This was supposed to mark the end of Labour's long wait. They told us it was the moment when the party's policy banner would unfurl and the Ed Miliband project would begin to make sense. Thursday was to be a day of delivery. But in a week of English World Cup defeats, any sense that Labour was bucking the national mood and charting its own convincing path to victory seemed further away than ever.
The venue was chic and modern the Rich Mix studios in east London, home of a charity where young people gather to make music and dance. In a handsome theatre, copies of a smart 250-page paperback produced by the independent Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), entitled The Condition of Britain, were placed on every seat, like hymn books in a church.
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