speech from Ed Milliband:
And yet in terms of actual policy, it was a genuinely challenging prospectus. Language tests: ?If we are going to build One Nation, our goal should be that everyone in Britain should know how to speak English. 
We should expect that of people that come here. 
The last Labour government raised the language requirements for people seeking to enter Britain on work and family visas. 
 That was the right approach.? A scaling back of translation services: ?English language must be the priority. 
In a world where there is less money around, more of a priority than many written translation materials?.
The previous Labour government had, ?made mistakes?, he admitted. ?As I have said before, the capacity of our economy to absorb new migrants was greater than the capacity of some of our communities to adapt.? This meant ?we will learn lessons from Eastern European migration and ensure maximum transitional controls in future?. And most significantly, ?we will look at the whole system of control for non-EU migration, including the Government?s cap, to ensure a system that works.?
Language tests for public sector employees, cuts in translation services, transitional immigration controls for EU workers, a full cap for those from outside. If Tony Blair had proposed those things, the Labour grassroots would have been uproar. Today the only sound is polite applause.
That reveals a number of things. Firstly, the extent to which Labour?s footsoldiers are prepared to march in step with their leader. Or, perhaps more accurately, the extent to which their leader is ensuring he keeps time with his troops.
Whatever the shadow cabinet, the Parliamentary Labour Party and commentators like me may feel about Ed Miliband?s stewardship of his party, his members are warming too it. That?s why a speech like today, which would have caused mayhem had it been delivered by a hardened disciple of New Labour, is met by thoughtful and open minds.
It?s also clear that Miliband?s self-definition as a politician of conviction and high principle is starting to pay dividends, at least amongst his own faithful. He is in effect the de facto keeper of the liberal progressive flame. ?If it?s OK with Ed,? his youthful campaigners are beginning to say to themselves, ?then it?s OK with me.?
All of which reveals a third important truth, which is that, for perhaps the first time in his leadership, Ed Miliband has some political space to play with. Obviously, he has to be careful how he uses it. If he keeps marching his party to the Right on issue after issue, it will start to indulge in its favourite pastime of hunt the traitor. But his speech on immigration, which contained much more than the usual platitudes about opening debates and facing hard realities, has shown that if presented in the right way, and wrapped in the right language, Labour is prepared to place pragmatism alongside its idealism.
Of course there are still many areas that remain out of bounds. On deficit reduction, public spending and welfare Labour is still not even on the park. But this speech demonstrated it could be if it wanted to.
Ed Miliband took an important political step today. And significantly, his party took it with him.
- Dan Hodges, Labour activist