You really do know that David Miliband has lost, don’t you?  Have a look at the following screenshot from the BBC website today for all the evidence you need (click on the image to get the full-size version).

So what do we see?  David Miliband in the headline from his speech yesterday praising his brother Ed.  Then, at the bottom of the image, a dead giveaway which simply reads: “In Full: Miliband’s speech”.  And where does this lead us to?  Well, not to David Miliband’s graceful swansong.  Rather, at least for the media, to the only Miliband speech which now counts.  That is to say, Ed Miliband’s first speech proper as leader of the Labour Party.

Brutal stuff.

On the other hand, so is the “New Generation” turning of the page that forms the underlying thesis of Ed’s taking charge.  I was telling you all the other day that Ed could be to the Labour Party what Pope John XXIII was to the Catholic Church.

In the light of events, in the light of today’s speech by Ed at Party Conference, I feel even more certain of such an assertion.

I was planning to fisk both speeches today, but there is no embeddable sight or sound of David’s to be found anywhere (or, at least, I haven’t been able to find it) – either on YouTube more generally or on the Labour Party’s own YouTube channel in particular.  Nothing, even, as far as I can tell, on LabourList, where you’d expect some trace of David Miliband’s most recent comments to remain in their entirety.

The BBC do have something of it here – but no transcript for sure, no unmediated version of the content.  And I do find this interesting.

Don’t you?

Which is why I suggest you watch it whilst you still have the opportunity.  If this isn’t a latterday example of political airbrushing in the making (whether – I hasten to add – it be conscious or unconscious), I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, back to Ed himself.  Below his speech in full (original source from the BBC here), with my occasional fisked comments inline.

Conference, I stand here today ready to lead: a new generation now leading Labour.

Be in no doubt.

The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.

Today I want to tell you who I am, what I believe and how we are going to do the most important thing we have to do – win back the trust of the country.

We all of us share a deep conviction which brought us into this party and into this hall.

But each of us has our own individual story.

And I want to tell you about mine.

In 1940, my grandfather, with my Dad, climbed onto one of the last boats out of Belgium.

They had to make a heart breaking decision – to leave behind my grandmother and my father’s sister. They spent the war in hiding, in a village sheltered by a brave local farmer. Month after month, year upon year, they lived in fear of the knock at the door.

At the same time, on the other side of Europe, my mother, aged five, had seen Hitler’s army march into Poland.

She spent the war on the run sheltering in a convent and then with a Catholic family that took her in. Her sister, her mother and her.

My love for this country comes from this story. Two young people fled the darkness that had engulfed the Jews across Europe and in Britain they found the light of liberty.

They arrived with nothing. This country gave them everything.

It gave them life and the things that make life worth living: hope, friendship, opportunity and family.

And they took hope and opportunity. They worked hard; they got on.

My Dad learnt English, paid his way moving furniture during the day, and studying at night at technical college. He joined the Navy to fight for our country and afterwards he wanted to go to university. He did.

My Mum built a life here after the war, for all of us. I know nobody more generous, nobody more kind, nobody more loving and nobody more relieved that this is contest is over, than my Mum.

The gift my parents gave to me and David are the things I want for every child in this country. A secure and loving home. Encouragement and the aspiration to succeed.

This first section is effective backstory stuff which serves a double purpose – firstly, to round out the Ed Miliband family background in case the Daily Mails of this world find it impossible to further resist the temptation to make comments about “offspring born out of wedlock”; and secondly, used quite firmly and, in this case, quite shamelessly (for I think it’s clear that Ed is showing himself to be absolutely no novice at the darker arts of political communication), in order to provide him with the moral authority to begin to address that thorny subject of immigration, one of recent Labour’s many examples of communication and policy failure resulting from that triangulatory obsession to be all things to all men and women.

And so it is that Ed continues thus:

In those ways my family was just like every other. But in some ways it was different.

I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn’t believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism.

But you know, it wasn’t a cold house.

It was warm, full of the spirit of argument and conviction, the conviction that leads me to stand before you today, the conviction that people of courage and principle can make a huge difference to their world.

What my parents learnt in fear, they passed on to us in an environment of comfort and security.

And there was one more lesson that I learnt.

We do not have to accept the world as we find it. And we have a responsibility to leave our world a better place and never walk by on the other side of injustice.

