Stay positive to beat SNP, urges Miliband

The Labour leader made the call during a question-and-answer session at the party’s conference in Liverpool yesterday, at which he also faced a call to bring his brother David out of “political Siberia”.

He said he would “happy” to have his brother in his shadow cabinet, more than a year after the two stood against each other in a bitter leadership contest.

However, Ed Miliband said his brother, a former foreign secretary, had “to decide whether he wants to come back”.

The Labour leader appeared last night in shirt sleeves and without a jacket, alongside comedian and actor Eddie Izzard, who chaired the session, with broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell also helping to stage the event which was open to non-Labour Party members.

He was asked about the SNP’s flagship plans to stage an independence vote and what role he would play in the campaign. Mr Miliband replied: “We’ve got to argue against separatism and for the Union in a positive way.”

The Labour leader also backed the UK government’s controversial decision to retain the Trident nuclear deterrent at Faslane on the Clyde, and told the audience that elections are “won from the centre ground”.

Mr Miliband appealed to the audience not to ask “patsy questions” and was challenged on a series of topics, such as NHS spending, crime and education, during the session, which lasted for well over an hour.

He even appeared to back the Prime Minister’s famous appeal to “hug a hoodie”, which David Cameron made when Opposition leader. Mr Miliband suggested poverty was part of the “explanation” for the criminal behaviour that gripped England’s biggest cities during the summer riots.

But one of the crunch questions facing the Labour leader was on whether he would ask his brother to return to serve in his front-bench team, amid speculation that he is planning to announce a raft of changes to his shadow cabinet.

A Labour supporter from Leeds asked Mr Miliband to bring his brother “out of political Siberia”.

Mr Miliband said his brother was a “massive asset” to Labour and he wanted him to return to the front-bench.

He said: “I would be happy to have him back. I want him back. He’s got to decide whether he wants to play a role in the shadow cabinet.”

Mr Miliband said his brother was “supportive” of his leadership, despite repeated reports that the siblings were no longer on speaking terms.

The Labour leader said he favoured the decision to keep Trident, alongside a government-commissioned report on the future of the defence system.

Mr Miliband said: “I think the government has done the right thing by commissioning a study. I’m not a unilateralist. I want disarmament, but in a multilateral way.”

He also rejected a call from a member of the audience to move Labour to the left and said “the political “centre ground” was “where elections are won”.

Asked about the economic legacy left by Labour, Mr Miliband said: “It wasn’t the debt that caused the crisis, it was the crisis that caused the high deficit.”

But he added: “That doesn’t mean to say that there are easy times ahead, even if we were in government, because there aren’t and we have to be absolutely frank about that.”

He warned that the “normal Labour route to greater social justice, which is more spending … is going to be much, much tougher to do in the next decade because, frankly, with this lot in power I have no faith at all they are going to clear up the deficit and we are going to have to”.

Despite criticism that his keynote speech on Tuesday was anti-business, Mr Miliband defended his call for greater corporate responsibility.

“I think most businesses that I talk to know in their heart of hearts that I’m right about this.That I’m right that, for them, the good businesses that are really genuinely creating wealth, earning a decent wage, they think actually ‘the people who are making hundreds of millions and then causing a financial crisis give us a terrible name’.”