“I’m the only person in this race that isn’t ‘Continuity Miliband'”, says Liz Kendall

Liz Kendall has argued that she is the only person in the Labour leadership race who isn’t ‘Continuity Miliband.’

Kendall is running to be Labour leader against Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Jeremy Corbyn. In an interview with the Sun, she argued that:

“The other candidates haven’t spelled out how they would be different from Ed Miliband. If we stick with what we have been saying for the last five or eight years, we will have the same result”. 

This time span Kendall references includes not just the party’s five years in opposition but also the Brown years of the last Labour government. It looks as though this is directed at Burnham and Cooper who were both ministers under Brown, whereas Kendall only became an MP in 2010.

At a recent hustings Burnham has also offered significant praise to Miliband, although he has noted the party need to change by building on their last manifesto.

Kendall is pitching herself as the change candidate, promising to give the party a ‘fresh start’. Along these lines, she told the paper:

“I am determined to change the party so that Sun readers look at us again and believe they can trust us with their money, trust us with their taxes, that we are on their side.”

This comes after she yesterday told the Local Government Hustings that Labour needed to deal with welfare reform, otherwise she said the party would be out of power ‘for decades.’ She said if the party weren’t “trusted on public finances and getting the deficit and debt down” the electorate will “not give us a hearing”.

Although she didn’t clearly outline what welfare reform proposals under her leadership would look like, she argued the party need to face ‘head-on’ the issue of welfare reform:

“I don’t want to see £30 billion of taxpayers money spent on tax credits subsidising low pay employers. We’ve got to have a living wage society. I don’t want to see £27 billion going on housing benefit. I want to see that money going on investment in building new homes. We are going to have to re-think what we do.”