I said it during the Labour leadership election in 2010 and I say it again today - Ed Miliband is not up to the job of leading Labour or the country.  At the time I actively campaigned for and supported his brother, David.

Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign in 2010 is similar to Labour’s election strategy now.  It lacks ambition or any detail and the aim is to win on a technicality.  In the context of unprecedented cuts to the NHS and public services and cost of living rises, it is a staggering failure of Labour’s national leadership not to have articulated to the electorate a coherent alternative and to find the party being squeezed by UKIP in its own heartlands.  Labour has enjoyed recent election success in local government in places like London but this has been in spite of Ed and the national party, not because of them.  Labour’s renaissance is well underway in leading Labour run councils such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Camden, Hackney, Lambeth and Southwark and one thing is consistent in all those authorities – strong leadership.

In 2010 I had many a disagreement with Labour MPs, senior trade union officials and Labour councillors the length and breadth of the country on who is best to lead Labour and the country. I was even accused at the time of being a right winger and Blairite for supporting David!  I wasn’t then and am not now, either of those. MPs and councillors told me Ed Miliband’s politics were ‘sound’ and he was the right man to lead Labour.  My old trade unionists colleagues assured me Ed would deliver for ordinary working people.  They all said he will grow into the role and, come the time of the next General Election, he would be ready to be Prime Minister.  Well, they aren’t saying that now and 4 years on and 7 months away from the General Election it looks like Labour could be in even worse shape than we were last time.

Ed Miliband is more Gordon Brown than Tony Blair, which is no surprise given he was Brown’s special advisor for years.  Whatever the criticisms of Tony Blair (and I have many) you’ve got to admire his leadership qualities.  Brown lacked them and so too does Ed.  Blair let people get on with the job, giving over responsibility to his ministers.  Gordon Brown was the opposite and Ed is cut from the same cloth.  He has micromanaged, dithered on policy, actively stifled the profile of leading Labour figures and, crucially, failed to make any sort of impact with voters, especially women.  And, without women, Labour can’t win.  In fact, if women hadn’t switched their votes to Labour in 1997, the Tories would have remained in power.

I would argue that no other government has done more for women than the previous two Labour governments.  New maternity pay and rights, creation of children and sure start centres, work on closing the gap between men and women in the workplace, increasing women’s representation on boards and introducing legislation to help eradicate domestic violence and abuse.  I can’t think of one thing that this coalition has done for women, yet no one, least of all Labour seems to have focused on that?

Miliband has failed to woo women voters. I can’t believe his focus groups haven’t told him this. My own mum, a Labour supporter and activist all her life has said to me “How could he do that to his brother?”  There is an urgent need to highlight Labour’s track-record on delivering for women and future commitments on this agenda compared to that of the Tories.  Miliband is not getting through and time is running out.  This isn’t about UKIP or immigration, it’s about Ed Miliband.