Labour leader Ed Miliband puts team on election footing as Andy Burnham says odds government will not last have shortened
In Ed Miliband's headquarters in Norman Shaw South, Westminster, there is wedding and election planning going on. Miliband gets married at the end of the month and in the next fortnight will have his stag do – a very Miliband affair. A cross between a stag and hen do (resist "hag" do) it's a knees-up with his partner Justine, at home with old friends but with not a paintball cannon or pair of pink plastic devil horns in sight.
Miliband has put his team on election footing. At the most recent campaign meeting Andy Burnham, Labour's election planner, observed that the odds of this government not lasting until the next election had shortened in the last week. Burnham asked the party's general secretary Ray Collins to look at whether Labour could fight an election in the coming year. Collins has set up contingency plans for just such a poll.
In Miliband's office a phrase they use to describe the coalition government has, for them, a pleasing radioactive fuzz. The "half-life" of the coalition government keeps shrinking, they say – it appears not to follow a smooth curve downwards but instead seems to surge in finite periods, each lasting only half the length of the one before.
Early on in his leadership, Miliband was admired by Tories for his assessment that the coalition would go the distance. They thought that he was the first person in Westminster outside the quad at the top of government (David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Danny Alexander) who understood it was a five-year exercise and so he should do a proper party rebuilding job.
Miliband's insight looks maybe too cool-headed after the energy secretary Chris Huhne jabbed his finger like a Lib Dem Zola. But Huhne probably won't quit the cabinet. When US energy secretary Steven Chu visited, someone who found themselves in conversation with the two energy secretaries heard Chu say he wouldn't mind going back to academia, but Huhne couldn't agree. He said he "loved" his job too much.
The vivid nature of Huhne's remonstrations with the prime minister are just what they seem – 60% pure anger, 10% electioneering, 30% longer term strategic repositioning. Few will now think the two parties too close.
But an unintended consequence from this period of intended consequences wrought by the Lib Dems is a sense from Tories that their coalition partners are odd and unpredictable.
After Huhne's eruption in cabinet, and as Vince Cable and Nick Clegg darted to the energy secretary's side, George Osborne did not tend to Cameron but went up to Alexander, Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, seeking explanation. Those present report not knowing if Huhne's next step would be to resign outside Downing Street then and there. Osborne has long grown weary of what he thinks is Lib Dem whingeing – he thought the front bench shouldn't have gone ahead with supporting the tuition fees rise (they could have abstained) because sometimes brute politics trumps ideology.
He is supposed to have thought that the coalition should go all the way to 2015, for the Tories to be able to say they have fixed the economy. More and more Tories at the highest levels are tempted to uncouple. Thus another election becomes a small chance, but a chance.
So where is Miliband? On the face of it, he is not ready. He's been sticking defensively and would have to twist earlier than he might otherwise. His team have policy groups out in the field that are not due to report for 18 months and his brains trust is working backwards from 2015 rather than the other way round (the government after all, is pushing through legislation for fixed-term parliaments which would effectively require both Labour and the Tories to want an early election).
He is feeling around the territory of making the principle of universalism smarter – so an end to monolithic universal benefits for all. After the work Iain Duncan Smith has done in this area, a return to Gordon Brown's tax credits would not be feasible. A similar critique is true across the portfolios.
With the policy groups works in progress, the scope is there for Labour, challenged too early, to get battered.
The Labour leader also has another pitfall to avoid. The election that never was, dangled by Brown in autumn 2007, forced the Tories to come up with the inheritance tax wheeze – a policy that worked for a time but was a problem in the post-crash era that they had to dump. Miliband will want to avoid making a similar hostage to fortune. A pledge to reverse the VAT rise – costing £13bn – would be just one such idea he needs to have an iron will to resist.
All the above give cause for concern, but in reality an early poll would empower the Labour leader who would be likely to sequester himself and top aides and ram through chosen policies. Space for shadow cabinet pet projects would not be massive. He would probably choose policies Brown blocked him from putting in the last Labour manifesto – such as more family-friendly hours and remutualising Northern Rock.
The Tories would be likely to go to the polls claiming Labour always leaves the country's finances in a mess. Labour can mount a strong argument that the Tories can't be trusted with the NHS. "Never would the charge '24 hours to save the NHS' have quite so much plausibility," a friend of Miliband says.
Labour find themselves quite up for an election. Which may be why the Tories ultimately won't force the issue.