This underlines the “New Generation” theme, a theme which may chime and resonate far beyond the Labour Party itself.  A theme which contradicts quite fundamentally the desire to include everyone, young and old, in the act of governance.  For – as we will see later on in the speech – Ed Miliband’s vision of politics, whilst encompassing a desire to renew, seems just as pyramidal as Blair’s ever was.

More, as follows:

Freedom and opportunity are precious gifts and the purpose of our politics is to expand them, for all our people.

That faith is not something I chose. It’s not something I learned from books, even from my Dad’s books.

It was something I was born into.

And that is why David and I have devoted our lives to politics.

And it is why I will commit to you here and now. My beliefs will run through everything I do. My beliefs, my values are my anchor and when people try to drag me, as I know they will, it is to that sense of right and wrong, that sense of who I am and what I believe, to which I will always hold.

New politics?  Substitute the word belief with, say, “Christianity” – and this could surely be Blair speaking.

Conference, I am so honoured that you chose me to lead your party and I know you share those values.

And I am proud that every day, day in and day out, in every village, and every town and city in the land, you work to put those values into practice.

Conference, can I thank you for the heroic work you did at the election.

The reason we denied the Conservative Party a majority was because of the incredible work of Labour and trade union members the length and breadth of our country.

From Birmingham Edgbaston to Westminster North and from Edinburgh South to the Vale of Clwyd, it was your dedication, your energy and your determination to fight for the communities you love that beat the Ashcroft millions.

And let me thank everyone, not just Labour Party members, but thousands of ordinary members of the public who drove the BNP out of Barking and Dagenham.

But let’s face facts.

We had a bad result.

We had a very bad result.

And we are out of government.

And let me tell you, there is nothing good about opposition.

Every day out of power, another day when this coalition can wreak damage on our communities, another day when we cannot change our country for the better.

And let us resolve today that this will be a one-term government. That is the purpose of my leadership of this party.

This is pretty damn clear and will provide the future justification for what I fear will repeat recent history as it becomes a short-cut approach to political hierarchy and structure.  Sentences like these will prove a linchpin and validation of what may unhappily happen in the years to come, as the pyramid of power that is a traditional British political party reasserts itself inside Labour.  For if I am right in what I say, the emotional appeal of Miliband (E) will be plenty enough to enthuse his “New Generation” of activists into signing up to a fulsome participation based on nothing more real (certainly nothing more systemic) than a personal trust in the leader.

Ed may not want it that way now, he may be clear about what he would prefer – but, whether consciously or not, he is laying down the ground rules for a capitulation to severely pyramidal politics, when, that is to say, push comes to shove and it’s time to shove the Coalition out of power.

But to achieve that we must go on our own journey.

And that is why the most important word in politics for us is humility.

We need to learn some painful truths about where we went wrong and how we lost touch.

We must not blame the electorate for ending up with a government we don’t like, we should blame ourselves.

We have to understand why people felt they couldn’t support us.

We have to show we understand the problems people face today.

This will require strong leadership. It won’t always be easy. You might not always like what I have to say.

But you’ve elected me leader and lead I will.

See what I mean?  This is the winner asserting his right to rule, his recognition and insistence that he alone commands the dizzy heights of power.  We may interpret this as him needed to show the media he’s his own man – but he’s showing the Party, just as much, the kind of structures he truly believes in.

I truly wonder if David Miliband would have dared to treat his own comrades in the same way.

This country faces some tough choices. And so do we. And we need to change.

You remember. We began as restless and radical. Remember the spirit of 1997, but by the end of our time in office we had lost our way.

The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.

Think of how we took on the idea that there was a public ownership solution to every problem our society faced.

We changed Clause 4. We were right to do so.

Think of how we emphasised being tough on crime was as important as being tough on the causes of crime. We were right to do so.

Think of how we challenged the impression that we taxed for its own sake and that we were hostile to business. We were right to change.

And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.

And the reason Tony and Gordon took on conventional wisdom in our party was so they could change the country.

We forget too easily what a radical challenge their ideas were to established ways of thinking about Britain and how they reshaped the centre-ground of politics.

They were reforming, restless and radical.

This restless and radical soundbite is very good -  excellent, in fact.  This is probably the most effective part of the speech.  He apologises for New Labour but recovers the right to use the same discourse – the discourse of flexibility, of pick-and-mix politics.  The discourse, in fact, of a consummate triangulator.  Or, in other words, what every politician has done since the beginning of time: keep all their options open.

