Evening Standard comment: Mr Miliband’s offer to the squeezed middle

Labour's bid to capture the middle ground of British politics has dominated this conference and Ed Miliband’s speech today. So, for example, Labour would, if elected, instruct the energy regulator to cap energy prices from 2015-2017. Mr Miliband also wants to cut business rates for small firms, to be paid for by cancelling plans to reduce corporation tax from 21 to 20 per cent, at least for the largest firms. He pledges a major house-building programme too. All of this is part of his effort to identify with the “squeezed middle” struggling with the steadily increasing cost of living.

Taken together with shadow chancellor Ed Balls’s pledges yesterday — more childcare cover, and a mansion tax on homes costing more than £2 million, targeted at foreign buyers — this is an eye-catching offer for middle England. The party’s attempt to embrace the centre ground is a useful supplement to its pitch for the support of the low-paid and the insecurely employed, as seen in the possible re-introduction of a 10p tax band. In particular, Ed Balls’s attack on HS2 as potentially unaffordable is a bold attempt to appeal to voters in the Tory heartlands: it should give the Conservative leadership pause on the issue.

There remain questions about Labour’s credibility on the economy, even discounting its record in government. For all the rhetoric about the cost of living, it is not clear that it would tackle inflation head-on. Suspending or cancelling a reduction in corporation tax for bigger companies, to cut business rates for small firms, is also potentially problematic. Reducing the tax is part of the Government’s bid to make Britain more attractive to overseas investors. Putting the reduction on hold would send out the wrong signals to business. And Labour’s proposal to oblige employers who take on foreign workers to train apprentices has already wilted under scrutiny this week.

Yet Mr Miliband’s instinct to go for the middle ground of politics, the “strivers” as well as those at the bottom, is a sound one. In hard times, the squeezed middle is increasingly restive. Now he must hope that today’s speech connects with those voters and cements the party’s lacklustre lead in the polls.

London is making a bid next month to host the 2018 Gay Games, a festival of sport that embraces activities from football to ballroom dancing. It has been held since 1982 and has athletes from up to 70 nations. London’s competitors in the bid are Paris and Limerick, a small historic city in the west of Ireland with a problematic violent crime record. Paris is another matter but the sheer success of the London Olympics is the strongest case for us to host other sporting events: we know we can do it.

The case for hosting the Games is economic as well as social; the advent of so many people to the capital will be a useful boost to business. London welcomes the pink pound. The event promises some of the spectacle of the Olympics without the burdensome security and weight of expectation. It would also be enormous fun.

The launch in London today by New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, of a £9 million prize to any European city that can come up with a “world-changing idea” could produce miracles, or at least stimulate new thinking. Mr Bloomberg comes to the end of his 12-year tenure in November; he’s always welcome in London.