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A sensible and sagacious Scottish politician recently observed to me that elections are won, broadly, from three stratagems or combinations thereof.

Those are: time for change; trust the people, not the machine; and the right person for the job.

In his conference speech, Ed Miliband deployed the first two, thereby inviting the audience in the hall in Manchester to infer the third.

Intriguingly, though, those first two stratagems were deployed with regard to his own party, not his opponents.

With regard to the Tories, he cited areas of agreement while stressing his fundamental disagreement on the pace and scope of spending cuts.

With regard to the Lib Dems, he backed the Alternative Vote and, obliquely, praised that party's history by listing Liberals such as Lloyd George among his political heroes.

Think of that change message. It is commonly deployed just before an election.

It was used with obvious success by Alex Salmond at the last Holyrood election.

War 'wrong'

But, as Labour leader at Westminster, Ed Miliband won't face a direct electoral challenge for years.

Rather, the change he envisaged and offered was from the immediate past of his own party.

Labour had become complacent, naïve about the power of the markets, "the prisoner of its own certainties".

In particular, he declared that the Iraq war was plain wrong.

Further, he sought to counter suggestions that he is in hock to the unions by condemning "overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes".

On "trusting the people", he suggested that New Labour had been tarnished on occasion by the elite company kept, had become the establishment machine rather than the restless agent of change.

This, though, was an introduction, a declaration of intent, not a substantive essay.

'Living wage'

It told us what he is not, what he hopes to offer - not, yet, his detailed position on, for example, tax, Trident or immigration.

Understandable, given that he has been in post for just three days.

However, there were clear pointers: support for a "living wage", the idea championed by Iain Gray in his conference speech; a declaration (echoes of Robin Cook) that foreign and defence policy must be governed by values, not simply ancient alliances; and a desire to prevent employers from using cheap migrant labour to undermine conditions for others.

On all fronts, though, work still in progress - particularly with regard to that third stratagem.

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