Ed Miliband will kiss and make up with the unions at the Durham Miners' Gala Yes, that's the T Blair who, after dropping in to the Durham Ministers Gala before becoming Labour leader, never took part again, despite being MP for nearby Sedgefield for another two decades. Mr Miliband claims that there is a synergy to the two gatherings, and that (he insists) he feels equally at home at both. He will tell the gala-goers: "Labour is coming together - both here and across Britain. We need that spirit now more than ever at a time when families, communities and country are under such pressure. The subtext is that Labour has overcome the schizophrenia of the 1990s and 2000s, when it was more interested in dallying with the prawn cocktail circuit than eating cheese and onion crisps in a northern field. One insider said: "He is not ashamed to hang out with working people - the type who get up in the morning, go to their job, work hard all day and pay their union dues. They are our people and good people. It might seem a contradiction in terms that a Labour leader feels the need to show off the party's working class roots, but after the credit crisis, age of austerity and now, most pertinently, the banking scandals, Mr Miliband clearly feels that the political game of Prolier Than Thou is back on. And that means distancing himself from the detoxification efforts of John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who were in turn distancing themselves from Michael Foot, Ken Livingstone, Arthur Scargill and co. Which brings us back to the miners. Denuded of the power they once wielded to hold the nation to ransom- thanks to 30 years of Thatcher and Blairism - Mr Miliband perhaps believes it is safe to repackage the unions as a signifier of working class charm, as nostalgic and yet familiar as John Major's warm beer and cycling old maids. And maybe he's right - after all, the abject failure of the public sector strikes last November to bring the country to its knees shows how little risk the unions pose to the nation's economic wellbeing, certainly compared to our casino banks. Whether voters will truly warm to Ed Miliband's Clark Kent act (he rubs shoulders with miners by day and celebrities by night - prawn cocktail crisp anyone?) remains to be seen. But what is certain is that Durham will this weekend witness the hammering in of another nail in the New Labour coffin.