Miliband talks the language of cuts

Much of Ed Miliband’s Grand Confession on the economy is wearily familiar. I mean, we’ve known his take on the deficit for some time: that the drop in tax receipts from a crumbling financial sector was to blame, rather than Brown’s spending. And to have him argue that Labour should have made the economy less dependent on the City is just another way of saying exactly the same thing.

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But there is something new in there, too. Miliband is set to admit that Labour didn’t “talk the language of cuts” soon enough. Not that he’s saying Labour should have – or still should – cut deeper and faster, mind. It’s simply that Brown and his ministers didn’t breath the c-word early enough. This, the thinking goes, made it look as though Labour were impotent when it came to actually reducing the deficit.