Leadership doubts overshadow Labour party before 2015 vote

(Reuters) - With his party ahead in opinion polls eight months before an election, opposition leader Ed Miliband could be Britain’s next prime minister. Yet his Labour party is in the odd position of trying to win power despite, not thanks to him.

An Opinium/Observer poll released on Sunday after his party's conference, the last before May's national election, showed Labour's lead over Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives had been cut to 2 percentage points, down 6 points in a fortnight, after Miliband forgot vital parts of his speech.

Derided by the press as a socially awkward nerd, Miliband, an Oxford-educated career politician with the demeanour of an academic, is seen by some in and around his party as an electoral liability rather than an asset.

"If they (Labour) win, they’re winning it in spite of him," Peter Simpson, a worker for a non-governmental organisation who last week attended Labour's annual conference in Manchester, northern England, told Reuters.

"Everyone is worried about real core issues like the National Health Service and the Conservatives being seen to be in the pockets of the rich. They’ll win it because of that, not because of Miliband. If anything he could lose it for them."

Anxious to defuse his image problem, something that has dogged him since he won the party leadership in 2010, Miliband took the unusual step of publicly mocking his own image in July, saying he rejected "a politics driven by image".

But Britons, and some in his own party, remain sceptical amid signs that a perception among some voters that he cannot be trusted to run the economy or to reduce immigration - two of the country's biggest pre-election issues - could be an obstacle to his party winning office.

A protege of former prime minister Gordon Brown, Miliband presents himself as a heavyweight left-wing intellectual who has a 10-year plan to rebalance the economy in favour of low-wage workers and society's most vulnerable.

Yet he frequently finds his policies overshadowed by his perceived presentational shortcomings with the press mercilessly poking fun at the way he looks, talks, walks, and even eats.

That has kept his personal ratings low.

In a YouGov poll released last week, 63 percent said they thought Miliband wasn't up to the job of being prime minister.

He polls much better when it comes to how closely people perceive him to be in touch with ordinary people, but poorly when it comes to leadership and economic competence.

'NOBODY THINKS WE ARE GOING TO WIN'

His centre-left party, most recently in power from 1997-2010, is more popular than him. Polls give it a lead over the Conservatives of between 1 and 8 points. The same polls show Cameron is much more popular among voters than Miliband.

Cameron, a former public relations executive, is a polished speaker. He has his own image problems though - some voters regard him as too keen to protect the narrow interests of the privileged part of society he comes from.

Cameron, 47, often gets the better of Miliband, 44, in weekly question and answer sessions in the parliament which are televised and shown on TV news bulletins. Miliband says he wants to change the format to place more emphasis on substance over style.

Supporters concede his image has been a problem at times.

"Party leaders don’t get it right all the time," Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, told the party's conference last week. "And Ed - it's fair to say - there have been a few incidents where the photograph hasn’t quite worked out.

"But who would you rather have? A man who one day had a bad photo with a bacon sandwich or a man whose director of communications was sent to prison," she said, referring to Cameron's former spin doctor who was convicted of phone hacking.

Close-up photographs of Miliband struggling to eat a bacon sandwich earlier this year went viral and, for a few days, became a national joke.

Harman predicted that personal criticism of Miliband would intensify before the election because the Conservatives wanted to "attack the messenger" rather than the message, which she said they couldn't tackle.

Pollsters say that Labour, which sees itself as a champion of the working class, should have a much bigger opinion poll lead at this stage in the electoral cycle, particularly since most voters have yet to feel much benefit from the country's rising economy in their pockets.

Some party workers blame Miliband, believing they'd be further ahead in the polls with a different leader.

A dozen Labour activists and politicians interviewed by Reuters during the party's conference in Manchester said voters always cited doubts about Miliband's leadership when canvassed.

There was anxiety within the party about his electability, they said, and the atmosphere at conference - meant to be a big pre-election morale booster for the party's workers and a bellwether of its fortunes - was flat.

"It's because nobody thinks we are going to win,” one activist, who declined to give her name because of the matter's sensitivity, told Reuters. “Our leader is not very charismatic ... It is a real problem for me."

ANTI-BUSINESS?

The son of a Belgian Marxist intellectual of Polish origin, Miliband, the party's first Jewish leader, won the Labour leadership in 2010 after defeating his brother David, a former foreign secretary and the early favourite, in a bruising contest.

Ed triumphed with help from the party’s paymasters – the trade unions – even though David was more popular among Labour lawmakers and rank-and-file party members. His victory soured relations with his brother and left many in the party convinced they had chosen "the wrong Miliband".

Since then, he has shifted Labour to the left and away from the centre ground where one of his predecessors, triple election winner Tony Blair, anchored it.

With promises to freeze energy prices and pour extra money into the National Health Service by taxing wealthy home owners and tobacco firms, he has cast himself as the champion of low-wage employees and society’s most vulnerable.

Along the way, he has made stinging criticisms of bankers and big business, causing concern among some about what they say are his anti-business policies.

Miliband, who grew up and lives in a wealthy London neighbourhood, strongly denies that charge.

In the recent campaign to keep Scotland inside the United Kingdom, Miliband found himself overshadowed by his one-time patron, Gordon Brown, whose barnstorming speeches were widely regarded to have helped persuade Scots to reject independence.

By contrast, Miliband's own big moment, his keynote address to the party faithful at the annual conference, flopped.

He used what was billed as a make-or-break speech to cast himself as a prime minister-in-waiting, pledging to wring money from owners of expensive houses, hedge funds and tobacco companies to fund better health care.

But in an embarrassing slip, Miliband, who spoke without notes, forgot to mention what pollsters say are two of the biggest pre-election issues: Britain's sizeable public deficit and immigration. The original version of the speech showed he had intended to touch on both issues.

Dan Hodges, a commentator and a former Labour adviser, said what he called a dismal speech had aggravated existing doubts about Miliband's leadership.

"He had to show that he was a man on the threshold of 10 Downing Street," said Hodges, referring to the British prime minister's official London residence. "But instead he showed that he couldn't even get the basics right."