This is a seminal moment in the UK parliamentary cycle. The Tory Party have overtaken Labour in two of today's polls (YouGov & Ipsos-Mori) and they have drawn level with Labour in ComRes polling. This is important because it is the first time in YouGov polling in 2012 that the Tories have managed to get their nose in front. Labour first took a polling lead the month Ed Miliband became leader of the Labour Party and for the most part they have held strong ever since, eking out an 11% lead before the budget in March 2011. But the Tories have closed that gap and now look very strongly placed at this stage in the political cycle. But where did it all go wrong for Labour?
It is no coincidence that the Tory ascent coincided with Ed Miliband proclaiming that he 'agrees with Nick [Clegg]'. The universally unpopular Lib Dem leader is not someone you ally yourself with in a bid to gain favour with public. But the deeper issue is that Ed Miliband has made the wrong call on two important political matters in the last month - Europe and the Pension Strikes.
What matters most is not the fact that Labour leader failed to make clear he too would have vetoed the prospective EU treaty in the form it was presented, or indeed that Ed failed to explicitly back the strikes. Much more dangerous was the lack of clarity in Miliband's stance. As the time of writing I am still not quite sure if he would have signed the EU treaty. More worryingly, I am not even sure Ed knows the answer. If the public are to take him seriously they will need to see a strength of character that he showed during the Milly Dowler hacking story.
The same problem occurred during the pension strike. It was literally at the last hour that word emerged that Ed would not be supporting the strikes. That begs the question as to when he made up his mind that he wasn't going to? The speculation and the uncertainty then and now both create a gnawing sense of doubt about whether or not the Labour Leader is Prime Minister material.
Ed Miliband can turn this around. He has tapped into a sense that neo-liberalism and bad capitalism have created a squeeze on living standards. Ed gets the cost of living crisis that millions of us face. What he now needs to do is to get back to showing he understands ordinary people by talking about fuel poverty and cramped and squalid housing. In time, another seminal moment will arrive when the Labour leader needs to make a call on a major political decision. Whatever he decides it must be communicated clearly, timely and decisively, so that we at least understand the direction the Labour leader is headed.