Miliband reminds his party why he is in the game

If you want to hear a politician lift their oratory, push their back against the wall. It took a mix of cabinet rebellion and economic slump to provoke Margaret Thatcher's "Lady's not for turning" moment. Tony Blair could always find a winning phrase, but he never took the dark arts of rhetoric to greater heights than in the fraught Commons debate on Iraq, and even Gordon Brown finally found a ringing voice at Citizens UK in 2010, in a desperate last stand to save his government.

So it has proved with Ed Miliband. In Manchester just a few weeks ago, he gave the flat conference speech of a man who could still calculate that he was likely to edge it over the electoral line, and he paid the price.

Now, however, with his personal ratings plumbing Cleggite depths, and a body of MPs semi-openly muttering that they wish he would go, he has been forced to remind himself why he is in the game, and then attempt to explain this to the voters. While precious few of them will have been tuning in to hear his “zero-zero economy” speech at Senate House, the press and the party will have been listening, and all but his determined enemies in both these crucial constituencies will have been impressed.

Part of the problem for Miliband is that a country in a determinedly anti-political mood sees him as yet another Westminster suit full of bugger-all. Born in a family obsessed with politics and reared at Brown’s knee, very many people dismiss him for never having done a proper job and suspect him of empty ambition. Before he can stand any chance of cutting through on any of the policy detail, he needs to challenge this damning verdict, and the fightback speech did that well.

Politely but firmly, he set about taking on Ukip, without conceding an inch on the substance. A passing mention of the 70th anniversary of “the death of my grandfather at Nazi hands” reminded the audience that this is not, after all, a man devoid of a backstory, and provided an eloquent “show not tell” reminder of where unchecked nationalism can lead. The chief focus, though, was on the emerging choice between Labour and the Conservatives in the election.

Instead of coming up with yet another of the slogans that he has sometimes dreamed up and then ditched before they’ve developed into much more – Predatory Capitalism, One Nation or most recently and unsuccessfully “Together” – he spoke in strikingly plain language about the big themes that have preoccupied his private thinking during his leadership: inequality and insecurity. There was an integrity in that choice, which came through in more animated delivery than he has managed for a long time, as well as in what sounded like genuine enthusiasm in the hall.

With few strengths in the eyes of the electorate just now, to make headway he needed to exploit the weaknesses of his opponents, and these economic themes did this adroitly. No matter what George Osborne might say about the minimum wage and particular abuses of zero-hour contracts, most voters are not going to believe that this is what gets him out of bed in the morning, just as few believe that Miliband is moved to shrug off the duvet by the thought of cutting public spending or capping immigration. While Labour might be unloved, it is still seen as a far better bet on these things.

He very deliberately decided to say something – about inequality, about challenging power – rather than risk being seen to say nothing at all for the sake of keeping everyone happy. There were virtually no concessions to the right or – some would say – to grim fiscal realities, save for a mention of the deficit which he was obliged to make, after his much-mocked failure to remember to mention it in Manchester. Even here, his promise “to pay down the deficit, but to pay it down fairly” is a formulation which concealed many more questions than answers.

The Blairite wing will, as so often before, despair at a “35 per cent strategy”, which banks all those who stuck with Brown in 2010 and chucks in a few disillusioned Lib Dems, but fails to do much to lure former Tories over to Labour. The truth, however, as revealed by the polls at the moment is that 35 per cent would be a pretty good showing for either of the two main party tribes. Labour MPs say that what has changed over the past six weeks of panic is that the old assumption that the core would stay loyal is fizzling away, as voters who no longer know what their party stands for peel off in every direction, to the Greens, Ukip and the SNP.

Today Miliband set himself the task of reminding them what he was about, and what the party was for. That made for a good speech, and it could also prove smarter politics than the alternative of abandoning tribe and rendering Labour so indistinct that core voters would sit on their hands. There are moments when triangulation serves its purpose, but Miliband may be smart to recognise that this isn’t one.

Guardian service