What would the Age of Ed mean for Britain? Even he doesn't know It is funny to think that Miliband - who, when they worked together in Gordon Brown's Treasury, loathed Balls so much that he moved to Harvard to get away from him - may soon be in government with his old tormentor, confronting a long line of problems that neither of them have thought through. Miliband still seems to be at the conceptual phase of his leadership, searching for an ism. His ideas are reassuringly unoriginal. Take the latest, "pre-distribution," which is that there is no more money available for the redistribution of wealth, so things must be arranged to ensure society becomes more prosperous and cohesive without the need for corrective government action. This is a fine idea, which also goes by another name: Toryism. Miliband's other ideas (such as punishing "predator" companies and focusing on the "squeezed middle") make sense only in the political textbooks on which he was raised. His best characteristics - his essential decency and his honesty - have become a little more apparent in the two years of his leadership. It is hard for anyone to hate him, which is an important attribute in an election that may be a referendum on the government, but Miliband has not yet been able to overcome his greatest flaw: a love of the abstruse. His is a world in which sentences such as "capitalism isn't working" are substitutes for actual policy. It would be almost endearing, if he were not so close to power. There is nothing abstruse about the risk a Labour government poses to the new generation of free schools created under the Coalition (another 55 opened last week). A conference is being held in London tomorrow where the head teachers of these schools will discuss, among other things, the implications of Labour winning the next election. Will Miliband revoke their status, as Tony Blair did to the 1,200 grant-maintained schools? The unions hope so, but then you can trawl the speeches of Labour's schools spokesman, Stephen Twigg, without finding the faintest clue. Labour's health policy is also an enigma. The party had plenty of fun when Andrew Lansley tried to codify the Blair-era reforms into law. But does this mean that Miliband would take the NHS back to the days of Frank Dobson? The private clinics now serving the NHS, which need to make investment decisions for the next five to 10 years, have been scouring Labour MPs" speeches and are none the wiser. There is a large vacuum where policy should be, and it should alarm voters as much as it delights unions and lobbyists. By this stage in David Cameron's leadership, there was enough information to understand his direction of travel. He had promised to bring radical reform to welfare, control immigration and revere the family. He even had some ideas which in themselves made it worth voting Tory, such as the free schools policy (then known as "Swedish-style school reforms"). From Miliband, today, we have little more than abstract nouns and vague talk of "change." Of course, the Labour leader has a personal reason to avoid giving clarity to his positions. Common sense will tell him that the surest road to electoral success lies through following the New Labour playbook: giving people the same choice in public services as is offered in all other walks of life. He ought to reclaim New Labour's best achievements and then mock the Cameroons for behaving like a Tony Blair tribute band. He could say to the voters: if you like the sound of reform, why not try the originals? But here's his problem: if he were to choose this route, then why did he stand against his Blairite brother for the leadership? Those around him say that, even now, this is the question he asks himself - and that it is paralysing. It is almost two years since Miliband launched a review of policies, and since then he has seen how well he has done in their absence. He may not want to risk spoiling his success, and instead restrict himself to harmless-sounding waffle while collecting protest votes from those fed up with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. Labour's poll lead is unfair and undeserved. The party has done nowhere near enough to show it is ready for power, but may get its chance anyway. And this is what's most terrifying about the looming Age of Ed. No one, the party leader included, has the first idea about what it will mean.