Ed Miliband: Labour leader warns party on spending

Ed Miliband is giving a speech in London on Labour's plans

Labour leader Ed Miliband says his party needs to accept there will be less money to spend if it wins the next election.

In a speech in London, Mr Miliband challenged those "who say Labour is only a party for good times".

Earlier, he also dismissed speculation about his leadership, saying: "You get noises off."

But the Conservatives said Labour still did not have a credible plan to cut the budget deficit.

The opposition leader said that with less money go round Labour must rethink how it hopes to achieve fairness across the UK.

While David Cameron offers "more of the same", Labour would reform the economy and tackle "big vested interests" to ensure rewards are "fairly shared", he said.

'Inner belief'
In an interview ahead of the speech with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he gave the example of winter fuel allowance, which he said he would no longer be able to promise to increase because money was tight.

But he said he would instead change the law to require energy companies to automatically place everyone aged over 75 on the cheapest available tariff.

Labour has dismissed speculation about Mr Miliband's leadership, saying the party is united behind him.

Asked if he was affected by criticism, he replied "no" and said: "This is what happens... you get noises off.

Mr Miliband - who beat his brother David to the leadership - said it had been "a hard choice" for him to stand, but he had "something important not just to say but to do".

"I knew that the person doing this job couldn't be the person who was saying, 'Let's have more of the same.'"

And he added: "I have a very, very strong inner belief that we will win the race."

Asked about criticism from Labour peer Lord Glasman - who said his party seemed to have "no strategy, no narrative and little energy" - Mr Miliband said: "I don't agree with him when he says it's all crap."

'Rethink'
In his first major speech of the year, the Labour leader told community groups the tough economic climate was a challenge for the opposition and very different from the benign economic conditions which had faced the party when it won successive elections in 1997, 2001 and 2005.

He argued that the "failure" of the government's economic policy would ensure that whoever wins the next election - scheduled for 2015 - would inherit a budget deficit, spending constraints and a "different landscape" from that which they might have once expected.


"We will have to make difficult choices that all of us wish we did not have to make," he said.

"Labour knows what fairness means. It always will. But we must rethink how we achieve it for Britain. The ideas which won three elections won't be the ideas which win the election in 2015. So we will be a different party from the one we were in the past."

Amid claims the public is unconvinced by Labour's economic strategy, Mr Miliband argued he had led the debate in his call for "responsible capitalism" and for action to tackle the pressure on living standards for low and middle earners.

"Everyone is now joining us talking about the 'squeezed middle'. But it is not enough just to talk about them. Suddenly David Cameron is falling over himself to say he too is burning with passion to take on 'crony capitalism'. Now he has accepted this, the battleground of politics. I say 'bring it on'."

'Shaky start'
A number of senior party figures, including former Home Secretary Alan Johnson and shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy, have said Labour cannot oppose all the government's spending cuts and must put forward a credible programme for reducing the deficit while protecting the most disadvantaged.

Mr Johnson - who quit as shadow chancellor in January 2010 - has suggested Labour's message on the economy is "not getting through" and the public "remained suspicious" about them.

He told the Daily Mirror that Labour had had a "shaky start" to the year, and while praising Mr Miliband's leadership on key issues, he said he must do more to "hammer home Labour's message".

Shadow Europe minister Emma Reynolds rejected suggestions that Mr Miliband's speech - on the day Parliament returns from the Christmas recess - was effectively a "re-launch" of his leadership.

But Conservative deputy chairman Michael Fallon said: "If Ed Miliband was serious about taking tough decisions, he'd set out a credible plan for cutting the deficit as Alistair Darling, Alan Johnson and half the shadow cabinet have demanded.

"If he seriously accepts there's less money to spend, he would stop making billions of new unfunded spending promises and instead tell us what Labour would cut."

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16473548

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