A leader’s conference speech is always a tricky moment to pull off and though it wasn’t revolutionary, I think the scenes that the news organisations played over and over again will reconnect with many who thought Labour had abandoned them – that is much of the moderate left who had decamped to the Liberal Democrats as a non-toxic alternative (now regretting it). And big brother David just couldn’t keep his emotions in check. A Labour leader needed to lance the Iraq boil and denounce a war that was launched on false pretences and cost hundreds of thousands of lives – by some legitimate processes, a million – and all those who criticise the Lib Dems for forming an alliance with the Tories at the glint of ministerial office, are blood-stained-hypocrites if they voted for the war to keep their cabinet jobs (that’s you, Jack Straw). Launching an illegal, disastrous war on the flimsiest of evidence is far worse than going into coalition with the Conservatives. Robin Cook, were he alive, could lambaste the Lib Dems, so can the uncontaminated Ed Miliband, not those who are unrepentant about their actions. There’s Nick Clegg, facing a Sword of David-Camocles above his head, with George Osborne making snipping noises; what does David Miliband do, but make the headlines for himself, with terse words towards Harriet Harman for applauding Ed declaiming Gulf war II as "wrong."
I also liked Ed bearing down on New Labour becoming establishment and “prisoners of old certainties,” such as the market is always right and more efficient, an ideology that could have been gleaned from a GSCE economic textbook, than any high-minded financially-minded think-tank or university. The market is sometimes right and not always more efficient – many Public-Private Partnerships are colossal wastes of money with the worst of both worlds, not the best, co-opting the rapaciousness of the private sector with the foibles and bureaucracy of the public sector.
Even with a conference bounce, the Lib Dems had better be worried. AV needs to go through so they can wave it at their critics and say that this is something 13 years of Labour government failed to achieve.