Politics & Power Quote by Ed Miliband

Miliband is trying to do something British politicians often avoid: name class without sounding like he is declaring class war. The repetition of "definitely" is doing defensive work. It signals he expects skepticism, or at least the polite national habit of pretending class is an awkward relic rather than an active operating system. By doubling down, he frames class not as a fringe grievance but as a mainstream fact - safe enough that "most people" will "sympathise."

That word choice matters. "Sympathise" is softer than "demand" or "insist". It casts inequality as a moral and emotional problem rather than an explicitly structural one. Then comes the pivot to a familiar meritocratic narrative: "talent and ability all across this country". It's a unifying phrase, geographically expansive, designed to flatter listeners in every postcode while sidestepping who, exactly, blocks that talent from converting into power and security. The line "want to make more of themselves" is telling too: aspiration is individualized, respectable, almost Victorian. The system becomes an obstacle course for the deserving rather than a hierarchy designed to reproduce itself.

His key political move is to redefine government's role as enabling rather than redistributing: "part of the responsibility of government is to make that happen". It's an argument for intervention, but framed as opportunity-building, not punishment of winners. In the post-financial-crisis, austerity-shadowed Britain Miliband was speaking to, that's a careful triangulation: acknowledge class, validate ambition, promise mobility - and keep the confrontation with entrenched privilege mostly implied, safely offstage.