Ed Miliband: You Are The Quiet Bat People And I Am On Your Side

Ronald Reagan once quipped that  “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” As was so often the case the Great Communicator was only half-joking. He knew government had important jobs to do, jobs only government could do. What was needed was a rebalancing. Government had become too invasive. It needed pruning. (Never mind that not much pruning took place; the rhetoric and the positioning was what mattered.)

I didn’t watch Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour party conference this afternoon but no-one, I think, would say he possesses a Reaganesque delivery. But he was in Brighton to tell the hard-pressed, plain people of Britain that government is back (a straw man admittedly since it never went away) and, more importantly, that it is on your side. It is here to help. For an Oxford, LSE and Harvard wonk, Ed Miliband is a surprising kind of populist.