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Conservative MPs did not want to vote for a referendum on the Alternative Vote, a system they dislike. Many did not want a reduction in the number of MPs and the boundary changes that entails so soon after winning their seats for the first time. They did not want to support the increased External Action Service of the EU or the expanded EU budget. They did not like the 5 year Parliament  bill, the increase in the EU and Overseas Aid budgets nor some of the defence cuts.

This sounds like an oblique reference to the Iraq war, which Ed Miliband said led to "a catastrophic loss of trust" and Ed Balls condemned as "wrong." Asked directly about those remarks, he says: "The purpose of these elections is how we build a better tomorrow, not how we debate a better yesterday." Is that a rebuke to his brother? "No, it's just my position." But I suspect that David Miliband, who – unlike the two Eds – had a vote in 2003, still agonises over Iraq. Nor, with the Chilcot inquiry reconvened, and the war raised at every hustings and meeting, can it easily be consigned to history. "I've done Chilcot. I've said if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have [backed] it." Is he saying the war should never have been fought? "The way I put it is that if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a war. I've set out that if we knew there were no WMD, there would have been no UN resolutions and no war. "The toll in British and Iraqi life, never mind the toll in trust, has been very, very high. It's a war we didn't need to fight," he says before reverting to his previous formula, saying he is mindful of the dead and doesn't want to "rewrite my own history." He pauses, conscious that he has gone further than he intended. But his regrets and reservations over Iraq sound at least equal to those of his brother and Mr Balls? "Of course. People are dead. I voted in good faith." Did his brother ever express his misgivings to him? "I'm not getting into opening up private discussions," he says. "He was in America at the time." The other lingering issue of his old brief will surface shortly, with the Government expected to announce a judge-led inquiry into claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects. Mr Miliband hotly denies any policy of collusion. "I would not be sitting here if I thought there was the slightest suspicion of a doubt that a Labour government had any entanglement in torture." On last week's High Court order that M15 and M16 release guidelines alleged to tell British agents to turn a blind eye to the treatment of terrorism suspects abroad, he says. "After 2001, there was insufficient training and guidelines. That has been superseded and new guidelines put in place."

Britain, whose intelligence cooperation with America is probably uniquely deep in the history of the world,

Indeed, it is no accident that the greatest trust in the intelligence world is that between Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada – sometimes known in this field as the Five Eyes. This exists because of a common experience of kinship, language, war and living under law-based liberty. It is emphatically not the product of untrammelled state power, but of a culture that knows that its eyes (five pairs being better than one) need to scan the horizon to stay free.

I believe the business of government should be more business-like – that the British people are the boss and like any employer they deserve to know about the performance of their team. And so I am proposing the following.Firstly, Sir Tim Berners Lee, the man most associated with the invention of the internet, is the government’s advisor on data openness and transparency all across the internet. In the months to come he will be ensuring that there is the maximum possible information available to the public at all times. This rapid extension of transparency will show in real time how government are delivering against our pledges.Secondly, I will set out a clear and public annual contract for each new Cabinet Minister, detailing what I expect them and their department to deliver to the British people, and that their continued appointment is dependent on their delivery just as it would be in a business or any other organisation. Thirdly, I will require the Cabinet Secretary to performance manage the Permanent Secretary of each department against their delivery of pledges and other priorities as set out in the letter of appointment.

Reversing a century of centralisation

The coalition government is beginning to rewrite the rules of British politics. It is of course still early days. We are six months into one of the boldest experiments in British politics, six months into a five year coalition government.

Old progressives measure success by the power and spending of the central state. New progressives measure it by the power and freedom of individual citizens.

More than 30,000 people in the area claim education maintenance allowance which helps poor students aged 16 to 18 afford to stay in school or college. But the scheme is being scrapped by the Government at the end of this academic year.Across London, almost 100,000 teenagers claim payments of between £10 and £30 a week. Figures from the Department for Education show the biggest demand is in east London — more than 5,000 in Newham get the allowance, along with more than 4,000 in Tower Hamlets, compared with 900 in Richmond.

From the bungled arrest of the ricin plotters to the shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, the failure to investigate the ringleader of the July 21st suicide bomb plot, the arrest of Damian Green, the admission that not one of its 100,000 stop and searches under Terrorism Act had led to a terror-related arrest, and finally the ‘Hackgate’ scandal, the Met has stumbled from one blunder to another.     

In 1980, 8 per cent of US earners received 16 per cent of national income. That same proportion now falls into the hands of the top 1 per cent, while the top 20 per cent take over half. There is a similar concentration of wealth in the UK. Politicians have good reason to fear a new western world in which a small minority continues to prosper and spend prodigiously, while the living standards of middle earners decline.