Parties change tack as vote comes closer

Lynton Crosby, the Conservative election chief, likes to remind his political charges that the process of changing public perceptions about a party is a long-term process: "You can't fatten a pig on market day."

That might well apply to David Cameron's belated attempt to inject some "sunshine" into a political strategy that has for several years focused relentlessly on his party's reputation for economic competence and attacks on Labour leader Ed Miliband.

But it could also apply to Ed Miliband's decision to address his party's greatest weakness, by building the manifesto - launched on Monday - around Labour's "responsible" approach to the public finances.

Mr Miliband's campaign launch will happen in Manchester where, six months ago, the party held its conference and the Labour leader famously forgot to mention the deficit in his main address.

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Now Mr Miliband is recognising what his brother David realised in 2010: Labour needed to address its weakness on the economy to ensure it won a hearing on other parts of its policy.

In the draft acceptance speech that David Miliband never delivered, the putative Labour leader would have said: "George Osborne says we are in denial about the deficit. Because he wants us to be. So let's not be.

"However much [the Conservatives] are hated we will not benefit until we are trusted. Trusted on the economy as we were in the 1990s. Trusted because we show in word and deed that the alternative to mean government is lean government.

<>"Step one is to recognise what is obvious: that we did not abolish the business cycle. We should never have claimed it. You can't in a market economy. And public spending plans cannot depend on it. Nor can you write your own fiscal rules and then be the judge and jury for how they are calculated and when they are met.

"We should have been proposing the creation of an Office of Budgetary Responsibility and we should be campaigning today for its accountability to Parliament to be strengthened."

Ed Balls, shadow chancellor, has toughened the party's fiscal stance, notably in 2013 when he said Labour would match Conservative spending plans in the first year after the election.

Mr Balls promises to balance the current budget deficit by 2020 at the latest, but fiscal discipline has hitherto been a relatively low-key part of Labour's political message.

Ed Miliband will make up for lost time in Manchester today. But is it too late?

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