Miliband 'relishing' election fight

Ed Miliband said he was relishing a “close” general election fight after a series of opinion polls showed Labour’s lead narrowing.

The Opposition leader said 2015 would be a “big stakes” contest about “what kind of country we are trying to be”.

Mr Miliband’s strategy has come under renewed scrutiny after his failure to respond directly to measures in last week’s Budget was seen to have allowed Chancellor George Osborne to score a significant political victory.

Post-Budget polls suggested the two main parties were effectively level-pegging.

A group of influential left-leaning thinkers joined forces to urge him to produce “transformative” policies that would excite voters and not rely on Conservative unpopularity to secure a return to government.

“I took this job on three and half years ago and always knew this was going to be a close election,” Mr Miliband told ITV’s The Agenda last night.

“But I think the stakes are incredibly high. And I relish the fight over the future of country over the next 13 months and fundamentally I think that is a fight about what you stand up for.

“Do you stand up for a few people at the top, is that where you think a country succeeds? Or do you stand up for lower and middle income people, and that is where I think where this election is going to be fought out.

“This is a big, big stakes election about what kind of country we’re going to be, who are we going to recover to be as a country.

“Let’s have the argument and let the people decide.”

The Budget ” missed out on the central issue we’re facing: the cost of living crisis that so many families are facing”, he said.

Mr Miliband was seen as having dodged taking a position in the Commons on Mr Osborne’s surprise overhaul of pensions and savings rules – with the party taking several days to affirm its qualified support for the changes.

“The Government is saying that the economy is fixed and people are still feeling that they are worse off. So my criticism of this Budget is mainly what it omitted. The things it didn’t do. On an energy price freeze, on help to get our young people back to work, on housing. There were a lot of things missing from this Budget.”

Responding to suggestions that his approach is over intellectual, he said: “I think ideas are absolutely crucial.

“Unless you get your ideas right, unless you think deeply about the country and the way it’s going to work, you are never going to be a leader of the Opposition.”

Miliband 'relishing' election fight