The deficit and immigration: were there two worse topics for Ed Miliband to forget?

No notes speech have been Ed Miliband’s political party trick. His One Nation speech two years ago ended speculation about his leadership and last year’s energy price freeze effort knocked the Tories off their stride for months. But today, the no notes speech hurt Miliband rather than helped him.

Without an autocue, Miliband skipped bits of the speech. This has happened to him before, one year he missed out the section on the environment. But this year, Miliband missed out the bits he could least afford to: forgetting the sections on the deficit and immigration.

By, albeit inadvertently, not talking about either the deficit or immigration, Miliband has left himself open to the charge that he ignored both the most important issue in British politics and the one that the voters care about the most.