28 September 2010
New Labour leader Ed Miliband today signalled his support for halving the public deficit within four years and promised not to oppose all the coalition’s cuts.
In his keynote speech to the party conference in Manchester, Miliband said he would be ‘responsible’ in opposition.
‘There will be cuts and there would have been if we had been in government,’ he said.
‘I won’t oppose every cut the coalition proposes. There will be some things the coalition does that we won’t like as a party but we will have to support.’
But the former energy and climate change secretary went on to condemn the new government’s approach to cutting the public debt. ‘What we should not do as a country is make a bad situation worse by embarking on deficit reduction at a pace and in a way that endangers our recovery.’
Referring to the deficit reduction plan set out by former chancellor Alistair Darling, Miliband said: ‘The starting point for a responsible plan is to halve the deficit over four years, but growth is our priority and we must remain vigilant against a downturn.’
Miliband, who was elected party leader on Saturday, also took a jibe at the coalition’s decision to scrap Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme. He said: ‘You see when you cancel thousands of new school buildings at a stroke, it isn’t just bad for our kids, it’s bad for construction companies at a time when their order books are empty. It’s not responsible, it’s irresponsible’
The new leader blamed the scale of the deficit on an economy that was too reliant on financial services. He pledged to learn lessons from the past. ‘I say the people who caused the crisis and can afford to do more should do more: with a higher bank levy allowing us to do more to protect the services and entitlements on which families depend,’ he said.
Miliband narrowly beat his brother David Miliband in the leadership contest as a result of widespread support from trade union members and has been nicknamed ‘Red Ed’. But he told party members that he would not support ‘irresponsible’ industrial action during the forthcoming financial squeeze.
‘We need to win the public to our cause and what we must avoid at all costs is alienating them and adding to the book of historic union failures.
‘That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes,’ he said.
Miliband, who claimed he would ‘lead a new generation not bound by the fear or the ghosts of the past’, also paid tribute to Darling, who is standing down from frontbench politics. He praised the way he had steered the country through the financial crisis.
