British Labour leader Ed Miliband shifts to the left ahead of May poll
Britain's Labour leader promises to make wealthy pay for improved health care
Opposition Labour party leader Ed Miliband cast himself as Britain's prime minister-in-waiting eight months before an election, pledging to wring money from wealthy home owners, hedge funds and tobacco firms to fund better health care.
Yesterday's speech, the last he will deliver before May's national election, shifted his party further to the left and away from the centre ground, where one of his predecessors, former prime minister Tony Blair, anchored it.
"There is a choice of leadership at this election, a real stark choice of leadership; leadership that stands for the privileged few or leadership that fights for you and your family," Miliband, 44, told delegates in Manchester, northern England.
"In the next eight months the British people face one of the biggest choices in generations. We are ready."
Narrowly ahead of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party in opinion polls, Miliband faces a tough task to win the May poll.
Experts say Labour, which was in power from 1997-2010, should be much further ahead in opinion polls at this stage in the electoral cycle than it is.
The centrepiece of Miliband's speech was a promise to create an annual £2.5 billion (HK$31.7 billion) fund to improve Britain's health service which he said could be used to recruit thousands more doctors and nurses.
The extra money would be raised by taxing wealthy home owners, by cracking down on tax avoidance schemes including those used by hedge funds, and by levying a new "fee" on tobacco manufacturers calculated on their market share, he said.
A YouGov poll released yesterday put support for Labour at 35 per cent against 33 per cent for the Conservatives. More worryingly for Miliband, 63 per cent of respondents said they did not think he would be up to the job of being prime minister.
Miliband, whom Britain's mostly right-leaning media regularly lampoons for being socially awkward, set out a 10-year plan to transform the country in the speech which focused on improving people's everyday lives.
