Politics & Power Quote by Ed Miliband

A party sells renewal the way a brand sells a “new formula”: by repeating the word until it feels like evidence. Miliband’s line leans hard on that marketing logic, using “different” as both drumbeat and shield. It’s an incantation meant to create distance from what Labour had just been associated with in the public mind: the Iraq-era hangover, technocratic triangulation, and a sense that “New Labour” had aged into managerial sameness.

The intent is obvious but strategically narrow: reassure floating voters that Labour can change without forcing them to relitigate what, exactly, was wrong before. Notice what’s missing. There’s no named adversary, no policy, no moral reckoning. “Different attitudes” gestures at values without specifying whose values were compromised. “Different ideas” signals substance, but it’s kept safely abstract. “Different ways of doing politics” is the key phrase: it implies a cleaner, less scripted, less machine-driven culture while acknowledging—without confessing—that Labour had started to look like a machine.

Context matters: Miliband took the leadership after the 2010 defeat, and after a bruising, legitimacy-testing contest against his own brother. So the subtext isn’t only generational; it’s intra-party. He’s trying to authorize himself as the face of change without detonating the coalition that elected him. The repetition performs confidence, but also betrays caution: a promise of difference that can be filled in later, once the party decides what it’s willing to disown.