The Memory Man

The biggest challenge facing the UK ahead of the 2010 general election was the awful state of the country's finances which was caused by two things: the great banking collapse of 2008 and the mountain of debt (public and private) built up as the result of UK PLC spending, for years, far more than the country was earning.   

Now for some time after the economy hit the skids, Gordon Brown, then Labour Prime Prime Minister, argued that the Labour Government would simply spend its way out of this mess which had, of course, occurred under Gordon Brown's watch.

But as the general election loomed other senior voices in the Labour Party argued that Gordon's approach was increasingly untenable and the debate switched to 'how far and how fast' the incoming Government should move to balance the books.

Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and (Lord) Peter Mandleson were among the senior Labour figures telling Gordon Brown bluntly that 'spend spend, spend' was not a credible platform on which to fight the 2010 election and would inevitable lead to disaster at the polls.

So the battle to balance the country's books was fought with the Conservatives demanding a tough programme of public spending cuts and tax rises, which became known as 'austerity', and Labour promising essentially the same thing, albeit with a slightly less ambitious package that was fairly characterised as 'austerity-lite'.  

Ed Miliband failed to mention these issues in his leader's speech to the 2014 Labour Party conference which is really quite astonishing since the very same challenges and problems still exist less than nine months away from the May 2015 general election. 

All mention of the present Coalition Government proceeding 'too far, too fast' seems to have disappeared without Ed Miliband or his shadow chancellor Ed Balls offering an alternative analysis about the state of the economy or explaining clearly to voters just 'how far and how fast' an incoming Labour Government would tackle the task of balancing the spending books.

Now that really is remarkable if you ask me, because as Bill Clinton once said: 'It's the economy, stupid' and not to mention the single biggest issue facing the country looks like a terrible own goal. 

But maybe the answer is that Ed simply forgot to mention the economy in his leader's speech which was supposed to last 80 minutes according to the Labour advisers who briefed the media, yet was inexplicably cut short at just 65 minutes.

In other words, in delivering his speech without notes Ed appears to have forgotten his lines.