Why so many people must be jealous of Ed Miliband's future

What would New Labour have looked like if the News of the World had closed in 1997 - instead of collapsing ignominiously in 2011?

This thought comes to mind on the back of a comment of mine which came out of an exchange with Brian at the foot of a previous post:

Yes. That's true. That the debate [on neoliberalism] wasn't conducted *was* a serious failing of Blair and New Labour. But Murdoch still ruled the roost. A thought experiment then. What would New Labour's regime have looked like if the News of the World had collapsed in 1997 instead of 2011? Think that one through and perhaps contextualising Blair might be easier for us all.

Just imagine what might have happened if Blair - suddenly released from his obligations to the man who had helped crown him - could have moved Labour forward in exactly the way he must only have ever dreamt about.

This was before tuition fees had splintered Labour's faithful; before Iraq had broken the back of the patient church that still constituted the Party, even in 2003; before a whole host of concessions to the rancid right of British politics had distorted and fatally damaged his ability to perceive the real opportunities for a moral democracy.

For it is the strangest matter that the more moral become the discourses of those who would lead nations, the more violent and militaristic become the realities they proceed to deliver.

But let's imagine that Murdoch & Co were vanquished as now: temporarily at least, without too much room to regroup.  Blair could have created a government of an easy three terms - not doing God; not doing triangulation; not doing the Daily Mail or the Sun.  Just being what became him most naturally: listening to the wider people and reinterpreting their discourse for the good of a wider voting constituency.

Politics has always produced leaders who know how to crystallise and exemplify the desires of a generation.  And where this has not happened, we have had lost generations thrashing about wildly.  It would seem, right now, that we are awaiting that moment again.  And the generation we form a part of has a grand opportunity to remake the future - with or without the help of the commentariat.  As already pointed out:

[...] what if a politician was wise enough to propose pulling - first of all - the wool over the eyes of the commentariat itself?  That is to say: let's imagine that Miliband, in this case, intended not to give too many gobbets of psychological stroking in the direction of self-important observers - observers who had become so used to being seen as astonishing crystal-ball gazers, by virtue of a privileged connection and control over the people we actually wanted to vote into power, that they found it absolutely impossible to contemplate that any politician might wish to play a different more solidly democratic game and at the same time be half-competent.

And so they interpret, supposedly on our behalf but surely far more in their own rank interests, that Ed Miliband can't communicate; Ed Miliband doesn't know how to fight; Ed Miliband is in hock to big trades union interests; and Ed Miliband is plain and simply the wrong man.

Plain and simply the wrong man not because he's wrong for us, the voting public, but - rather - because he's very wrong for the commentariat.

You know what I think?  I think most politicians and commentators in modern politics are actually jealous of Ed Miliband.  That he has got so far without owing anything to the media of one sort or another must really frustrate them in their own carefully marketed strait-jackets of thought. 

Which is why I do say: "Ed, you still have my vote.  The power you can take advantage of, channel and mould is as yet largely untested, untried and unseen.  But if you manage your opportunities well and effectively from now on in, if you manage to see them exactly for what they are before the rest of us are able to even sense their wisdom, you will be marking out a new territory: a new territory which will change British politics forever.

"It's now your only alternative. 

"It's now our only option.

"So understand it for what it is - and take it whilst you still can."