I don’t expect it to get a huge amount of media coverage or to immediately impinge on the public consciousness. But I do think that as the current parliament goes on we may look back at this on-the-face-of-it rather studious speech to a thinktank no one had previously heard of and realise that this was when Ed found his voice as a leader and when Labour started to develop a compelling narrative that stands a chance of taking us to victory in 2015.

It’s a compelling narrative because it includes not just a critique of the policy approach of the Tory-led coalition but also a vision of how to deal with the problems facing society.

It moves us beyond a cuts versus investment narrative that is an important one for many Labour voters but does not resonate with key groups of swing voters who are torn between their need of public services and their anger about the tax to pay for those services biting into their already stretched family budgets; and will cease to be as resonant in the final two years of the parliament when the government will open the spending taps and try to get the electorate to forget the initial three years of cuts.

It showed an understanding of the concerns of, and empathy with the angst of Middle England which is going to be vital if we are to win back lost marginal seats in the south and east of England and the Midlands. If we needed evidence that Ed ‘gets’ swing voters, this is it.

I’ll try to summarise the argument in case you can’t be bothered to follow the hyperlink and read the whole thing. If you are a Labour activist you need to get your head round it because my suspicion is that this sets out the themes on which we will fight the next election.

The basic message was this:

• It’s not good enough to try to get back to life before the 2007 crisis
• Low and middle income earners were working ‘harder for less’ even before the crisis because productivity gains have fed increased profits, not increased wages
• The economic gains of the last 30 years have benefited the top 10 per cent disproportionately, making society more unfair
• That unfairness drove demand for cheap credit to keep up living standards, which caused the economic crisis
• The economy is divided between high-skill well-paid jobs and low-skill ones
• The lowest-skilled face even greater pressure because of more flexible labour markets and immigration
• Labour in power helped with the symptoms through tax credits but did too little to change the fundamental structural problems with the economy
• Coalition policies are about to make the long-term trends worse: VAT increases, cutting the childcare component of tax credits, cutting child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers will all add to the cost of living crunch for families
• Public spending cuts will hit couples with children twice as hard
• The solution is to build an economy based on high-skill, high-productivity jobs
• The tax and benefit system needs to support families with children
• Businesses need tax incentives to pay the living wage and to develop skills and productivity
• An active industrial strategy is needed helping companies in high-skill industries to succeed (including R&D investment and government procurement decisions)
• Banking reform is needed so the banks support businesses
• The pressure people face is not just financial, it’s about having to work harder for longer and work-life balance and family life suffering
• We need a fairer, high quality economy that works for the many not the few

This strikes me as a package that has several merits:

• It’s about Britain after 2015, not Britain from 1997 to 2010
• It understands and is focussed on the real difficulties facing ordinary people
• It seeks to construct a political coalition extending across both low-paid and middle-income voters
• It is achievable, not utopian
• It is pro, not anti, business, provided that business looks after and upskills its employees
• It is authentically social democratic in its vision
• It sets a clear dividing line with the laissez-faire policies of the Tories and Liberal Democrats

I hope this is not a false start and that Ed runs with and develops this economic vision.