Leading article: Labour’s opportunity

By now, Ed Miliband should be feeling upbeat about next week’s Labour party conference. No matter what happens in Liverpool, it can’t be more debasing than the spectacle the Liberal Democrats laid on in Birmingham. The Lib Dems’ decision to insult their coalition partners did nothing to enhance their standing. If the Tories are, as Vince Cable put it, the ideological descendants of those who sent children up chimneys, why did his party join these villains in government?

Against such juvenile behaviour, the Labour conference will, for the first time in years, look like a convention for grown-ups. All Ed Miliband needs to do is look as if he is leading a government-in-waiting. It is easy to dismiss Miliband. He has struggled to make an impression on the political stage or improve his party’s ratings in the polls. But if Britain tips into another recession — an increasingly likely possibility — the next election is his to lose.