Ed Milliband Will Own Any Outbreak of Violence Today

In terms of weather it's not such a lovely day today as it was at the end of the week, but all in all it's not such a bad day for a good, old-fashioned, recalling-the-Thatcher-era demonstration. And indeed, it appears that a lot of people have responded to the anti-cut calls of the unions, if the BBC is correct at least 100.000 or perhaps even 500.000 public-sector workers are marching from the Embankment towards Hyde Park. If even the smaller estimate is accurate than the break away protesters, intend on violence and nihilistic destruction for its own anarchic ends, are a tiny minority. These hedonistic close-minded extremists are not latter-day Robin Hoods but class-warriors, attacking shops and even the Ritz hotel, not because these establishments necessarily support the cuts, but simply because they are, or are perceived to be, upper or middle class.

We can only hope - though if the protests last autumn are anything to go by, hope against hope - that those hundreds of thousands on their way to Hyde Park keep their peace with the street. I expect that by far most of them will, but the danger is the end of the day when, at once tired and full of spirit, the organisers tell them to go home but they have to wait to leave the park. Kettled by gates and fences, tempers on the rise, what little spark will set off the conflagration? We saw the same thing happen last time, when the end of the organised programme sounded the knell of peaceful protest and resulted rapidly in the setting afire of Parliament Square and the defenestration of the Office of Revenue and Customs.

If this direst of scenarios comes to pass, Ed Milliband will own the violence and the bill of public outrage will be his to settle. The Labour leader won't be responsible for the uproar - only those protesters who turn to violence will be responsible for their actions - but Mr. Milliband, by appearing at the rally, and speaking to the crowd, has aligned his party with the demonstrators and in the perception of the public watching the unfolding at home on the news tonight he stands on the side of destruction. To be true, this would be undeservedly so, but so it will be. So for the sake of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, if nothing else, let's hope again that peaceful protest will be the watch word of the day, and not violent demonstrations.

God Forfend: Is Ed Milliband Starting To Grow On Me?

When the Labour party last September elected, rather surprisingly, Ed Milliband as leader over his older brother David, I thought that would close the door on my returning to the left wing fold in the foreseeable future. While both brothers were the supreme epitomes of the techocratic MP, David appeared to have far more political acumen as well as sounder policy ideas. Ed, on the other hand, gave off the impression of being a highly opportunistic fellow, willing to discard his old ties to Gordon Brown, the unions and the left wing, socialist divisions of the Labour party in order to gain the leadership. And that's not to mention the commiting of that most dishonourable of sins, fratricide. So young Mr. Milliband, with his deer-in-the-headlight eyes and lack of any centrist charisma, in my view would not amount to much.

All this was confirmed during his first months in the position as his first press conferences and sparrings with David Cameron across the dispatch box during Prime Minister's Questions revealed a man grossly out of his depth. He did not have a firm grasp of his policies and figures and stumbled when pressed on even the most basic of policies, until he was so hard pressed that he announced a general policy review in lieu of having to come with up anything himself. In all not a very auspicious start for a new, relatively untried leader of the opposition. Then came the questions about his private life - as an unmarried co-habitating father he had neglected to sign his name on his first child's birth certificate - and his party's inivisible presence during the university top-up-fees debates. Oh woe was Ed Milliband, who by now seemed certain to be a short-lived Labour leader.

The arrival of the New Year, however, has been kind to Mr. Milliband. The rise of VAT has for the first time signalled to the general public that the Coalition Government's policies will hurt them in their wallets and pockets, at least in the short term. For some reason - maybe his Christmas dinner brought him good fortune or he made some propitous New Year's Resolution - his first press conference (See here for a, perhaps a little overly sympathetic, live blog) of 2011 showed him in a different, far more agreeable and capable light than his first. More relaxed and in control, Mr. Milliband the Younger showed he might yet have a future as Prime Minister. That these thoughts have entered into my usually conservative mind may be because they are being roped in by my growing dislike of David Cameron, who after a strong start in Number 10 is starting to appear as a somewhat pantomime politician, incapable of making promises he can keep.

Even some of his policy suggestions are starting to make sense. To even impugn that I might find Labour ideas sensible in any way, shape or form would have been repugnant and hideous to me but a few short months ago. I especially appreciated his calling for Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive - a state-owned bank - not to receive a multi-million pound bonus and that the unions should not strike in a coordinated fashion to bring down the government. That, Mr. Milliband the Younger says, is the job of the opposition in Parliament, not the opposition on the street. Very well, it is not yet anything I'd vote for, but if he keeps on going, Mr. Milliband the Younger will at least make me think of Labour as a party I could see running the country.

And the most important impression I came away with today is that Ed Milliband seems to believe in what he says, something that I can never recognize in Mr. Cameron these days. As we learn from Cicero, only a politician who's is convinced of the truth of his own ideas can hope to convince the voters. That is what Mr. Milliband the Younger needs to do and that is, indeed, what he seems to be doing.