Jayne Dowle: Anonymous Ed has failed to make any impression

Carelessness could be to blame at The Independent, which ran a big front-page interview with Ed Miliband last week, then called him David on its inside leader pages. But I think it goes deeper than that.

The worrying thing is, it’s not the first time that he has been referred to as “David” in public. Harriet Harman famously slipped up on Radio Four when she informed the nation that she was backing “David” for Prime Minister, before hastily correcting herself. Sometimes, in my more lucid moments, I wonder how we ended up with this in a mature political democracy.

At the helm of the Labour Party we have a man who fought his brother to be Leader. A man who is apparently now making so little an impression on others that people forget his name.

Is this really the way that politics should be? Is this why all those dedicated MPs and party workers devote their lives to the Labour Party cause? Because for every coasting expenses-fiddler there is a man or woman who is in this game for the right reasons. There is only one word for the situation, and that is “farcical”.

I am not a member of the Labour Party. Indeed, I’m not a member of any political organisation because I can never decide who I disagree with least.

But like most ordinary people, I just want a fair and equal society, one which does its best for every individual in terms of education, health care and a decent standard of living. It’s not much to ask. I don’t want class war. Or a revolution. I just want a credible choice when it comes to politics. But when I step back and look at what is happening, I despair.

Here I see a man who won’t back industrial action against the swingeing spending cuts which mean massive job losses and the decline of essential services, such as the closure of hospital wards and respite homes for the elderly.

Who can forget that maniacal repetition of “these strikes are wrong” to that BBC interviewer who asked him to comment on the strikes in the summer?

How could he imagine that this was a sensible and measured response? And yet, here I see this same man, who won’t support those who have given their working lives to a job, paid their taxes and asked for nothing, but who then blithely announces that he backs the Occupy London anti-banking protesters who forced the closure of St Paul’s Cathedral.

If we didn’t know that Ed Miliband had spent all of his adult life, and a good part of his formative years, in politics, you might think he was running for President of the Student Union instead of planning to be Prime Minister.

I had hoped he might grow up and into his leadership, but I’m still waiting. I mean, what was all that fuss about not getting married? Oh, I won’t go on about it, because it’s just too tedious. I won’t go on about the vocal delivery either, but it doesn’t help that he always sounds so, well, whingey.

It doesn’t help either that whatever you think of David Cameron’s politics, undeniably he is a good orator. When he lays into Miliband across the House, you want to wince.

What we need is a calm, rational and measured response to the excesses of the Coalition government’s policies. What we need is a Leader of the Opposition who at least appears to understand and sympathise with the bad things happening to good people every day in this country.

What we have got is someone who, I’m sorry, but on the evidence before me, brushes off the concerns of the public just as much as any Tory grandee does. I watched Miliband closely when he was being filmed outside the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this year. His eyes were glazed, whether in fear or boredom, it was hard to tell, as ordinary party members swarmed around him.

He didn’t actually look like he wanted to be in charge. Even his speech – and although I know some praised it – hasn’t appeared to galvanise anyone into action.

What was it about again? Was the word “progressive” in there somewhere? Who knows? Who cares? Well, I can only presume that the 256 Labour MPs in the House of Commons care. And I can only presume that what ever kind of united face they put on publicly, some of them must be privately questioning the political cul-de-sac their leader is taking them up.

They owe it to themselves, to their constituents, and to the country, to remember why they came into politics. And I’m sure it wasn’t to prop up a leader who after more than a year in the job, still seems incapable of proving he is fit to lead.