Labour has little iron will

Now Mr Balls, the Shadow Chancellor and prominent West Yorkshire MP, wants Britain to believe that a future Ed Miliband government will preside over the public finances with “iron discipline”.

To illustrate this, Mr Balls proposes to scrap the winter fuel allowance for “wealthy” pensioners – even though he offers no indication of the financial cut-off point or the cost of introducing such means-testing to the welfare system.

Even Labour shadow ministers concede that the savings will be minimal – and that this is a one-off gesture to boost the party’s economic credibility – but it was the only substantive commitment in a speech which contained more than 6,200 words.

Mr Balls may blame the prevailing uncertainty for the absence of any detail but the reality is this: Labour is no nearer to forming a credible alternative to George Osborne’s policies than it was in the aftermath of the 2010 election.

This explains why Labour is only now setting up “a public sector efficiency advisory board” – headed by Leeds MP Rachel Reeves and Hemsworth’s Jon Trickett – to look at how taxpayers’ money can be spent more wisely as well as guaranteeing “fairness and consumer choice in service delivery”.

Given the extent to which the costs of the bureaucracy sustaining key public services had sky-rocketed prior to 2010, it is rather alarming that it has taken Mr Balls and his colleagues to wake up to this need.

And it is even more ironic when Mr Balls says that “we will not make promises we cannot keep” – it was the Shadow Chancellor’s political mentor, one Gordon Brown, who promised, and then failed, to end the perpetual cycle of “boom and bust economics”.

As such, the various committees being set up by Mr Balls may buy Labour some much-needed time – but the indecision, and lack of clear vision, does little to convince the wider electorate that the Opposition has learned from its previous mistakes and can be trusted again with the public finances. It is a view that will be hardened by a sabre-rattling and political pointscoring speech that will come to be regarded as a wasted opportunity.