I am not going to offer a long commentary on the Labour leader's speech today. I'm one of those who thinks it doesn't really matter what Ed Miliband says, because...well, he's Ed Miliband.
For what it's worth, my immediate impression was that the speech was underwhelming even for those more sympathetic to him than I am. It was a like a New Statesman essay; very much the speech of a backroom boy. There was no substance to it, just a string of clunky phrases pleasing to the ears of his party (Labour will support 'producers, not predators') that didn't add up to a story, beyond the vague sense that Tories are bad people and everything is unfair. The speech will be forgotten by next year, by which time commentators will doubtless once again be declaring that Miliband has to make the 'speech of his life'.
One moment struck me, though: the booing of Blair's name. It wasn't so much that it happened - we know that large parts of the Labour Party loathe the man who had the temerity to lead them into government. It was that Ed Miliband seemed to invite it. He said, "I am not Tony Blair" (as if we hadn't noticed), and paused for a second, wearing a coquettish smirk. Cue cheering and booing.
Was that deliberate or accidental? I suspect the booing of Blair will feature significantly in this evening's news reports, as it's a neat way of symbolising a break with New Labour. That may be what Miliband wanted - or he may have just stumbled into it. Either way, it was symptomatic of his focus on pleasing the people in the hall, rather than talking to the viewers beyond. Voters watching that moment on the news will take two things away: that the party is an undisciplined rabble, uneasy with its immediate past, and that Labour is turning to the left.
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