The old way of thinking said that economic efficiency would always come at the price of social justice.

With the minimum wage, tax credits, the New Deal, they showed that was wrong.

I am proud that our government lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, hundreds of thousands of pensioners out of poverty, proud that we created the highest levels of employment in Britain’s history.

The old way of thinking said that public services would always be second-class. But we defied the conventional wisdom.

I come from a generation that suffered school lessons in portacabins and crumbling hospitals. I tell you one thing, for the eighteen years they were in power the Tories did nothing to fix the roof when the sun was shining.

Our legacy is a generation for whom newly built schools and modernised hospitals are an everyday fact of life.

I am proud of the fact that because of what we did, yes we did save the National Health Service in this country.

The old way of thinking said that you couldn’t change attitudes towards gay men and lesbians.

Let me tell you that last month I was privileged to be in this great city, at Pride, to see not just thousands of people marching but thousands of people lining the street in support.

We should be proud that our commitment to equality means we have couples forming civil partnerships across the country and celebrating with t heir family and friends.

The old thinking told us that for 300 years, the choice was either the break up of the United Kingdom or Scotland and Wales run from London.

We should be proud that Labour established the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. And we should make sure that after next May’s elections we re-elect Carwyn Jones as the First Minister in Wales and we elect Iain Gray as the new First Minister in Scotland.

And I am so so proud that, against all the odds, we helped deliver peace in Northern Ireland. And it will be one of Tony Blair’s great legacies to this country and we owe our gratitude to him.

The old thinking told us that the challenges of the world were too big and our country too small to make a difference.

But thanks to our leadership around the world, development spending is now heading towards our goal, forty million more children are going to school each day, and two hundred million are protected from malaria. And that would never have happened without the leadership of Gordon Brown as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister.

Tony and Gordon had the courage to take on established attitudes and institutions in Britain.

It is that courage that made us such a successful political force.

But our journey must also understand where it went wrong. I tell you, I believe that Britain is fairer and stronger than it was 13 years ago.

But we have to ask, how did a party with such a record lose five million votes between 1997 and 2010?

It didn’t happen by accident.

The hard truth for all of us in this hall is that a party that started out taking on old thinking became the prisoner of its own certainties.

This last phrase – “… the prisoner of its own certainties …” – will surely become one of the most oft-quoted phrases from the entire speech.  Accurate and damning at the same time.  Here, it’s almost as if Ed is telling us: “New Labour was right all along.  What lost us those voters was the fact that it was actually Blair and Brown who deserted New Labour’s original guiding principles.  And what we need to do to regain our popularity is to do what Blair and Brown ended up deciding not to be: that is to say, faithful to the tenets of the truly restless and radical in society.  Faithful to what New Labour always stood for.”

In the light of this thesis, power didn’t exactly corrupt New Labour.  Rather, it simply diluted it.

The world was changing all around us – from global finance to immigration to terrorism – New Labour, a political force founded on its ability to adapt and change lost its ability to do so.

The reason was that we too often bought old, established ways of thinking and over time we just looked more and more like a new establishment.

Let me say to the country:

You saw the worst financial crisis in a generation, and I understand your anger that Labour hadn’t changed the old ways in the City of deregulation.

You wanted your concerns about the impact of immigration on communities to be heard, and I understand your frustration that we didn’t seem to be on your side.

And when you wanted to make it possible for your kids to get on in life, I understand why you felt that we were stuck in old thinking about higher and higher levels of personal debt, including tuition fees.

You saw jobs disappear and economic security undermined, I understand your anger at a Labour government that claimed it could end boom and bust.

And I understand also that the promise of new politics of 1997 came to look incredibly hollow after the scandal of MPs’ expenses. And we came to look like a new establishment in the company we kept, the style of our politics and our remoteness from people.

I stand before you, clear in my task: to once again make Labour a force that takes on established thinking, doesn’t succumb to it, speaks for the majority and shapes the centre ground of politics.

Now it is in the speech when Ed begins to mingle the assertion of his individual authority – a very traditional way of looking at politics (none of the namby-pamby enabling or facilitation processes of modern management systems for Labour politics then) – with a rather empty and unspecific set of references to that “New Generation” I mentioned earlier:

And I tell you this: if we are not this party, nobody will be.

