Ed Miliband attacks New Labour and says he is the 'modernising candidate' in leadership race

Ed Miliband today hit out at the record of the former Labour government, in remarks that will be interpreted as an attack on his brother and leadership rival, David Miliband. The shadow climate change secretary said New Labour – for which he was a minister from 2007 to 2010 – had been "too casual" about state power and civil liberties while becoming "fixated" on markets, leading it to end up as "the party of bankers' bonuses". Miliband said that while New Labour was right for its time, the party needed to modernise again if it was to reconnect with voters after losing May's election. "Traditional New Labour solutions won't work, and that is why I am the modernising candidate in this election," Miliband said in a speech in London. "New Labour fell into the same trap as old Labour, clinging to old truths that had served their time. We got stuck with old certainties, bad policies and became out of touch. The New Labour modernisers became the New Labour traditionalists – and that's why we need to modernise again." In recent days Miliband and his brother David – seen as the frontrunners in the race to succeed Gordon Brown – have both pointedly used the phrase "comfort zone" in what have been seen as attacks on one another. David Miliband, the shadow foreign secretary, said Labour leadership candidates ought to try to attract support from across the spectrum, not just from the centre-left "comfort zone", while Ed Miliband said the party had to abandon its "New Labour comfort zone". Ed Miliband is seen as the more leftwing of the two, while David Miliband is more closely associated with the Tony Blair years and the party's right wing. Ed Miliband said today that Labour needed to win back the votes of the three million manual workers who had turned to the Tories since 1997, as well as the middle-class voters who had gone over to the Liberal Democrats. "In this campaign I am the person who has shown I can take us beyond the New Labour comfort zone," he said. "I am the candidate who has the strength to say where we got it wrong – to challenge old orthodoxies, to challenge the previous generation's assumptions, with the confidence to change to win. That's what makes me the moderniser in this election." Both brothers went into the leadership race pledging to keep any conflict civil, and this week insisted the contest remained that way. Ed Miliband said: "As we head towards the ballot papers going out, all of us as leadership candidates must take special care to continue our debate in the spirit we started out. I will continue to conduct this campaign in that spirit." David Miliband said: "This is going to remain not just a comradely debate but a fraternal debate in all manner of meaning of that term, because we all know we are on the same side." Another Labour leadership contender, Ed Balls, sought today to distance himself to a certain extent from the former Labour government. In a speech this morning attacking the Tory-Lib Dem coalition's economic policies , he said he had "told Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling [then the prime minister and chancellor respectively] in 2009 that ... even trying to halve the deficit in four years was a mistake". He added on BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "I thought it would be very difficult for them to command wider market and public support because it could put growth and jobs at risk and it could put public services at risk." Ballot papers will be sent out to Labour MPs, MEPs, members, and affiliated trade unionists next week, and the next Labour leader will be announced on 25 September on the eve of the party's autumn conference.