He spoke without notes, and yet stuck precisely to the script. Ed Miliband today ignored George Osborne's welcome – but artfully timed – move to back a higher minimum wage the evening before. The Labour leader pressed on, damning a government that sees a future "in low wages, insecure work, the hope of a bit of wealth trickling down from the top". It might have been sharper to have hailed the chancellor's arrival on to the territory of fair pay, then challenged him to do more. But Mr Miliband's speech had been some time in the works, he had something to say, and so he resolved to press on and say it.
Sooner rather than later, some people (at least) are going to start tasting the fruits from the return to growth. This challenges Labour, whose main theme has long been the fact of falling living standards – the "cost-of-living crisis". Mr Miliband needs to refine this pitch, which he attempted to do by asking the country: "Who do we want to recover to be?"
Mr Miliband has long mulled an agenda that goes beyond the New Labour project, of picking up the pieces left by a red-in-tooth-and-claw market, by fostering a fairer capitalism, where growth is not disfigured by dead-end, insecure jobs. But a weakness for wonkish words, like "predistribution", has made it harder to cut through. Today, however, he sounded more purposeful. The problem, he said, was not just about average pay, but "who gets the rewards"; the answers he is sketching out involve regulating working conditions at the bottom, and – at the top – holding big money to account. From payday lending to energy bills, he is finally getting specific. Today he focused on the banks, and it was especially good to hear him explain that he would task the competition authorities to produce, not some vague review, but specific advice on how two new real players could be created.
But as the agenda on economic regulation shapes up, nagging questions remain on tax and spend. Extra capital spending is floated, but few specific commitments are made, a missed opportunity since investment is the surest route to better jobs. Mr Miliband spoke too casually about someone filling up their car deciding they "couldn't afford" the coalition, but he should not pretend he can bring petrol duties down. Indeed, the ugly truth, buried by all parties, is that taxes will have to rise, whoever wins in 2015. Vagueness over the fiscal position could end with Mr Miliband getting manoeuvred into saying "read my lips, no new taxes", a commitment to doom a prospective administration. A new capitalism is overdue, but a prospective government will still have to prove it knows how to manage the budget.
