The Waugh Room

Monday 22nd November 2010 | 12:20

Ed Mili returns to the fray

Ed Miliband will reinforce his return to the political fray tonight by addressing the PLP.

It will be a "rally the troops" event, but allies stress that this won't be a re-run of the Brown or Blair days where the leader faces down his backbench critics.

Instead, there promises to be a slightly wonkish air to proceedings, with Miliband speaking for a few minutes before handing over to Liam Byrne and Peter Hain to present plans for the coming policy reviews. "Don't worry, there won't be any flip-charts," quipped one insider this morning. Still, MPs will be given a sense of what lies ahead at Saturday's national policy forum event.

It's unlikely there will be outright dissent tonight, although some MPs may want to know where the party stands on the crucial isse of tax while the review is conducted.

In his Guardian interview today, Miliband makes absolutely plain where he stands.

"When I think about the next election, is our policy going to be to reduce the 50p rate for people on £150,000? I don't think it is."

He adds that it is a policy that is not just about cutting the deficit:

"No, it's about values and fairness and about the kind of society you believe in and it's important to me."

Now, Alistair Darling used to say that the 50p rate was "not an end in itself", but Ed Mili's words come pretty close to just that. He's saying that it's not just about the cash that's raised, or even the redistribution that ensues, it's about the kind of society we live in.

That's certainly a far cry from Peter Mandelson's plea to the Lib Dems "haven't the rich suffered enough?". The tough line on 50p also seems a lot firmer than "for the foreseeable future", the compromise line-to-take hatched with Alan Johnson last week.

(On this point, Tom Harris may no longer have a blog, but he's as spikey as ever. He's just Tweeted something that will probably ensure he's kept out of the shadow ministerial team: "Interesting fact: the last time Labour won an election while committed to >40pc income tax was 1974.")

As for the wider party reforms, Ed Miliband looks keen to do something neither John Smith nor Blair were brave enough to do: genuine one-member-one-vote leadership elections.

This isn't, however, some plot to keep the unions out. Far from it. If individual trade union levy payers were given some kind of associate member status, they would for the first time have a very direct say in the party.

Number crunchers close to the leader point out that if OMOV of this kind has applied in the last leadership election, things wouldn't have been so close. Instead of a wafer-thin 1.3% margin, he would have won by around 9%.  The figures would have given Ed 175,519 to David's 147,220.

UPDATE: The Tories say that if all 2.7 million trade union levy payers were made members, then they would increase their share of the electoral college from 33% to....93 %. Of course, Ed Mili is far too smart to fall into that trap and will probably come up with some kind of voluntary membership scheme rather than an automatic membership for levy payers.

The exact nature of the reform will need to be finely tuned. It's worth remembering that David Miliband said that the levy payers should be allowed to 'attend' party meetings, but that was a very different option to giving them direct votes.

 

5PM UPDATE: I'm told that Peter Hain's role will be pretty significant. As chairman of the National Policy Forum he will lead a review of the party's structures. He will report back to the NEC, PLP and members, with the help of Harriet Harman.

The aim is to report back to party conference next September.

Hain may have failed to get elected to the Shad Cab, but Ed Mili clearly rates his reforming zeal.