New British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband today said he will not be able to reverse all the spending cuts made by Prime Minister David Cameron's government if does not win the next election, due in 2015.
Speaking ahead of the coalition government's comprehensive spending review on October 20th, which will set out plans to reduce public spending, Mr Miliband said he could not guarantee he would go back on those decisions and pledged to be "serious" about tackling the nation's record budget deficit.
"Come the next election there will be some things they have done that I want to reverse but won't be able to," he told his party's annual conference today in Manchester. "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."
In a speech designed to distance himself from the mistakes that led Labour to electoral defeat in May after 13 years in power, Mr Miliband challenged the economic orthodoxy that led to the worst financial crisis in more than 60 years.
He said the Labour governments of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair did not do enough to control mounting personal debt, regulate banks and secure jobs.
Mr Miliband also said high pay for bankers raises questions about the values of British society.
"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 can earn in a year?"
"Responsibility in this country shouldn't just be about what you can get away with," he said. "And that applies to every chief executive of every major company in this country," he said.
Mr Miliband criticised Mr Cameron’s “miserable”, “unfair” and “unpatriotic” austerity measures today as he drew dividing lines with the coalition’s efforts to tackle the deficit.
The new Labour leader insisted he was “serious” about reducing the Government’s debt, and admitted the party would have been making cuts if it was still in power.
But he suggested the deficit should be tackled slower than Labour had previously proposed to avoid damaging the economic recovery and slashing public services. “There will be cuts and there would have been if we had been in government,” Mr Miliband told the conference.
“Some of them will be painful and would have been if we were in government. I won’t oppose every cut the coalition proposes. There will be some things the coalition does that we won’t like as a party but we will have to support. 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.”
Mr Miliband said Labour had to take “responsibility” for allowing UK plc to become too reliant on financial services, leaving it more vulnerable than other countries to the credit crunch.
“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.”
Hinting that the party’s previous plans for tackling government debt - already significantly slower than proposed by the coalition - could be downgraded, he said: “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.
“We must protect those on middle and low incomes. They did nothing to cause the crisis but are suffering the consequences.”
The leader called for a higher levy on banks to raise money so that “services and entitlements” could be protected.
“After 1945, we had the biggest debt we have ever had,” he said. “That generation cut the deficit but they had a bigger vision: for a new 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 work and live in.”
In a reference to Mr Cameron’s famous dig at Tony Blair that “you were the future once”, Mr Miliband said: “You were the optimist once but now all you offer is a miserable, pessimistic view of what we can achieve. And you hide behind the deficit to justify it," the new Labour leader said.
Agencies