The quiet Miliband wants to turn up the volume

Ed Miliband has already managed to steal a big pile of clothing from the Tories by pinching the One Nation tagline for his own party. But this weekend Chuka Umunna offered the beleaguered Labour leader another Tory tag that he might not be quite so keen on. Trying to defend the party, the Shadow Business Secretary said:

‘The Shadow Cabinet and the leader of the Labour party are doing a huge amount already to sell Labour to the electorate which is why we’ve won back almost 2,000 councillors since Ed Miliband became leader of the party and of course as we move to the general election we will be turning up the volume even louder than it has already been in order to ensure that we form a majority at the next general election.’

Oh dear. Chuka was only elected in 2010 but surely he can remember what happened just weeks after another beleaguered leader predicted that he would be turning up the volume…

Miliband now has another make-or-break conference speech ahead of him, but he also needs to work out how to turn up the volume in a useful rather than panicked fashion.