Miliband finds new confidence as he turns his fire on coalition

You could see it in the way he carried himself at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, newly confident as he leaned across the despatch box to jab home lines about the double-dip recession to a reddening Prime Minister.

You could see it too as he addressed a lunch of political journalists in Westminster the following day, making light of the deluge of negative headlines that threatened to drown him out in his first 18 months in his role.

‘Ed – I’m not weird’ was one memorable line he picked out from his early days as Leader of the Opposition. ‘Ed – I’m not crap’ was another.

For now, at least, the headline-writers are dancing to a different tune. Everything changed on March 21, an equinox moment for the younger Miliband in the hours after George Osborne delivered his ill-fated Budget and support for the coalition began to unravel.

Suddenly the Government’s economic credibility was taking a battering. And within weeks, Britain had fallen back into recession.

Mr Miliband says his team are winning the key arguments, leading the key debates. He might even be enjoying himself a little bit.

“I am,” he agrees. “You always enjoy it more when it’s going better – it’s like any job.

He adds: “There are ups and downs in this job. Maybe a year ago people would say ‘well you’re only having downs, Ed’ – but you’ve got to treat them all with a level head.

“Westminster likes to talk about politicians and how they’re doing. (But) people want to hear about their own lives and what difference you can make to them.”

Today the Labour leader is focusing on the difference he wants to make in the North, our interview coming a week after David Cameron and Nick Clegg took to these pages to laud their achievements over the year since the Yorkshire Post launched its Fair Deal campaign, lobbying for greater support for the region and a push to close the North/South divide.

Mr Miliband’s riposte to the Government’s claims is unflinching. “Right across the country their economic plan isn’t working,” he says. “We see it in our region, by what is happening to long-term youth unemployment.

“We see it in the abolition of the regional development agencies, which was a bad, retrograde step, – and I don’t think they’ve made up for it with the LEPs (local enterprise partnerships).

“Sometimes where the default position is for investment to go to the South, you do need the RDAs or something similar playing that strategic role, properly resourced and properly equipped.

“Thirdly I’d point to the failure to reform our banks properly, so they help the small businesses of the region.

“I think they (Government) haven’t properly grasped the scale of the challenge and the scale of the impact of their cuts, particularly on parts of our region.”

We are speaking on an East Coast mainline service heading north out of London, the day before the Government unveiled its latest rail spending plans.

Mr Miliband travels standard class, packed in amongst the passengers fleeing the capital for the weekend.

He refuses to criticise Labour’s record on transport, insisting it “did invest” during the 13 years in office but accepts “there is still much further to go”. He is, for example, a “big supporter” of high-speed rail to the North.

The former Energy Secretary is also passionate about another key infrastructure issue for Yorkshire, clean coal technology, but is scathing of the Government’s green energy policies.

“I think clean coal technology could be fantastic for our region, as a fantastic job-creator for the future,” he says. “But the Government’s gone slow on it, been very uncertain about its green policies.

“George Osborne says green policies are the enemy of economic growth, and so I think the excitement there was about that green future and that green jobs future has rather withered away.”

One of the key aims of the Fair Deal campaign is to win more targeted support for the region’s unemployment black spots – including Mr Miliband’s own constituency of Doncaster North.

“I definitely think we need more targeted help for particular areas that are facing difficulties,” he says. “Everybody wants to create more private sector employment, but it’s not going to happen by magic. It’s not going to happen with Government just getting out the way.”

He goes on: “The campaign matters because it has drawn attention to a particular part of the country that is really suffering from the cuts, and really suffering from what the Government is doing. I think they don’t show sufficient understanding of what is really happening up here.”

The danger for Labour, of course, is that waning support for the coalition parties does not automatically translate into votes for Labour – as George Galloway proved in Bradford earlier this year.

“We’ve got to learn the lessons of what happened,” Mr Miliband says. “I think we lost touch with some parts of the community.

“I’ve been there twice since the by-election and I’m determined we learn the lessons, and that I lead that process. It’s about being in contact with every community, showing that you can make change happen.”

And how would he feel about driving that change as head of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition?

“I’m interested in a Labour majority Government,” he says, wryly. “I fear this coalition may be giving coalitions a bad name.”