Ed Miliband: Cameron wants to write trade union members off

Ed Miliband thought he’d delivered the speech of his life at last year’s Labour conference. But though it knocked the socks off everyone in the conference hall, it wasn’t enough: the Labour leader is having to deliver to one but two speeches to save himself this autumn. Today he will try to sell his union reforms to the Trades Union Congress conference in Bournemouth, and in a fortnight he will give another important party conference speech.

The Labour leader wants to frame his reforms as having a purpose that all parties should want: bringing politicians back into contact with ordinary people. He will try to contrast what he plans to do with the Conservative party:

‘We have a Prime Minister who writes you and your members off. Who doesn’t just write you off, but oozes contempt for you from every pore. What does he say about you? He says your members are a ‘threat to our economy’.