James Forsyth James Forsyth

A contest that sets brother against brother

Ed Miliband was on impressive form at the Fabian Society conference this morning. Early on, he defused the tension over the fact that he was running against his brother with a well-delivered joke about how, given her politics, he his mother would be voting for Jon Cruddas. Throughout he showed a real lightness of touch when addressing the brother against brother question.

After today, there can be little doubt that Ed Miliband is running as the candidate of the soft left of the Labour party. He claimed that ‘the state can do extraordinary things’, said that New Labour’s’ ‘combination of free markets plus redistribution’ had reached the end of the road, and argued that the Labour party needs to talk about class more.

One interesting thing was how consistently critical he was of Labour’s deal with the financial services industry. The architect of that deal was, of course, Ed Balls who is likely to be one of Ed Miliband’s rivals for the vote of the soft left in this contest.

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