Miliband's New Year message: The same, but different

Well, folks, the 2012 model of Ed Miliband looks and sounds rather like the unfancied 2011 model. Just compare the New Year message that he released today with the one that he issued a year ago; the similarities are plenty. His main argument this year is that the Tories are the party of gloom — resigned to years of stagnancy, unemployment, pestilence, etc — whereas Labour are the party of a bright new future, there to show that ‘optimism can defeat despair’. Or, as he put it at the end of last year, ‘Even in these tough times, we must keep the flame of optimism burning.’

There are some differences, though. Compared with last year, Miliband talks much less about the coalition going ‘too far, too fast’ with deficit reduction. And, in fact, he even warns against the deficit getting worse, as in his misleading* suggestion that:

‘…neither in Britain, nor across the world, can anyone afford just to stand back and watch unemployment rise, growth stagnate and indeed borrowing go higher as a result.’