Cautious Miliband doesn’t want to talk about borrowing

Labour is proposing to balance the current not the overall budget. This is presumably because they think that borrowing to spend money on capital projects is a sensible policy. But you wouldn’t have known that from watching Ed Miliband on BBC1 just now. In response to questions from Evan Davis, Miliband was determined not to say that Labour would borrow to invest.

In a highly disciplined performance, Miliband would also not engage with Davis’ questions about inequality and whether it was a good thing if everyone got richer even if the gap between rich and poor widened. Indeed, Miliband was so cautious that you began to wonder if he’s started to think that this is now his election to lose.

Unsurprisingly, Miliband would also not get drawn into any conversations about a hung parliament. But the Tories are not going to stop pushing on the SNP point and the prospects of a vote by vote deal.