Miliband’s latest break with the past

As an independent creature, the Resolution Foundation’s new Commission on Living Standards isn’t doing Ed Miliband’s work for him. But, boy, must the Labour leader be glad that they exist. At their launch event this morning, the “squeezed middle” – aka low-to-middle earners – suddenly took shape. There were graphs, such as those in James Plunkett’s post for us earlier, setting out the very real problems facing a segment of British society. And there were even definitions explaining what that segment is: 11 million adults, by the Resolution Foundation’s count, too rich to benefit from measures for the least well-off, and too poor to be entirely comfortable.

This was a decent platform for Miliband’s speech, and he used it to make a fairly important leap forward. “We did a lot to help these people in the tax and benefit system,” he said, “but we’ve also got to look at what can be done in the wider economy.” His point, as I heard it, was that New Labour got too hung up on handouts for smoothing various inequalities – and that his Labour should now take into account everything from the health of small businesses, to the jobs that are available, when working in this area. The most important line came in the Q&A afterwards, in reference to stagnating living standards in the US: “The welfare state couldn’t cope with those trends.”

This being Miliband, of course, there was little detail to add to this overall shading. He attacked the coalition’s VAT rise, specifically for its effect on petrol prices, and described the raised personal allowance as “giving with one hand and taking away with the other.” But alternative policies were there none.

Nevertheless, there is little doubting the potential of Labour’s attack over the cost of living. And little doubting, too, the potential of this new commission to tune the political mood music. Their next speech, we were told, is to be given by Nick Clegg, and a yet-to-be-confirmed Conservative will follow shortly afterwards. Commentators rightly describe living costs as one of the major problems of 2011. Looks as though it will be one of the most publicly debated ones too.