David Miliband would have said if he had won…

“The deficit. And there is a deficit. A serious one. Which needs to be reduced… This is the biggest argument in politics, and the biggest danger for us. George Osborne says we are in denial about the deficit. Because he wants us to be. So let’s not be. It is a test… Step one is to recognise what is obvious: that we did not abolish the business cycle. We should never have claimed it. You can’t in a market economy. And public spending plans cannot depend on it. Nor can you write your own fiscal rules and then be the judge and jury for how they are calculated and when they are met.

We should have been proposing the creation of an Office of Budgetary Responsibility and we should be campaigning today for its accountability to Parliament to be strengthened. There is no point in denying those things; they are true.”