A new term for Ed, but it's the same old Labour A new show at the Edinburgh Fringe called The Confessions of Gordon Brown explores the lows and even greater lows of the former prime minister's time in office. Its historic tone could give the impression that these events happened decades ago - like the Winter of Discontent. But Mr Brown misgoverned us as recently as 2010 and, troublingly, most of his cabal still run the Labour Party. One of them is Ed Miliband, back to work this week after his summer holiday. Not only was Mr Miliband close to Mr Brown but his cabinet contains Mr Brown's economic guru, Ed Balls, his deputy leader, Harriet Harman, and his health secretary, Andy Burnham. Mr Miliband has also inherited his predecessor's ability to engender disloyalty: at the weekend, Mr Burnham, who stood against Mr Miliband for the party leadership, warned publicly that Labour must "shout louder" and produce a more compelling set of policies if it is to win in 2015. Other colleagues have called Mr Miliband's policies "confused." If Labour is confused then it is partly because it cannot reconcile its past and present. On the one hand, there is a visceral loyalty to the ethos of the Brown years: spend, spend, spend and deny that anything went wrong. On the other hand, there is a reluctant recognition that most voters support austerity. Whenever Labour does shuffle towards the centre ground, its rhetoric begs comparison with what they actually did in office. Today, Chris Bryant, the shadow immigration minister, will give a speech attacking companies that employ cheap immigrant workers. He will say: "The biggest complaint I have heard, from migrants and settled communities alike, is about the negative effects migration can have on the UK labour market. Mr Bryant has a short memory. It was under Labour that it became much easier to gain a work permit, exit controls from the country were ended, visa offices were overwhelmed and human rights law made it almost impossible to deport illegal immigrants. In 2004, the government announced that Britain's labour market would be opened to people from Eastern Europe. Voters were told that only about 13,000 would come. The real figure turned out to be around one million. If companies are indeed overlooking British workers in favour of foreign-born ones, it was Mr Miliband's party that helped to make this possible. The legacy that Labour in government left Britain remains the Prime Minister's trump card. David Cameron likes to ask: "Do you want to hand the keys back to the people who crashed the car?" As the election creeps closer, more and more of the voters are asking themselves the same question.