Britainâs Parliament rose for its summer recess today. Ministers and backbenchers will pack their bags for Tuscany, Provence, or, for those keen to be seen vacationing at home, Cornwall. The recess could scarcely come soon enough for Prime Minister David Cameron, for whom summer offers a welcome break from the ghastliness of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and his own decision to employ a former editor of the now-shuttered tabloid to run his press and communications shop.
If summer is the sweetest season for Cameron, the break has come at a bad time for Cameronâs principal opponent, Ed Miliband. The Labour leader has had a good crisis and for almost the first time appears to have found his voice. It was Miliband who appreciatedâmuch more quickly than Cameronâthat this crisis offered the chance for the leader of the opposition to make his mark.
Standing up to Rupert Murdoch has boosted Milibandâs credibility on the left and, for perhaps the first time, helped him to âcut throughâ to the general public. When Miliband tabled a motion demanding News Corp. abandon its bid to purchase the 61 percent of BSkyB it does not presently own, it was seen as an odd, even quixotic, move. Few British politicians have dared challenge Murdoch like this.
It swiftly became apparent, however, that Miliband had a better grip on the public mood than his critics appreciated. With few Tory MPs volunteering to defend the Murdoch interest, the government indicated it was not going to oppose Milibandâs motion. Faced with unanimous parliamentary opposition, News Corp. took the hint and announced it was abandoning its takeover bid. (Though it reserved the right to return to the matter at some undefined point in the future.)
Whatâs more, Miliband is trying to slot the phone-hacking scandal into a wider narrative of over-mighty institutions losing touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Taming these institutions and curbing their excesses should be a task for a renewed Labour Party.

Milibandâs diagnosis is that the banking crisis, Westminsterâs own expenses scandal, and now this latest disgrace are each symptoms of a common problem.
In astringent, austere times, Miliband is inching toward a refreshed populism with which to combat the slick, suave, wealthy duo of Cameron and his coalition partner Nick Clegg.
If this seems mildly familiar to American readers, then it should for it is, in large respect, a reprise of âThe People vs. the Powerful,â much-favored by quasi-legendary, serial-loser Democratic strategist Bob Shrum. The former Kennedy, Gore, and Kerry adviser was closer to Gordon Brown than he is to Miliband but it is Brownâs successor who seems determined to follow a Shrumian agenda even if heâs not actually officially calling on Shrum for advice. At some point, this approach might work, even if it has not been notably successful in national elections in either Britain or the U.S. in recent times.
Unfortunately, it is possible to have a âgoodâ crisis without this being reflected in the polls. Cameronâs net approval rating has only declined two points (from -10 to -12) and Labour has not, or at least not yet, enjoyed any Murdoch-related bounce in the polls. The only significant movement in the polls is that Milibandâs appproval rating has improved from -34 to -21.
In other words, Milibandâs position has improved from âdisastrousâ to âvery bad.â This is, in one respect, a major advance even if most observers believe Labourâs lead in the polls is âsoftâ and largely the product of economic uncertainty. The next election is not due for another four years and the Tories are not running scared yet. The combination of a sluggish economy and public spending cuts was always likely to cost the government a great deal of goodwill.
It is not Milibandâs fault that he neither looks nor sounds like a potential prime minister. But until he discovers or acquires some measure of gravitas, he is unlikely to persuade the public that, whatever Cameronâs weaknesses, heâs a fit and proper person to occupy 10 Downing Street.
Fortunately Miliband is having an operation to remove his adenoids this summer, a procedure that may result in him sounding a little less like a teenage dork. This may seem a harsh assessment but not even the Labour leaderâs admirers claim that âpresenceâ is one of his best attributes.
Miliband says the operation is not connected to any desire to make his voice more appealing to voters. Instead it is designed to alleviate the sleep apnea from which he suffers. His wife will be thankful for that, but so may Labour supporters if the operation improves Milibandâs voice. (He would not be the first leading politician to change his voice: Margaret Thatcher received coaching to change her own voice and pitch, making it less harsh or grating.)
Milibandâs criticism of Cameron has been based on a simple idea: âHe simply doesnât get it.â Hiring Coulson was the original sin that prevented the prime minister from acting more decisively before it became impossible for him to avoid doing so. The fallout from that decision has yet to be fully measured and it may yet be the case that Cameron will face further embarrassment once the multiple inquiries into the scandal begin to report in the fall.
For the time being, however, the evidence suggests the public views the scandal as simply confirming their already low opinion of politicians and journalists alike. This being so, it has not radically changed their views in any serious or significant fashion.
If this remains the case then Milibandâs bad luck will be to excel, relatively speaking, on an issue of great concern to the Westminster and Fleet Street villages but that does not seem to have captured the publicâs imagination or changed votersâ views of the principal political parties. If that remains the case, Miliband needs a better story to tell on the economy, welfare, and crime if heâs to translate the progress he has made this past fortnight into major, longer-lasting gains.