This new generation that leads our party is humble about our past and idealistic about our future.

It is a generation that will always stand up for the mainstream majority.

It is a generation that will fight for the centre ground, not allow it to be dominated or defined by our opponents.

And it is a generation which thirsts for change.

This week we embark on the journey back to power.

It will be a long journey involving hard thinking for our party.

We do not start that journey by claiming we know all the answers now.

We do so by setting a direction of change.

Let me tell you what kind of country I want us to build together:

This generation wants to change our economy so that it works better for working people and doesn’t just serve the needs of the few at the top.

This generation wants to change our society so that it values community and family, not just work, because we understand there is more to life than the bottom line.

This generation wants to change the way government works because it understands the power of the state to change lives but also how frustrating it can be if not reformed.

This generation wants to change our foreign policy so that it’s always based on values, not just alliances.

And this generation knows very profoundly that to change Britain we need a new politics.

Above all, I lead a new generation not bound by the fear or the ghosts of the past.

So, Ed simultaneously acknowledges the other people in the Party who will help him lead us away from the “ghosts of the past” and defines who will have a right to participate in that leadership.  Once again, he talks new political structures but walks very old hierarchical relationships.

As we emerge from the global economic crisis, we face a choice: we can return to business as usual or we can challenge old thinking to build a new economy.

Let me say, I believe strongly that we need to reduce the deficit.

There will be cuts, and there would have been if we had been in government.

Some of them will be painful, and would have been if we were in government.

I won’t oppose every cut the coalition proposes.

This is actually rather brave, honest and wise.  Good stuff.

There will be some things the coalition does that we won’t like as a party but we will have to support.

And come the next election there will be some things they have done that I’ll want to reverse but will not be able to.

I say this because the fiscal credibility we earned before 1997 was hard won and we must win it back by the time of the next general election.

I am serious about reducing our deficit.

But I am also serious about doing it in a way that learns the basic lessons of economics, fairness and history.

We then get a short thumbnail sketch of economics which far more politicians should be prepared to share in public.  They won’t – but then, perhaps, this will only help Ed in his desire to be trusted beyond the Party limits.

Economics teaches us that at a time of recession governments run up deficits.

We were too exposed to financial services as an economy so the impact of the crash on the public finances was deeper on us than on others.

We should take responsibility for not building a more resilient economy.

But what we should not do as a country is make a bad situation worse by embarking on deficit reduction at a pace and in a way that endangers our recovery.

The starting point for a responsible plan is to halve the deficit over four years, but growth is our priority and we must remain vigilant against a downturn.

You see, it’s obvious really, when you cancel thousands of new school buildings at a stroke, it isn’t just bad for our kids, it’s bad for construction companies at a time when their order books are empty.

It’s not responsible, it’s irresponsible.

When you deprive Sheffield Forgemasters of a loan, a loan from which government would be paid back, you deprive Britain of the ability to lead the world in new technology.

It’s not responsible, it’s irresponsible. And we should say so.

And when you reduce your economic policy simply to deficit reduction alone, you leave Britain without a plan for growth, which is what this government has done.

No plan for growth means no credible plan for deficit reduction.

And nor should we reduce the deficit without learning the basic lessons of fairness.

We must protect those on middle and low incomes. They did nothing to cause the crisis but are suffering the consequences.

I say the people who caused the crisis and can afford to do more should do more: with a higher bank levy allowing us to do more to protect the services and entitlements on which families depend.

You see, Mr Cameron.  Ed Miliband is very dangerous.  Essentially because he’s prepared to be responsible and a populist at the same time.  Anyone can grab the headlines with the latter – combining the two will grab the hearts and souls of a nation.

The next bit is brilliant stuff.  Like all good marketing, like all good writing in fact, it shows without telling.  And what it shows us is that the aftermath of the credit crunch needs a spirit not seen here since the end of World War II:

And we should learn the basic lessons of history.

After 1945, we had the biggest debt we have ever had.

That generation did cut the deficit but they had a bigger vision: for our economy and a good society.

True patriotism is about reducing the debt burden we pass on to our kids.

But Mr Cameron, true patriotism is also about building an economy and a society fit for our kids to live in.

