DAN HODGES: Red Ed marches left just as the voters are moving to the right Problem: Labour is not currently on course to win the next election because it is not trying to win. It's sitting back, waiting for David Cameron to lose Ed Miliband isn't working. His strategy isn't working. His leadership isn't working. It will take the experts most of the weekend to sketch a complete picture of Thursday's results in the local elections and South Shields by-election. But this was emphatically UKIP's day, not Labour's. "We did OK," one Labour official told me glumly yesterday. We avoided disaster. Mr Miliband's party made moderate gains. But, as he never stops reminding us, we aren't living through moderate times. The economy continues to flirt with recession. The cuts are biting. Controversial reforms are being driven through in health and education. In circumstances like these the official opposition should be weighing the votes, not counting them. That's especially true given that the traditional third party - the Liberal Democrats - are effectively handcuffed, like a convict, to the Government. Instead, Mr Miliband can only watch forlornly as Nigel Farage loads ballot box after ballot box on to UKIP's electoral bandwagon. Labour is in denial. It has seen opinion poll leads averaging only single figures, yet convinced itself that they signpost the New Jerusalem. It has read leadership survey after leadership survey showing Mr Miliband's personal ratings plummeting, and said: "People just need to get to know him a bit more." And on Thursday Labour was pushed aside as the voters rushed to wave and cheer at UKIP's travelling circus. The response? We did OK. To an extent that's right. Apart from the total absence of a rational strategy, strong leadership or coherent policy platform, Labour is doing OK. In the same way that if you jump from a plane without a parachute you'll do OK until you reach the ground. Labour has three fundamental problems. The first is that it is marching defiantly off to the left just as the electorate is moving right. Mr Miliband and his advisers were convinced Britain would recoil in the face of austerity and embrace his brand of progressive metropolitan liberalism. The opposite has happened. In hard times, people have become even more alarmed at perceived excesses in areas like welfare provision, public spending and immigration. The second is that Labour has no idea what to do with a leader who seems unwilling or unable to lead. The solution over the past couple of weeks was to put Miliband on a wooden pallet in a series of shire town squares and let passers-by shout at him. To be fair, Ed took it in good spirit, showing more of a common touch than his predecessor. But it's not the common touch people think he lacks - it's the prime-ministerial touch. The third problem is this: Labour is not currently on course to win the next election because it is not trying to win. It's sitting back, waiting for David Cameron to lose. Not working: Mr Miliband and his advisers were convinced Britain would recoil in the face of austerity and embrace his brand of progressive metropolitan liberalism. The opposite has happened Faced with adopting policies he knows the public wants, but his party loathes - such as a welfare cap or sensible spending limits - Mr Miliband has chosen to adopt no policies at all. The difficulty and weakness of his position was made clear this week with a disastrous interview on The World At One, when he repeatedly dodged questions about whether Labour policies would require additional borrowing - only to be forced 24 hours later to admit that, actually, they probably would. Without a coherent strategy, Mr Miliband plans to spend the next two years parroting the phrase "One Nation" at anyone who will listen, and praying that Mr Farage will pilfer enough votes from Mr Cameron to let him slip into No. 10 via the back door. This morning he and his party run the risk of becoming a political irrelevance. He'll cling to his "35 per cent strategy," an attempt to cobble together a rag-bag coalition of lefties, disillusioned Lib Dems and apathetic students that will provide 35 per cent of the votes - just enough to sneak in. Meanwhile, the Tories and UKIP will embark on a lengthy period of sparring and bartering that will almost certainly decide the outcome of the next election. Mr Miliband's leadership isn't working, for events are out of his control. Labour's only hope now is that Mr Farage will continue to damage the Tories - and by doing so allow Ed into No.