Red Ed”. Doubters think he overrates the appetite for social democracy among middle-income people, a misapprehension born of a life spent in left-wing bubbles, from the Marxist household he grew up in to the climate-change department where he thrilled greens with his ardour.

It is telling that he has deplored Labour's failure to regulate financial services properly and to reduce inequality—but not the fact that it ran a fiscal deficit after 15 years of economic growth. Voters think he is to the left of his party. Only 11% think he is prepared to take “tough and unpopular decisions”. Mr Miliband is often accused of failing to challenge his own side—unlike his brother, who as foreign secretary defended the Iraq war against the left's rage.

Still, Mr Miliband can take steps towards the centre over time. The Tories are themselves seen as some way to the right. But his second, and perhaps less soluble, problem is more personal than ideological. He has not struck voters as a plausible prime minister. Mr Cameron is preferred as a national leader, something often attributed to his opponent's presentational problems and perceived immaturity.

Mr Miliband's speech to a union rally last month, in which he excitedly compared the campaign against cuts to that against apartheid, made him look hopelessly jejune. In a subsequent YouGov poll, 47% of respondents said he was not up to the job of Labour leader, let alone prime minister, and only 27% thought he was. The coalition increasingly seeks to paint Mr Miliband as a lightweight or a student politician rather than as a socialist.

Of course Mr Miliband can grow into the role, but he must hurry. Both main parties know from harsh experience that voters often make their minds up about a leader of the opposition very quickly. Lord Kinnock and his predecessor, Michael Foot, never shifted early perceptions that they were not quite prime ministerial. Neither did William Hague, the former Tory leader and now foreign secretary.

In the coming years, spending cuts will bite, the economy will remain sluggish and strains within the coalition will intensify. Mr Miliband must use this time to fix negative perceptions of himself and his party. He must talk to audiences outside his comfort zone: his recent speech to a business crowd was a start. He must revive Labour's economic credibility, if not by apologising for overspending, then at least by elucidating which cuts he would make. And he must be alert to the less obvious threat of being seen as an enemy of people power in the public services. If the coalition's decentralising reforms to schools, police and the like come to be accepted as part of the furniture, as Margaret Thatcher's privatisations quickly were, Labour's opposition to them could look redundant and Luddite. There is work to do. The probable joy of May 5th must not distract him from it.