On only his second day as leader Ed Miliband has come up a pretty big obstacle to his message on the economy – the IMF. Red Ed’s job has been made a lot harder by the IMF’s analysis that “the government’s strong and credible multi-year fiscal deficit reduction plan is essential to ensure debt sustainability.” Red Ed believes the Coalition’s plan is ‘economically dangerous’ whereas the IMF says it is ‘essential’.

In his keynote speech to conference tomorrow, the first time most of the voters will really see him, the broadsheet commentariat will be watching to see if he will call for a slower rate of deficit cutting than even Darling wanted before the election. He campaigned, like his rival Ed Balls, as a deficit denier so it remains to be seen if winning the leadership will see him dump his left-wing “Red Ed” campaign rhetoric. The IMF says the government’s plans are ‘appropriately ambitious” and will lead not to a double-dip recession but ‘sustainable recovery’. If this doesn’t trigger a rewrite of his campaign script then Red Ed is even more of a loser than his Blairite critics suggest…