Five Year Mission by Tim Bale review – the story of Ed Miliband’s leadership

Architect of a fairer society or deluded usurper? This account of the Labour leader gives both sides of a man who could still be king

Ed Miliband is the first opposition leader in British history to have come to the job knowing the date when he would have to fight a general election. All of his predecessors were at the mercy of a constitution that allowed a sitting prime minister to dissolve parliament at will. David Cameron, under the terms of his coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, forewent that privilege.

This is no minor technical tweak to the apparatus of British politics. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 drastically changed the country’s constitution. A legal presumption that governments are elected for five full years will seem extraordinary – possibly insane – if the coming election yields a result even less decisive than in 2010, and produces a coalition that is much shakier than the current one. Five years is a bloody long time in politics. A party can pack a lot of feuding and confusion into such a stretch. And every minor episode is inflated far beyond its true significance by media in a near permanent state of digital arousal.

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