Mr Cameron, you were the optimist once but now all you offer is a miserable, pessimistic view of what Britain can achieve. And you hide behind the deficit to justify it. We won’t let you get away with it.

But I have a different ambition, to emerge from the global economic crisis tackling the deficit, but also learning the much deeper lessons that this generation must learn.

It is a huge challenge to change our economy for the future and the same old thinking will lead to the same old results: an economy too dependent on financial services, too many people stuck in low pay and growing inequality.

We need a plan for change. A plan to reform the banks, invest in the industries of the future and support the small businesses and entrepreneurs who are the lifeblood of this economy.

The new generation in the party understands the fundamental New Labour lesson that we must build prosperity as well as redistributing it.

I do just love the way he keeps on linking back into the original New Labour source, don’t you?  I may not approve, mind – but it is so consummately achieved that I can’t help wondering how I really did not perceive his strength at narrative during the leadership campaign itself.

Perhaps because standing as candidate and winning the prize are entirely different situations – allow completely different things to be asserted and effected.

And it also knows that there are huge vested interests and huge barriers to the wealth creators in this country, particularly small businesses and the self-employed.

These must be tackled. I tell you this, I am determined to make Labour the party of enterprise and small business again.

And I want British businesses, large and small, to be able to make the most of the advantages of globalisation.

New Labour was right to be enthusiastic about the opportunities that come in a more connected world: the movement of goods and services, the chance to travel, the new markets for our companies.

But this new generation recognises that we did not do enough to address concerns about globalisation, including migration.

All of us heard it on the doorsteps about immigration. Like the man I met in my constituency who told me he had seen his mates’ wages driven down by the consequences of migration.

If we don’t understand why he would feel angry – and it wasn’t about prejudice – then we are failing to serve those who we are in politics to represent.

I am the son of immigrants. I believe that Britain has benefited economically, culturally, socially from those who came to this country.

I don’t believe either that we can turn back the clock on free movement of labour in Europe. But we should never have pretended it would not have consequences.

Consequences we should have dealt with.

We have to challenge the old thinking that flexible labour markets are always the answer.

Employers should not be allowed to exploit migrant labour in order to undercut wages.

And if we have free movement of labour across Europe we need proper labour standards in our economy, including real protection for agency workers.

So you see.  That backstory stuff at the beginning cleverly lights the fuse.  If I didn’t know the mainstream media better than I do, the headlines tomorrow could read “New Labour leader publicly addresses issue of immigration for first time in history”.  And from that moral high ground Ed shamelessly devises for us.  Speaking as an immigrant about the problems of immigration, Ed has found a way to allow us all to begin to contemplate a workable discourse.

And then we come to the unions, as a force of decency not strife:

And, as every democratic country recognises, it is vital that workers have a voice that speaks for them.

I remember during this campaign I met some school dinner ladies. They had to buy their own uniforms, their shift patterns were being changed at a moment’s notice, frankly conference they were being exploited.

So they looked to their union to help them. They weren’t interested in going on strike, they loved the kids the worked with, they loved their schools. But they wanted someone to help them get basic standards of decency and fairness.

Responsible trade unions are part of a civilised society, every democratic country recognises that.

But all of us in this movement bear a heavy responsibility. We want to win an argument about the danger this coalition government poses to our economy and our society.

To do so we must understand the lessons of our own history too.

We need to win the public to our cause and what we must avoid at all costs is alienating them and adding to the book of historic union failures.

That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.

Yup.  Ed the Populist again.  Perhaps, even, Ed the Merciless.

The public won’t support them. I won’t support them. And you shouldn’t support them either.

But it is not just from trade unions that I want to see responsibility.

This new generation demands responsibility from business too.

During this campaign, I have met some extraordinary people doing amazing service for our country.

I remember a care worker I met in Durham.

She worked hard and with dedication, looking after our mums, dads and grandparents when they couldn’t look after themselves anymore.

She is doing one of the most important jobs in our society, and if it was my mum or dad, I would want anyone who cared for them to be paid a decent wage.

But she was barely paid the minimum wage – and barely a few pence extra for higher skills.

She told me that she thought a fair wage would be £7 an hour because, after all, she would get that for stacking shelves at the local supermarket.

I believe in responsibility in every part of our society.

That’s why I believe in not just a minimum wage but the foundation of our economy in the future must be a living wage too.

