Labour Party National Policy Forum: Ed Miliband speech

Labour Party National Policy Forum: Ed Miliband speech; Miliband speech SOT - Modest in our promises, ambitious in what we want to do for the country. That must be our watchword. And there's a counterpart to this idea of not making promises you can't meet in the short-term, and that's being the people who talk about the long term issues our country faces even when it's not the most popular thing to do. That's why I said climate change must be at the core of everything we do. Because I know that the way my kids will judge me is on this basis. Were you the last generation not to get it or the first generation to get it? That's why at the heart of our economic review that Alan Johnson will be leading is the issue of sustainability. And we've got to take this seriously and it's not just about, in case you wondered, going off to the North Pole with some huskies. It's got to be about a serious engagement about how our policy agenda needs to change and how climate change needs to be at the core of it. - So look, we know the scale of challenge that we face. I know that we have to change in order to win. We've got to change in terms of the way we are rooted in people's lives, and you are essential to making that happen. We have to change in the way we think about our economy, the way we think about government, the way we think about community and indeed in the way we think about politics too. I do want to say this to you. There is no shortcut or quick fix to this. We shouldn't mistake the anger we feel at what the coalition is doing to the country for a sense that it isn't as much about us as it is about them. The strategy that says 'wait for them to screw it up, simply be a strong opposition' is not a strategy that is going to work for us. We need to do that hard thinking of our own and we need to understand that. - I have to say though I have a huge sense of optimism about what we can achieve. See, I think that actually what people see in Britain is a sense that t...