Labour leader’s performance will have boosted morale of party activists as they head out for biggest weekend of campaigning since election battle began

Chris Patten, the astute former Conservative chairman and the politician who delivered the double-whammy election for John Major in 1992, may have got it right in January when he said: “The thing that would worry me most in the campaign is Miliband might come across a lot better than the press said he is.”



After one set of TV interviews in which Jeremy Paxman appeared as if from retirement to enliven a pretty turgid, long campaign, Patten’s warning may be ringing in the ears of Grant Shapps, Patten’s successor as chairman.

David Cameron won on most counts, according to an ICM poll, but not by the kind of margins that most polls produce when voters are asked to compare the two leaders. Notably, Ed Miliband was only slightly behind on being prime ministerial, a measure on which he normally trails by 20 or so points.

Patten had been very explicit about the warning to the Conservatives not to mock Miliband as a buffoon. “The thing that would most worry me is not the Farage factor – that is probably a balloon that is deflating – the thing that would worry me is Ed Miliband. He is highly intelligent and a good debater,” he told the BBC.

“The sophisticated spin on Ed Miliband for the Conservatives should be: ooh, he is much better than what people say he is. What the Conservatives should be doing is trying to raise the bar.” In his own way Patten was repeating the old saw that success equals performance minus expectation.

The expectations game can be exaggerated. Miliband can hardly use the four main TV interviews and debates scheduled for the campaign suddenly to come across as a novel, captivating force in politics in the manner of Nick Clegg in 2010. He has been too familiar a face on the nation’s TV screen for the past four years to reintroduce himself and for scales suddenly to fall from viewer’s eyes.

Many have cemented their opinion that he does not have the elusive authority of a leader. His personal ratings were poor at the outset and then deteriorated, with only rare lifts. But pitted against other leaders in a TV studio, on an equal footing and unmediated by a political correspondent, Miliband has shown he has a fighting chance to prick up the ears of those still wavering, or those just starting to take time out from their daily lives to tune in to the election.

In the BritainThinks focus groups conducted with the Guardian there were voters who said their low expectations had been exceeded. Similarly the ICM polling showed waverers – albeit on a small sample – preferring Miliband to Cameron by a margin of two to one.

Labour now hopes that Miliband’s numbers for “leadership quality” in wider polls will start to improve correspondingly. Miliband cleverly played into the issue of the public’s perception of him in a set of lines to Paxman, saying he had been underestimated all his political career. To borrow a Bushism, “don’t misunderestimate me” was the less than subliminal message.

Oddly, the year-long assault by Cameron on Miliband at PMQs as useless, clueless, not up the job, a joke and weak – to choose at random some epithets used by the prime minister – leaves the Labour leader better placed to show that the truth can be different, and raises questions over why Cameron is not yet enjoying a five-point lead.

Politics is a confidence business, and Miliband – apparently nervous to the point of shaking before the interview – will have emerged from his first encounter with his resolve strengthened. Equally important, he will have boosted the morale of party activists as they head out for their biggest weekend of campaigning since the election battle began.

Labour followed up on Friday by proposing to impose a profits cap on private health companies, at the launch of the party’s election campaign at the Olympic Park in east London. The aim for Labour this weekend is to make 100,000 contacts and deliver 600,000 leaflets.

Trudging up the driveways and stairwells of Britain with the memory of a Miliband TV mauling would have been an unpleasant experience for Labour activists. Instead, Labour says it is well ahead of pace in pursuit of its target of 4m doorstep contacts by polling day.

Miliband’s performance owes in part to his diligence. He is not a figure like Edward Heath, Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock who finds the medium of TV distasteful. He trained hard, spending a day sometimes at Lord Falconer’s home facing different formats. The “Hell yes, I am tough enough” soundbite – redolent of the US Navy Seals – sounded as though it emerged from discussions with David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser.

The pace will now quicken, with Cameron appearing at a rally on Saturday before going to Buckingham Palace on Monday morning to ask the Queen for parliament to be dissolved. Labour, never knowingly under-launched, will unveil a business manifesto on Monday and its full manifesto in the week after Easter.

The one TV debate that will feature a direct confrontation between Cameron and Miliband – and five other party leaders – will take place next Thursday, long enough before polling day for memories to fade.

Miliband is said to favour more disruptive interventions – items not planned in the grid designed to exemplify difference. If anything he is in a mood to tack to the left in the campaign.

Labour hopes it can now contrast its campaign being fought outside Westminster engaging with ordinary voters with that of a Westminster-centric battle emerging from the Tories focused on Cameron’s third term, his successor, hung parliaments and SNP power-gaming.