And we need a tax system for business that rewards responsibility:

To pay a living wage;

To provide high quality apprenticeships;

And family-friendly employment.

And we need responsibility at the top of society too. The gap between rich and poor does matter. It doesn’t just harm the poor it harms us all.

What does it say about the values of our society, what have we become, that a banker can earn in a day what the care worker earns in a year? It’s wrong, conference.

I say: responsibility in this country shouldn’t just be about what you can get away with.

And that applies to every chief executive of every major company in this country.

And, just as businesses have responsibility to ensure fair pay, so those who can work have a responsibility to do so.

This is one of the hardest issues for our party because all of us know in our communities people who are in genuine need and who worry about the impact of new medical tests, or changes to rules on them.

At the same time, let’s be honest, we also know there are those for whom the benefits system has become a trap.

That is not in their interests or the interests of us a society and we are right when we say it must be challenged.

Reforming our benefits system is not about stereotyping everybody out of work, it’s about transforming their lives.

Real help matched with real responsibility.

That is why on welfare, I will look closely at whatever the government comes forward with: not arbitrary cuts to benefits but a genuine plan to make sure that those in need are protected and that those who can work have the help they need to ensure they do so.

Work is a central part of life. But it is not all that matters.

This needs to be said over and over again.  Even more so, in a Big Society dynamic.  If we are to all contribute more to our own communities, we will need big and small business to be far more flexible in relation to working-patterns and working-hours.

We all care about making a living, but we don’t just care about that.

Here is our generation’s paradox: the biggest ever consumers of goods and services, but a generation that yearns for the things that business cannot provide.

Strong families.

Time with your children.

Green spaces.

Community life

Love and compassion.

I love this Ed.  If I didn’t know better, I’d say you believed in some religion or another.  As it is, you clearly believe in rounded people and aspirations which are not tied – uniquely – to the marketplace. 

New Labour embraced markets in our economy and was right to do so.

But let’s be honest, we became naive about them.

We must never again give the impression that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Love this too.  Though I gather some arch-Blairites do not.  Perhaps arch-Blairites is wrong, though.  Perhaps ultra-technocrats would be better.

We must be on the side of communities who want to save their local post office, not be the people trying to close it.

We must be on the side of people trying to protect their high street from looking like every other high street, not the people who say that’s just the forces of progress.

And we must be on the side of those who are dismayed by the undermining of the local pub with cut-price alcohol from supermarkets.

We must shed old thinking and stand up for those who believe there is more to life than the bottom line.

We stand for these things not because we are social conservatives but because we believe in community, belonging and solidarity.

Again, his innate populism jumps out at you.  What if you are a social conservative, Ed?  More power to your elbow, say I.

And I tell you this: the good life is about the things we do in our community and the time we spend with family.

I feel this so deeply since the birth of my son sixteen months ago.

As we rebuild our economy, we must think how we protect families up and down this country.

Families can’t do the best job if they are stressed out, working 60 or 70 hours a week, can’t be there when the kids get home, doing two or three jobs.

We’ve got to change our culture on working time, not just for the good of families, but because it is through family that we learn right from wrong, develop ambitions for ourselves, and show kindness and respect for others.

When I look at some of the challenges we face as a country – from gangs to teenage pregnancy – it is only a government that stands up for families that are trying their best to bring up their kids that can offer answers.

So as we rebuild our economy we must think about how we protect and nourish the things that matter to families and to family life.

This new generation must also challenge the way we think about the state and what it can achieve.

I believe profoundly that government plays a fantastically important role in creating the good society.

This, then, is going to be Labour’s take on that Tory distraction that is the Big Society:

But our new generation also knows that government can itself become just such a vested interest. That unless reformed, unless accountable, unless responsive, government can impede the good society.

Our new generation, hungry for change, is unwilling to see that happen.

Like millions of people around the country, I went to my local comprehensive. I know the value of a good school, a good teacher.

And I know there are many parents frustrated, with a school that doesn’t suit your child or live up to your hopes.

There are amazing secondary schools in my constituency and amazing teachers and head teachers. But one of them was consistently failing its pupils.

And it pained me as an MP to walk into that school knowing those kids were being consistently let down. Now that school has been taken over, the kids life chances transformed.

That is what good public service reform is all about.

My generation recognises too that government can itself become a vested interest when it comes to civil liberties.

