BRITISH LABOUR leader Ed Miliband has declared that Labour will not attempt to match the major public spending increases sanctioned by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during 13 years of New Labour rule, but insisted that it could govern fairly.
“Whoever is the next prime minister will still have a deficit to reduce, and will not have money to spend. Whoever governs after 2015 will have to find more savings. It means that the Blair/Brown approach will not be enough,” Mr Miliband said.
The speech, heavily trumpeted in advance in the pro-Labour press, has been described by his enemies as Mr Miliband’s latest attempt to relaunch his faltering leadership, which has seen him languish in the polls.
“Next time we come back to power, it will be different. We will be handed a deficit. We will have to make difficult choices that all of us wish we did not have to make. So our values matter even more,” he declared.
Yesterday’s speech was an attempt to develop themes first voiced in his speech to his party’s conference last September, when he complained about predatory capitalism, and he repeated his determination to tackle over-charging by utility companies.
Leading pollster Peter Kellner reports that Mr Miliband’s popularity with voters after 16 months is worse than that of William Hague, Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron, Neil Kinnock or Tony Blair, but better than that of Iain Duncan Smith or Michael Foot.
Despite faltering ratings, Mr Miliband has set the agenda on a number of occasions over the last year – high pay for chief executives, the difficulties facing the squeezed middle class and youth unemployment – but has failed to reap any credit for it.
“Some even said that I was anti-business. But in the last few months something strange has happened. Suddenly, the prime minister and the deputy prime minister are falling over themselves to say that they too are burning with passion to take on ‘crony capitalism’.
“A prime minister who six months ago was gagging to scrap the 50p tax rate now tells us he will keep it for a few more years. [He] said I was anti-business when I called time on undeserved rewards at the top, now claims he’s desperate to stop them too,” Mr Miliband declared.
Refusing to accept the Conservatives’ determination to reduce the role of government in British life, Mr Miliband insisted: “My Labour party is not going to bow to the outdated idea that says that government cannot help, that there are no choices to be made.”
Despite negative new year coverage, Mr Miliband does not face a leadership challenge, though there is little doubt that some fear that he will neither be good enough to oust the Conservative prime minister David Cameron or bad enough to justify sacking.
Even some loyalists have recently voiced misgivings. Lord Maurice Glasman has argued that Labour must once more speak for the working class on issues such as immigration, claiming that Labour has “no strategy, no narrative and little energy”.
Speaking during a BBC Radio 4 interview, the Labour leader, who at one point, bizarrely, had to reject a charge that he was too ugly to win power, insisted that he has the “inner belief” to bring Labour back to power.
Labour’s shadow chancellor of the exchequer Ed Balls accepted Labour would have had to cut budgets for the police, schools and defence spending if it had won the election, but he insisted the government had gone too deep, too quickly.
