Miliband’s compliment to Thatcher

Ed Miliband’s speech today contained an interesting compliment to Margaret Thatcher. He said that the challenge for Labour now was to ‘change the common sense of the age’ as the Tories had done in the 1970s.

Miliband’s argument is that Labour need to articulate an entirely new political economy. As he put it,’ we can’t build economic efficiency or social justice simply in the way we have tried before.’

What I find interesting about Miliband is that he trying to move the centre ground from opposition, something than no one has done successfully since Thatcher. Both Blair and Cameron moved towards it in opposition and only tried to shift it in government.

Miliband is moving towards more criticism of Labour’s record in government. He told the Fabian audience that ‘Parties don’t suffer defeats like the one we suffered last May because of an accumulation of small errors.’ But he still defended Labour’s spending in government.