Ed Miliband’s speech: instant reactions

Ed Miliband has just finished speaking – his final leader’s speech before the general election. We’ve got instant reactions from well-known figures from across the Labour party:

Mark Ferguson: Yesterday Ed Balls delivered a speech that was tough to take, and which flattened a conference that already less upbeat than it should be at this point in the electoral cycle. Ed Miliband had a huge task ahead of him today, he needed to deliver a brilliant speech that electrified the conference delegates.

He didn’t achieve that.

This was a decent enough speech that touched on many of the policy areas that Miliband has focussed on during his leadership. But it lacked the big announcement (a la energy price freeze) or spark of magic (like One Nation) that would have made this a top notch speech rather than just an ok speech.

With only eight months until the next election, I’ll likely be leaving conference feeling pretty flat – and many Labour activists will feel likewise. For a campaign that’s reliant on motivating a sceptical public and a tired party behind its vision for Britain, that’s not a good place to be. With the exception of the section on NHS funding (which is positive, but insufficient to solve on its own the NHS funding shortfall) it didn’t move me all that much.

What will be interesting is how (or if) the public at large – who don’t watch these speeches – take on board any of this speech. Miliband didn’t electrify, but if his (at times modest) plans gain traction, and he can overcome the public’s lack of trust in politicians (which he is yet to do), that lack of bombast today needn’t be terminal. But if we wanted a springboard to an election win, we don’t yet have it. There’s more work to do.

Luke Akehurst: I thought it was an exceptionally well written and delivered speech, with flashes of real passion that got the hall going in the way that had been missing until this point in the conference.

Grace Fletcher-Hackwood:  Ed’s speech in numbers: 3,000 more midwives; 5,000 more care workers; 8,000 more GPs; 20,000 more nurses; 4 standing ovations; 6 goals for Britain’s future and 10 years to get it all done.

As a speech it wasn’t the most impressive we’ve seen, but once Ed got around to actual policies they were good ones, and they marked a clear choice for the general election. For too long our chief promise on the NHS has been “we’ll stop doing what they’re doing”: we were missing a positive message, and now we have one. The Labour vision of the future I called for on Sunday is looking clearer all the time.

Rowenna Davis: “Together” is a good message. It dares to admit the truth that politicians can’t fix everything alone. The challenge for us candidates and activists is HOW to get people contributing. Ed just inspired me to send out a press release in Southampton asking for more help from businesses, kids and councillors to get our apprenticeship numbers up for example.

We have to make sure that our policies reflect our messages. If we want fairer businesses we need to get workers contributing to the boards of their companies for example. To solve the crisis of social care and loneliness we need to ask more people to volunteer and give greater power to our carers. And our whole great party of members and activists shouldn’t just be asked to deliver leaflets, but to play an active part in turning this speech into a reality. Here’s to that!

Owen Jones: It was a fair enough speech. It was delivered fine. But the last Conference speech before an election has to be more than that. A policy to defend our NHS – currently being fragmented by a privatisation programme no-one voted for – was particularly welcome, funded by a clampdown on tax avoidance and taxing hedge funds and cigarette companies. The increase in the minimum wage to £8 by 2020 is derisory – far from a living wage – and was met by tutting and sighing in the LabourList tent. Modern Britain is a grotesquely unequal place, where the wealth of the top 1,000 can double in five years during an economic calamity, while living standards fall for working people for longer than any time since the 1870s, and nearly a million people are forced to depend on food banks. You might hope that the Labour Party would offer a radical, coherent alternative that inspires people at a time like this. But for those waiting for it to appear in Miliband’s speech today, they will undoubtedly have been a little disappointed. It falls to the rest of us to build pressure from below to turn that around.

Marcus A. Roberts: If Ed Miliband’s “principle of Together” is to be made real the tests will come in message, policy and organisation. In message, this should mean ditching the “Only Labour” strapline in leaflets and press releases. In policy, we must go further and faster in giving more power away not just to regions and cities but communities and people. And in organisation, Labour must embrace the movement politics of Arnie Graf’s inspiration and do politics with people not to people.

Together means listening to voters and changing Britain with them, not just for them. It’s a dramatic change of mindset, culture and party for all of us. And it’s desperately needed.

Stefan Stern:  That was a clever, well judged speech. ‎The Better Together theme has now been purloined by the Labour party － it reminded me a bit of Tony Blair adapting the Football’s Coming Home song in 1996.

‎It was a long speech, but that is no bad thing considering the size of the task and the scale of the ambition. The six goals are big and important.

Ignore Twitter and the attention span of some hacks that would embarrass a goldfish：this was a serious speech from someone who is getting ready to be prime minister of an ambitious reforming government. In eight months’ time he will be.

Emma Burnell: Solidarity is back on the agenda. We may use different words (together for example) but the meaning of Ed’s speech was clear. This is about a new politics of social and economic solidarity. A politics where we don’t abandon people but work with them.

It was a long speech and at times it felt it. Ed does well when going out and meeting the public, and cynical journalists give him too much stick for it (perhaps because they never do) but referencing it is a rhetorical device with diminishing returns.

As always with the Labour Party it was the NHS that brought us to our feet. It was the most passionate section of the speech and brought it to life.

I love Ed’s vision for the country and the ambition that underpins it. To change the political consensus of the last 30 years is -actually – breathtakingly daring. At times Ed struggles to make clear how bold he wants a Labour government to be. This was a good start.

I’m now Sat with delegates from Lichfield and Henley who are raving about the speech. It certainly seems to have hit their sweet spot. Linda tells me “it’s the first time I’ve heard such important promises.” This matters. These delegates are going to go back to their constituencies ready to take the fight to the Tories and elect a Labour government. A government whose vision has inspired them today.

Anthony Painter: The speech had everything but a decent edit. It was sprawling, capacious, drifted between folksiness and a substantive plan (advice: be careful if approached by Miliband you could end up in a speech). It was best in its articulation of Milibandism as a set of policies which embody a modern expression of traditional social democracy. The attack on Cameron as a fraud and friend of powerful but ignorant of the needs of the common man and woman was effective too.

It was a chunky collection of speeches really with an over-arching ‘together we can’ speech. The Scottish referendum has slayed one nation. We are now four nations in one and so it was right to move on. It had a position on England, Europe and the world that has been quieter in previous outings.

But primarily, the speech was very much him. It reflected him as a leader: engaging, substantive, ethical, relaxed, bold, conversational. It is also a return to the true soul of the Labour Party. There is little doubt the party as a whole will love it and love him. Whether the country will do so also is an unproven proposition. It is a proposition that Miliband wants to see tested on the basis of an authentic expression of him as a person and a leader. Together, we’ll see. It’s his best foot forward.