On the 50th anniversary of Harold Wilson’s first of four General Election victories, the current Labour leader should heed the advice of his illustrious predecessor.
“The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing,” announced one of Britain’s finest post-war Premiers when still in opposition.
Wilson combined a formidable intellect with crafty politics to modernise a class-riven country and improve life for the majority of its inhabitants.
In office for eight years between 1964 and his sudden retirement in 1976, any reasonable assessor would agree that Wilson was largely a success.
The great communicator in a Gannex raincoat had a masterful common touch, puffing on a pipe and professing a folksy love of HP Sauce. He was king of the TV sofas before Ed Miliband and David Cameron were born.
Harnessing the white heat of technology, from health and housing to education and pensions, he implemented far-reaching reforms.
During Wilson’s reign Britain became a fairer land as the living standards of the low-paid rose and the inequality gap closed. A Made in Dagenham uprising won women equal pay with men. Right-wing caricatures painting it as an era of strikes ignore the wage increases won for working people.
Ted Heath’s Tory interregnum from 1970 to 1974 took Britian into the then Common Market without the people’s consent. Europhobes still bridle that Wilson held the only European referendum, resulting in a hefty majority for continued membership.
Social revolution in the Swinging Sixties saw abortions legalised to end the back-street butchery that killed terrified young girls. The death knell was sounded for state executions with the outlawing of capital punishment.
Oh, and Wilson kept Britain out of the disastrous US war in Vietnam.
He never lost his sense of purpose – a drive to transform Britain.
Of course he could be petty, vindictive, cynical and paranoid. But he was justified in fearing the security services and establishment were out to get him.
Miliband could do worse than emulate Wilson on the 50th anniversary of his initial triumph in October 1964. He beat upper-class relic Alec Douglas-Home, the last Old Etonian in Downing Street before Cameron.
Times and politics change but the need for Labour to be a crusade hasn’t. Miliband acknowledges this privately when unrestrained by fear of failure.
His “loyalty” lectures to the Shadow Cabinet and his MPs fall on deaf ears unless he can also inspire them.
Miliband walked 10ft tall after his superbly executed Lord Freud ambush kicked the legs from under David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Yet attacking the Tories, Liberal Democrats and UKIP is the easy bit in the most unpredictable election since Wilson joined Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour Government.
To win, Miliband must convince sceptical voters that Labour is on their side. Too often, he struggles to show the anger within.
That five million Britons earn less than the £7.65-an-hour living wage is immoral.
Miliband should say so loudly and vow to end the scandal immediately – not in four or five years.
Wilson won four elections, one more than Tony Blair, although only the second one in 1966 produced a convincing majority.
As Ukip’s Nigel Farage prospers by puncturing the political blandness, Wilson is the ideal role model for a Labour leader who can avoid achieving nothing if he offers genuine hope.