Political Animals

It’s surprising how often criticism can prove more interesting than the thing it purports to attack. In the art world, for instance, creative criticism is often appropriated by the maligned themselves: “Donatello au milieu des fauves!” sneered Louis Vauxcelles at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, a put-down painters took up with delight when they realized their striking, colorful works could at last be united under the “beastly” name Fauvism.

New U.K. Labour Leader Ed Miliband is less likely to embrace the moniker bequeathed him. “[Current Prime Minister David] Cameron to use ‘Red Ed’ as rallying call for centre ground,” a headline in The Independent announced Sunday; though “Red Ed” has been the preferred Tory attack on Miliband for some time, now it’s the official line. Miliband’s response to jibes was rather humorless: “Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit—I can see the resemblance. Forrest Gump—not so much. And what about Red Ed? Come off it!”

At times, one wonders what would happen if Miliband borrowed a bit more from his critics. Far from being “red,” Miliband has actively distanced himself from any whiff of “extremism”—making a show of coming out against a recent union strike, for example. In his debut address last week, he insisted that even in childhood his older brother (whom he edged out by a 1.3 percent margin for the leadership) was further left than him: “On the day I stole his football, he was so angry he nationalized my train set.” Adorable: until the BBC pans to David’s awkward smile, and one realizes how strategic the joke’s meant to be.

If he lacks their boldness, Miliband is “comme les fauvistes” in at least one way. “Britain’s big question of the next decade,” he wrote in The Guardian, “is whether we head towards an increasingly U.S.-style capitalism—more unequal, more brutish, more unjust—or whether we can build a different model, a capitalism that works for people and not the other way around.” Miliband too wants a fauve, but his beast of choice sounds closer to a Leviathan. In contrast to this imagined Britain, he chooses the word “brutish,” with all its Hobbesian resonances, to describe American capitalism—a word conjuring up an unsympathetic, pre-social contract state of nature (“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”). Merriam-Webster defines “brutish” as merely sensual, or unthinking. One might therefore assume that Miliband wants more thinking up top and more power conferred on the state as central planner.

That’s not what his policies propose. He’s not advocating social democracy, a mixed economy, or even renationalization of the railways (a move most British voters—including Tories—support). Instead he’s insisted, with some irritation, on his position as a “centrist.” The crucial question, given Cameron’s implementation of drastic new “austerity measures”—which include huge cuts to government programs and university fee hikes—is what that centrism means and whether it’s viable. On the economic front, Labour can sometimes seem to have on rose-tinted glasses; certainly the situation can occasionally appear dire—or absurd. The Bank of England recommends that to boost the economy people spend their reserve cash; in the London Review of Books, Jenny Diski wonders whether that means she should start purchasing fancy knickers at Net-a-Porter or just stock up on loads more undies at good old Marks & Spencer.

What’s interesting, in any case, is how much force the “red” label still has, given how far Britain has drifted to the right over the past few decades. Few would be quicker to point this out than Miliband’s father, were he alive today. Ralph Miliband, née Adolphe, was a well-known socialist intellectual, who after catching a boat from Brussels in the 40s to flee anti-semitism proceeded to pen several books, including The State in Capital Society and Parliamentary Socialism. A longtime professor at the London School of Economics and close friend of C. Wright Mills, he questioned the ability of the state to effect real change under the current economic structure. Both his sons have worked to distance themselves from him on the record; neither would have received his vote. (Their mum, still living, has said her ballot will go to a third-party candidate. And a very happy holidays they are in the Miliband home.)

Miliband was the right choice for Labour, and his selection remains promising. But he has yet to give any indication of how his program will seriously differ from that of his predecessors. Politics can be a beastly business; the goad “Red Ed” offers opportunity for thought. Honing his policies in weeks ahead, rather than simply lash out at the label as “tiresome and rubbish” Miliband ought to soberly assess the struggles of his father’s generation as he attempts to build a new capitalism.

Jessica A. Sequeira ’11, a former Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.