I believe in a society where individual freedom and liberty matter and should never be given away lightly.

The first job of government is the protection of its citizens. As prime minister I would never forget that.

And that means working with all the legitimate means at our disposal to disrupt and destroy terrorist networks.

But we must always remember that British liberties were hard fought and hard won over hundreds of years.

We should always take the greatest care in protecting them.

And too often we seemed casual about them.

Like the idea of locking someone away for 90 days – nearly three months in prison – without charging them with a crime.

Or the broad use of anti-terrorism measures for purposes for which they were not intended.

They just undermined the good things we did like CCTV and DNA testing.

Yes, indeed.  He backtracks on the really daft stuff – but won’t be a liberal pushover.  This is yet another example of old politics dressed up as new.

Protecting the public involves protecting all their freedoms.

I won’t let the Tories or the Liberals take ownership of the British tradition of liberty.

I want our party to reclaim that tradition.

So too in our foreign policy the new generation must challenge old thinking.

We are the generation that came of age at the end of the Cold War.

The generation that was taught that the end of history had arrived and then saw 9/11 shatter that illusion.

And we are the generation that recognises that we belong to a global community: we can’t insulate ourselves from the world’s problems.

For that reason, right now this country has troops engaged in Afghanistan.

They represent the very best of our country.

They and their families are making enormous sacrifices on our behalf and we should today acknowledge their service and their sacrifice.

Our troops are there to stabilise the country and enable a political settlement to be reached, as David said yesterday, so that Afghanistan can be stable and we can be safe.

I will work in a bi-partisan way with the government to both support our mission and ensure Afghanistan is not a war without end.

But just as I support the mission in Afghanistan as a necessary response to terrorism, I’ve got to be honest with you about the lessons of Iraq.

This needed to be said.  This will convince many people who left Labour to, at least, contemplate voting again for what they had always considered their natural home.  This is an important statement.

David would never have said this.

David would have been a prisoner of those “ghosts of the past” his brother referred to earlier in this speech.

Iraq was an issue that divided our party and our country. Many sincerely believed that the world faced a real threat. I criticise nobody faced with making the toughest of decisions and I honour our troops who fought and died there.

But I do believe that we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that.

Wrong because that war was not a last resort, because we did not build sufficient alliances and because we undermined the United Nations.

America has drawn a line under Iraq and so must we.

Our alliance with America is incredibly important to us but we must always remember that our values must shape the alliances that we form and any military action that we take.

So many of the world’s problems need functioning international institutions. The days in which any country could achieve their goals on their own are over.

There can be no solution to the conflicts of the Middle East without international support, providing pressure where it is needed, and pressure where it is right to do so.

And let me say this, as Israel ends the moratorium on settlement building, I will always defend the right of Israel to exist in peace and security. But Israel must accept and recognise in its actions the Palestinian right to statehood.

That is why the attack on the Gaza flotilla was so wrong.

And that is why the Gaza blockade must be lifted and we must strain every sinew to work to make that happen.

The government must step up and work with our partners in Europe and around the world to help bring a just and lasting peace to the Middle East.

But to achieve all these things – a different economy, a different society and reform of the state, changes in our foreign policy – we must change our politics too.

Let’s be honest, politics isn’t working.

People have lost faith in politicians and politics.

And trust is gone.

Politics is basically broken.

Its practice, its reputation and its institutions.

I’m in it and even I sometimes find it depressing.

This generation has a chance and a huge responsibility to change our politics. We must seize it and meet the challenge.

So we need to reform our House of Commons and I support changing our voting system and will vote yes in the referendum on AV.

Yes, we need to finally elect the House of Lords after talking about it for a hundred years.

Yes, we need more decisions to be made locally, with local democracy free of the constraints we have placed on it in the past and free of an attitude which has looked down its nose at the work that local government does.

And I want to congratulate all our local councillors and tell you: I will be shoulder to shoulder with you at next May’s local elections, which must mean victory for Labour up and down this country.

And the following year, we will be proud not only of the Olympics in London, but proud too to see them presided over by the next mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.

And let me also congratulate Oona King on the campaign that she fought for the London election.

Let’s be honest, changing our institutions won’t be enough to restore trust on its own.

Look, in the end, it’s politicians who have to change.

