Talking to senior Liberal Democrats and Conservatives about Ed Miliband’s speech, it is striking how similar their analyses of it are. Despite coalition, we’re entering into a period of stark government, opposition dividing lines.
Pretty much everyone admits that Miliband has put to bed the question of his leadership of the Labour party and moved himself out of the IDS category. But they argue that he’s not dealt with Labour’s biggest weakness, the public’s belief that it spent and borrowed too much. One influential Liberal Democrat accused Miliband of ducking the generational challenge that is the deficit likening his speech to one in 1942 that didn’t mention there was a war on.
I expect that in Birmingham, David Cameron will echo Nick Clegg’s lines from Brighton about how the world has changed and Britain needs to become more competitive to survive but Labour is still stuck in the past.
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