Ed Miliband’s task in Manchester this week was inevitably a demanding one. The Labour leader had to rally the faithful by setting out a compelling vision of how British society would be fairer under a Labour government, while at the same time providing a credible policy framework that would inspire confidence in the party’s ability to govern. Miliband’s speech has been roundly criticised in the media as retreating to a ‘core vote’ strategy which fails to address voters’ concerns about Labour as a party which is yet to regain the mantle of economic competence. Nonetheless, we might conclude that if anything, the putative social democratic prospectus which Labour is offering the country does not offer too much radicalism, but too little. In four years, we have gone from reshaping the contours of British capitalism to an ostensibly defensive form of social democracy which too often appears content to govern within parameters already established by our opponents. Let me offer three broad policy-focused illustrations of this point.

First, the announcement on NHS funding. The NHS needs a sustainable financial settlement in order to deal with rising demand pressures, as well as providing additional capacity which includes extra nurses, doctors and ancillary staff: Miliband was quite right to address this in his speech, positioning Labour firmly as the party of the NHS. Nonetheless, it is not clear that the combined taxation measures that Labour is proposing on tobacco companies, hedge funds and housing wealth will be sufficient to plug the long-term gap in NHS funding. Those countries in western Europe with the best health systems usually convince the electorate that it is worth paying a little more tax for world-class treatment. The debate about a hypothecated insurance system to fund the NHS and social care will not disappear. Neither has Labour said enough about how it would deal with structural pressures in the delivery of health and social care from rising cost inflation to declining productivity. Reconfiguring healthcare systems around integrated care pathways and community-based treatment is the right approach, but the ground for potentially unpopular decisions such as hospital closures needs to be prepared in advance.

Second, the decision to continue the child benefit freeze. Of course, Labour urgently needs to demonstrate that it is prepared to take tough decisions in order to deal with the structural deficit in the UK public finances. But a one per cent freeze to 2017 will have a marginal impact at best. Moreover, Labour’s announcement adds to the sense that in the wake of the financial crisis, it is children, young people and families who are paying the price of austerity. If Labour was to identify an insurance system to fund the NHS, additional taxation on property, capital gains and unearned wealth could be channelled into opportunity-boosting programmes such as childcare, early years, parenting support, family income credits, as well as extra money for primary and secondary education. At Labour’s conference we heard far too little about why universal childcare should be a strategic priority for any radical social democratic government worthy of the name. A broader argument is that there must be a fairer distribution of resources and opportunities across the generations.

Third, Labour’s provisional resolution of the so-called English question still feels myopic and oddly defensive. Having literally saved the United Kingdom from disintegration, Labour needs to have the confidence to articulate a new constitutional settlement for Britain which acknowledges the legitimate and burgeoning sense of English identity, while demonstrating that power will be radically decentralised to the cities and regions of England. A powerful contribution to the debate is provided in Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford’s recent pamphlet: One Nation: Labour’s Political Renewal. They argue: ‘Britain’s centralised state and political system is a serious hindrance to good government and to economic development and growth’. Labour in office should aspire to nothing less than ‘the biggest devolution of power and resources to our cities and county regions in 100 years’, bringing politics closer to people.

Cruddas and Rutherford are also right to warn Labour that where defending ‘the ideology and institutions of 70 years ago became the horizon of our ambition’, defeat will inevitably follow. Labour’s radicalism must always be rooted in the dynamic currents of social change.

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Patrick Diamond is lecturer in public policy at Queen Mary University of London and vice-chair of Policy Network. He tweets @PatrickDiamond1