Not Red Ed to sing "Anything you can do ...." and dedicate it to George Osborne say newspapers

although it has to be said the Indie headline and sub heading "Labour to limit spending in social welfare crackdown - Ed Miliband will impose a budget cap and use cuts to child benefit to push parents back into work if he wins the next election" has more of a "the bend with the wind weasel" about it than the Guardian's "Labour to support welfare spending limit and pledge to tackle high rents - Miliband seeks to bring down rising housing benefit bill as PM accuses opposition of using 'policy altering substances'"

Andrew Grice in the Indie reports that Ed's commitment to match George Osborne's commitment to "put a cap on Annually Managed Expenditure" will extend to "payments to the sick and disabled" and "so rates [at which these benefits are presently paid] could be cut if total spending on them increased. But the state pension would not be included in Labour's cap" and that these and the other measures he will outline are intended "to tackle the impression that the party is "soft" on welfare at a time when public attitudes to such spending have hardened. A similar cap on such structural welfare payments was announced by George Osborne in his March Budget and will be confirmed in his spending review on 26 June".

In the Guardian Patrick Wintour says of the same speech (and we must assume he and Andrew both have advance "check against delivery" copies of it) that Ed will "promise to ease the burden on the taxpayer by driving down rents, cracking down on low pay and making people work for longer before getting the higher rate jobseeker's allowance. ... He will also say unemployed parents will have to do more to prepare for the world of work as soon as their children reach the age of three or four, so long as adequate child care is available".

Yes this is the same Ed Miliband who as long ago as Sunday 13th January 2013 when interviewed by James Landale, who was standing in for the then hospitalised Andrew Marr said that “universal benefits are an important bedrock of our society.” And indeed made a defence of pensioner benefits such as the Winter Fuel Allowance in the same interview.

And the same Ed Miliband who, speaking on the World at One on 29th April said: “We’re supporters of the Winter Fuel Allowance and those other benefits. We introduced them when we were in Government. Of course in our policy review we will look at all these issues” which was regarded as being "slightly ambivalent" to the extent that in the hours following Labour HQ had a spokesperson stress that “Of course we look at all these issues but as Ed made clear twice in the interview Labour supports the Winter Fuel Allowance. Labour introduced the Winter Fuel Allowance. He made clear in his interview in January with James Landale that universality is “part of the bedrock” of our system. The position has not changed.”

Of course, if a week is a long time in politics, well six weeks is an eternity, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Ed and the party he leads have experienced such a "change of heart" during it.

But expecting us to believe that these "changes of heart" are motivated by anything other than a wish to pander to "benefit bashing" would however be a tad insulting of our intelligence, so I do hope he doesn't try to suggest that during the speech. We'll find out later on today, I guess.

Update : I thought the South Wales Argus deserved a mention for its "Ed Miliband is bidding to wrest back the initiative in the benefits debate by pledging to cap the overall welfare bill." in which is stated "The intervention, in a speech in London, comes as the Opposition seeks to restore its reputation for economic management and shift position on the issue of welfare".