Labour leader says his party can overcome 'gnawing anxiety' with plans for education and house building
Ed Miliband has made a direct appeal to middle class voters by saying that Labour is best placed to help middle income families who feel a "gnawing anxiety" about their future.
In a sign of his determination to broaden the appeal of his cost-of-living message, the Labour leader says his party's plans for education and house building are designed to "rebuild our middle class".
He says the protracted downturn means they are facing a crisis over the pillars of middle class life including "access to further education and training, good quality jobs with reliable incomes, affordable housing, stable savings, secure pensions".
In a Daily Telegraph article, Miliband writes: "I know our country cannot succeed and become collectively better off without a strong and vibrant middle class.
"And so we must equip ourselves to compete with countries such as China, India and Brazil – all of whom have a rapidly expanding middle class – in order to win that race to the top."
Miliband makes a pitch for soft Tory voters, who believe Labour unfairly blames David Cameron for the impact of Britain's gravest economic downturn since the war, by saying his plans are "rooted in an understanding" that the crisis began before the prime minister took office.
He writes: "There has been a hollowing-out of those white-collar professions that used to keep the middle class strong … But under David Cameron, life is getting tougher still."
The article by the Labour leader, which comes before a major speech on the economy later this week, is designed to address two concerns among senior Miliband advisers. First, they fear there is a danger that Miliband's pledge to freeze energy prices at last year's Labour conference caught voters' attention so well that it risked giving the impression the party is just offering populist measures. Advisers felt the need to show that there is a substantive body of thought behind Miliband's plans to create a fairer economy.
Second, Miliband needed to show that while he has not abandoned the middle Britain voters championed by Tony Blair, he will do so on his own terms.
The Labour leader writes: "My own party's politics changed in the 1990s to surf a wave of aspirational self-confidence. But the task facing the next Labour government will be far different from the one we faced in 1997.
"Indeed, the greatest challenge for our generation is how to tackle a crisis in living standards that has now become a crisis of confidence for middle class families."
Miliband also returned to the theme he enunciated in his first newspaper article after he became Labour leader in 2010, which was published in the Sunday Telegraph. In that piece Miliband pledged to champion Britain's "squeezed middle".
The Labour leader talked of how the middle classes are facing a squeeze, though in a slight change of wording he stopped short of talking about the "squeezed middle". He wrote: "Today, the British middle class is being squeezed by a cost-of-living crisis as never before – and people grafting to join it find that the obstacles in their way are getting bigger... No one saw this protracted squeeze on the middle coming."
Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps said: "The only way to ensure a better and more financially secure future for hardworking people and for their children is to stick to David Cameron's long-term economic plan – reducing the deficit, creating jobs, cutting taxes, giving young people the skills they need to get on and fixing the welfare system so that it pays to work."