So it comes back to individuals – just as much as the system.  I do like how it sounds, but I have to say my brain tells me you’re on a hiding-to-nothing.  You can change systems pretty quickly, pretty easily as a general rule.  You can’t, however, change people’s behaviours and attitudes.  That takes much longer.

I simply don’t think it will work.  Either Ed is being naive here or he is telling us what he thinks we want to  hear.  I have to say I don’t know which I would prefer to be the case, which I fear the most as an eventuality and truth.

This generation must reject the old ways of doing politics. And must speak to the issues our generation knows it must confront.

The focus groups will tell you that there’s no votes in green issues.

Maybe not.

But taking the difficult steps to protect our planet for future generations is the greatest challenge our generation faces.

When I think about my son, in 20 years time he will be asking me whether I was part of the last generation not to get climate change or the first generation to get it.

And climate change, just like the aging society, can’t be tackled by the politics we have.

They don’t lend them selves to the politics of now: instant results, instant votes, instant popularity, X-factor politics.

So we can’t be imprisoned by the focus groups.

Politics has to be about leadership or it is about nothing.

You see?  A clearer definition and attachment to pyramidal politics you could not have.

The next piece is another example of how brave Ed can (already) be.  He also, I think, captures the spirit of the time.  We might not like what the Coalition is doing to our country – but Coalition government is what the public asked for.  And conversational politics is what we all need right now:

I also know something else. Wisdom is not the preserve of any one party. Some of the political figures in history who I admire most are Keynes, Lloyd George, Beveridge, who were not members of the Labour Party.

Frankly, the political establishment too often conducts debate in a way that insults the intelligence of the public.

We must change this for the good of the country.

I will be a responsible Leader of the Opposition.

What does that mean?

When I disagree with the government, as on the deficit, I will say so loud and clear and I will take the argument to them.

But when Ken Clarke says we need to look at short sentences in prison because of high re-offending rates, I’m not going to say he’s soft on crime.

When Theresa May says we should review stop and search laws to prevent excessive use of state power, I’m not going to say she is soft on terrorism.

He he he.  Brilliantly traditional knockabout stuff.  Even as he says he’s not going to be knockabout.  Massive win here!  (Even though I don’t approve of such an approach …)

I tell you this conference, our generation must find a new way of conducting politics.

And that brings me to some of the names I’ve been called…

Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit… I gather some people can see the resemblance.

Forrest Gump… Not so much, I think.

And what about Red Ed?

Come off it.

Let’s start to have a grown-up debate in this country about who we are and where we want to go and what kind of country we want to build.

A few days ago our contest came to an end and now the real contest has begun.

I relish the chance to take on David Cameron.

We may be of a similar age, but in my values and ideals I am of a different and new generation.

The new generation is not simply defined by age, but by attitudes and ideals.

And there is a defining difference between us and David Cameron – and that is optimism.

We are the heirs to an extraordinary tradition, to great leaders who were above all the optimists of history.

The optimism of 1945 which built the National Health Service and the welfare state.

The optimism of Harold Wilson and the white heat of technology and the great social reforms of that government.

The optimism of Tony and Gordon who took on the established thinking and reshaped our country.

We are the optimists in politics today.

So, let’s be humble about our past.

Let’s understand the need to change.

Let’s inspire people with our vision of the good society.

Let the message go out, a new generation has taken charge of Labour.

Optimistic about our country.

Optimistic about our world.

Optimistic about the power of politics.

We are the optimists and together we will change Britain.

So then.  What do we have?  All in all, a speech where Ed Miliband finally throws caution to the winds as he carefully couches his language in the terms of those darker arts of communication I mentioned earlier: yes, I repeat – those darker arts.   This is the leader we needed if what we wanted to do was take the next generation by the scruff of the neck.

Without, that is, giving up on the traditional political arts of fudge and obfuscation.

Mr Miliband (E) is a very very clever man indeed.

I severely underestimated him.

I don’t think I was the only one.  Leastwise, I hope I wasn’t.  I wouldn’t like to be the only fool on the block.

This is a change-maker in the making.  A man with a sense of destiny.  A man not only for his time but – also perhaps – a man able to make, entirely in his own image, the time he was made for.

This is not exactly a new politics.  This is more an old politics renewed.  Not quite the same thing I grant you – but, I suppose, for the moment, for those who feel abandoned by the Coalition even as it talks of consultation, it will more than happily suffice.