Failure to Connect

I've watched every Labour leader from Neil Ninnock to Ed Miliband deliver a response to Chancellor's budget speech, but yesterday's effort by Ed Miliband was the worst I can remember.

Now the task is not easy because the opposition leader does not have advance sight of the budget speech although, unlike in years gone by, much of the content is leaked to the media long before the big day.

So very little of what the Chancellor is going to say remains a secret even if the Government is able to pull one or two surprise rabbits out of the hat. 

The Chancellor George Osborne had the best joke of the day in which he compared Ed Miliband to the King John, describing him as a 'weak' leader compared to his elder brother (King Richard aka David Miliband) and in thrall to a small band of barons (union barons, of course).

Now to their credit Ed and the opposition benches enjoyed this joke at their own expense not least because it was well delivered and funny, but when Ed stood up to respond he was dull, repetitive and uninspiring - his line of attack being that this was the 'same old Tories'.

Now this is a silly argument if you ask me, which makes about as much sense as going on about the Prime Minister's private education at Eton or his juvenile antics as a student.          

Because it makes about as much sense as saying that Ed Miliband is really the same as his father, the well-known Marxist academic Ralph Miliband whose view of politics and 'democratic socialism' were very different in the 1970s and 80s to the views that  his younger son holds today.

Just as David Cameron is a very different kind of Conservative leader compared to Margaret Thatcher over 30 years ago, so while I like a political bust-up as much as the next person I think it's important that what you say should be convincing and believable.

The other reason the Coalition Government is not the 'same old Tories' is that another party, the Liberal Democrats, are part of the Government as well which is a good thing, in my view, and you can see the evidence of the Lib Dem contribution in the new money for child care, for example, and in the decision to raise the tax threshold or the rate at which people start to pay tax to £10,500. 

So while I remember cheering on Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair on budget day, in years gone by, to my mind Ed Miliband fell flat on his face or to put things in boxing parlance - he failed to land a single punch.