Where’s the beef, David?

Camilla Cavendish’s column in The Times is essential reading about the Miliband leadership bid. She makes the point that for all the talk about Miliband being a big thinker with a firm grasp of policy, the Miliband manifesto is very vague:

“His pitch is that a refreshed Labour Party must combine “government action and personal freedom”. But he is shy about saying where the balance should be struck. To be fair, he has been saying for two years that people want more control over their lives, and that Labour must devolve more power to people. He said it again yesterday – but without a whit of detail. The only policies that he mentioned sounded strangely like a manifesto for more government – windfall taxes on utilities, family-friendly employment laws, state-funded childcare, and “more protection from a downturn made in Wall Street”. (By which he emphatically did not mean letting taxpayers keep more of their own money – one of his aides laughed when I made that suggestion.