Ed Miliband is a blancmange in a hurricane Contrast this with a Government - and PM - that has reduced the deficit, made the tax system more competitive, reformed the welfare state, cut net migration, reduced crime, made the NHS more efficient and compassionate, secured progress on the EU budget, repatriated European powers, freed millions from dictatorship, created a million new private sector jobs, presided over the largest number of business start-ups in a I write as someone who enjoys debate and discussion and who believes there are substantial figures in Labour's ranks who are capable of fleshing out worthwhile alternative courses. But, at the moment, they are on the margins. Miliband isn't leading the party anywhere new, interesting or relevant. Ed Balls responds to every development in the same way - let's party like it's 1929. He wants to enlist us all in sponsoring a revival of his one-man show, "Gordon Brown 2 - Return to the Edge of Bankruptcy," the original of which gave Britain a massive structural deficit, spiralling unemployment and declining competitiveness. Miliband's passivity in the face of his shadow chancellor's operating style is of a piece with his wider inertia. Labour has nothing constructive to say in response to accelerating global change. It has no plan to strengthen Britain's position in the European Union or to make the EU more competitive. It's no surprise Miliband declines to offer a referendum - he can't ask the electorate to ratify a decision because he seems incapable of making one. In my own area, the Labour leader has not made a single speech or unveiled a single original policy. On free schools and academies, the Opposition is in a position so tortured that the UN should step in to end the suffering. Its education spokesman, Stephen Twigg, has sounded supportive of free schools: "No politician should be against such schools," he once pronounced. But because union militants oppose reform, Miliband has proclaimed: "Free schools are the opposite of the thing we need." He has, however, never said what he would do to improve our schools. On what we do need - more freedom for heads, more strong discipline, more pay for good teachers - there is no clarity. Amid all the confusion there is only one firm commitment I can discern. Labour will censor information in league tables and abolish the English Baccalaureate measure of good exam passes in the subjects students need to get to good universities. It will thus make it more difficult for students to get on in life and more difficult for us all to see which schools are succeeding and which need help. But this censorship of exam data will make one thing easier - it will enable Labour to resume the debasement of exams that we have now started to reverse. Labour hates being reminded that it has been consistently on the wrong side of history. Just last month, Miliband presented himself as a disciple of Margaret Thatcher, saying proudly, "She also believed that ideology mattered... nobody can grasp Margaret Thatcher's achievements, and Thatcherism, without also appreciating the ideas that were its foundation." But there is nothing strong in denying your own past and trying to appropriate someone else's. And the contrast between the strength of Lady Thatcher and the weakness of Ed Miliband is all the starker when we consider that there is no programme of concrete policies, bound together by principles that make them intelligible and resilient, which any of us in politics can yet associate with his leadership. He is as clearly defined as a blancmange in a hurricane. There are certainly men and women with ideas in the Labour Party. Jon Cruddas and Maurice Glasman are gifted, fascinating thinkers, but are held in scorn by Balls and the Brownite restorationists. Between them stands, or rather hides, Miliband, incapable of choosing when he should be eager to lead, inconstant and vacillating when he should be backing the idealists, seeking refuge in a world where Willy Wonka and Montgomery Burns seem relevant because he cannot bear too much reality. Michael Gove is Secretary of State for Education