Ed Miliband did what he needed to do. In his speech he needed to show that he was not
some demented left-winger, that he was not a tool of the unions and that he appreciates the need for cuts.
He did the first bit with his tone. It is very hard to depict someone as dangerously left-wing when they appear thoroughly reasonable. The union test he got through with the line that no one in the Labour party should have any ‘truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.’ As one Tory said to me last week, attacking him over being in hock to the unions was never going to be effective for long as it is so easy for him to distance himself from them.
On cuts, he went further than his line that he wouldn’t oppose every cut, acknowledging that ‘There will be some things the coalition does that we won’t like as a party but we will have to support.
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