1. “My speech today is about the deficit …”
In case there was any doubt, the deficit has not been forgotten. On the contrary, here it is in his opening line. No ducking difficult issues here. Let it nevermore be said Ed Miliband doesn’t want to talk about the deficit. Deficit! Deficit! Deficit!
2. “Productive investment in our infrastructure should be seen differently from day-to-day spending because it often has a greater economic return …”
This is wriggle room carved out in technicality. Miliband’s speech included a promise that his party’s manifesto would contain no unfunded spending commitments and no pledges that would need to be paid for by extra borrowing. But Labour is also saying it would not be doctrinaire on shrinking the state the way the Tories have revealed themselves to be. Part of the difference in the two parties’ approaches will be in the balance between spending cuts and tax rises – George Osborne thinks he can do without the latter altogether. But by flagging up the role of infrastructure investment in boosting growth and productivity, Miliband is also signalling (discreetly) that Labour thinks there is a difference between “good” borrowing and “bad” borrowing … it just doesn’t fancy trying to explain the difference to a sceptical public in a general election campaign.
3. “I have heard people claim that our economic argument around the cost-of-living crisis has been missing the main economic challenge of tackling the deficit. But the facts are now in: it turns out that tackling the cost-of-living crisis is in fact essential for tackling the deficit.”
For Labour strategists this is perhaps the most important argument in the whole speech. Low wages, too many part-time jobs, squeezed incomes – it all amounts to poor tax receipts for the exchequer which is a significant reason why Osborne has missed his fiscal targets. Miliband’s allies are fed up with people saying he has ignored the question of fiscal credibility to bang on about the cost of living. Behold, the cry goes out, how they turn out to be the same issue all along!
4. “We must take the opportunity to do what no government has properly done: reshape public services so that they deliver better for people, doing more for social justice with less. Here we should take inspiration from what Labour local government has been able to do and give them a chance to do more.”
This represents a victory for those frontbenchers – Liz Kendall, Ivan Lewis, Jon Cruddas, Andrew Adonis among them – who have been urging the leadership to say more along these lines for months; years even. The point is that Labour has a positive story to tell about a fairer version of government with tight budgets that will be prudent but not callous. But it can’t summon up the image from thin air. It has to point to places where Labour has been governing in austerity and done a better, kinder job of it than the Tories have done nationally. It usually involves innovation in public services, since salami-slicing budgets is a route to social ruin. The Labour reformers will have been cheering that passage. Of course, public sector innovation can mean all sorts of interesting things in terms of non-state provision, but best not to dwell on that until after the election in case it involves words like “markets” and “competition”.
5. “The reality is that much of the detailed work about spending reductions can only take place when we have the full resources of government at our disposal.”
In other words: don’t bother asking us to spell out huge cuts before polling day because we won’t. We’ll give you some symbolic tasters – cutting winter fuel payments to wealthy pensioners, for example – but no hideous-sounding, cute-puppy-strangling, gruesome sacrifices that would really frighten people. No way.
6. “The Tory vision is clear: a country that works only for the wealthy few, with public spending back to 1930s levels and unfunded tax cuts put before the NHS.”
This is the pay-off; the big dividing line that Miliband wants to draw between his party and the Tories. They make wild promises they can’t keep and suck up to the rich; Labour is careful, balanced, moderate and thinks a smidgen of extra tax from mansion-dwellers isn’t too much to ask in order to save our beloved NHS. That, in essence, is Labour’s campaign for the next general election.
