Earnest Ed leans left in ‘touchingly retro’ speech

ED MILIBAND'S speech at the Labour Conference in Liverpool yesterday proved he is no great orator, but his earnest message about equality may resonate with many in middle Britain.

Goodbye New Labour

Ed Miliband is getting close to finding a language that speaks directly to the people of Britain, says Peter Oborne for the Daily Telegraph. He is quite right to say that something hasn't just gone wrong in the very bottom of society – "it's gone very wrong at the top as well". The culture of lawlessness extends from the housing estates to the very rich.

Miliband's speech was just as much a critique of the Blair-Brown years as it is of David Cameron, adds Oborne, and what he is attempting to do "is to articulate the anxiety of the squeezed people of middle Britain". Ed Miliband is still finding his voice, but he has made "a major step forward".

Miliband's charisma deficit

His speech did mark the most emphatic break yet with New Labour, says Steve Richards in the Independent. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would have been afraid of appearing too left wing.

Miliband was being brave, adds Richards. But where Tony Blair could mesmerise an audience with "elegantly constructed speeches", Miliband could not hold his audience. He "lacked accessible phrases to light up his long address", and his words "did not seem especially significant, even though they might prove to be".

OK, let's forget that he has a deficit of charisma that makes Greece's economic shortfall seem modest, says an editorial in the Daily Mail. Miliband's keynote speech "spelt out some home truths that will have struck a chord with many Britons angry about excesses in the City". After a decade of New Labour's "profligate welfarism and smooching to fast-buck millionaires, the Mail welcomes the new leader's about-turn".

Ed leans left

Really? asks an editorial in the Telegraph, which thinks "the figure that emerged from a rather leaden speech was someone whose political credo is build on an unhealthy mix of envy, coercion and a self-serving misreading of our recent history".

We all want a higher moral tone to permeate public life, the Telegraph went on, but Miliband offered no indication of how that is to be achieved. "Miliband had an opportunity to show he is bringing fresh and radical thinking to the centre-Left. He flunked it."    

He has two problems, says Daniel Finkelstein in the Times. Most people don't think he is up to being prime minister. The second, is that "he is too left wing". And his speech confirmed that.

Although he used promising language about rights, and responsibilities, Finkelstein goes on, in the end his policy is "borrow more, spend more, tax well off people more, regulate more and intervene in the economy more". And his suggestion of a different tax rate for bad and good companies is "almost touchingly retro".

Critics may eat their words

Leftward lurch? asks Polly Toynbee in the Guardian. Well, his riff on rewarding the responsible who work hard was a dog-whistle to the many who feel as outraged by the "something for nothing" culture at the bottom and the top.

While Miliband may be too earnest to be a great orator, he is "calm, determined and resilient" and his speech showed he has a moral and political sense of purpose. "His critics may yet eat their words." ·