A guide to Tory "morality"

On the day that the Tory government introduced a load of welfare cuts that will end up condemning 250,000 British kids to poverty the Labour opposition announced a policy of providing free school meals to all state school pupils.

The Tories and the hard-right press were apoplectic with rage at the idea of making sure that all school kids are well fed enough to concentrate on their work, but there was no such right-wing condemnation of the brutal welfare cuts that were introduced on the very same day.

The Tory cuts

Not only will the Tory welfare cuts end up impoverishing some 250,000 British kids, they're also snatching money from the working poor, the disabled and families that have suffered bereavement. The Tory excuses for this are utterly lamentable. They claim that these cuts will help to reduce the deficit, but at the very same time they're introducing income tax cuts that will mainly benefit the already wealthy.

Snatching money from children, disabled people, the working poor and bereaved families in order to redistribute it to the well-to-do is appalling behaviour from any kind of moral perspective, but it's also a display of shocking economic illiteracy. The poor spend almost all of their income which boosts aggregate demand and creates wealth, while the super rich are much more likely to save any extra income, or even extract it from the economy entirely by stuffing it into tax havens.

If you have any sense of morality whatever, or the slightest bit of economic literacy it's obvious that yet another huge redistribution of wealth from the poor to the very rich is an appalling idea, but that's precisely what the Tory government have just done, and right-wingers are out in force to make excuses for.

Labour's free school meals policy

Labour's free school meals policy is good evidence based stuff. Labour developed their policy based on evidence based research from free school meals pilot schemes in Newham and Durham. The results showed that had a significant positive impact on attainment for primary school pupils at Key Stages 1 and 2 (ages 7 and 11). Pupils in the pilot areas made between four and eight weeks’ more progress than similar pupils in comparison areas.

the study also found that the positive effects of free school meals only really occurred when the scheme was universal, rather than simply targeted at the poorest kids.

On the face of it it's difficult to imagine how it's possible to object to a policy designed to ensure that no kids are so starving hungry that they can't concentrate on their schoolwork, but the Tories and the right-wing press have managed to furiously object to this policy on the very same day that they're condemning a further 250,000 British kids to poverty.

An official Tory spokesperson resorted the the same pathetic trope that the Tories are economically competent in order to attack the free school meals policy saying that "Labour would wreck the economy if they ever got back into government ... which means this promise isn't worth the paper it's written on". This criticism is a staggering display of hypocrisy from a party that has created more new public debt since 2010 than every single Labour government in history combined, and insists on making the situation ever worse by relentlessly repressing workers' wages and deliberately redistributing more and more wealth from the poor and ordinary (who spend their cash) to the super-rich (who stuff it into tax havens).

Conclusion

The Tories are on an ideological mission to transfer as much wealth as possible to the super-rich minority who totally bankroll their party, and they don't care how many children they're going to condemn to poverty in order to do it. What is worse is that they actually have the gall to attack Labour for trying to ensure all kids are well fed enough to concentrate on their schoolwork on the very same day they've introduced these savage welfare cuts in order to hand another load of tax breaks to the already wealthy.

As far as the Tories are concerned there are any number of excuses for condemning huge numbers of kids to poverty, but they become apoplectic with rage that anyone would dare to try to make sure that kids have enough to eat so they can do better at school. 

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OR

The Tories made no effort to establish how bad a nuclear Brexit would be before crudely threatening the EU with it!

In January 2017 the right-wing press reacted with glee to Theresa May's lamentable Brexit speech. They loved the abandonment of the Single Market, the ridiculous threat-based posturing, the demands for special favours for UK based corporations, and the ridiculously over-optimistic fantasy of a Tory-Trump trade deal that would actually be good for Britain.

Those of us who pointed out that Theresa May's threat-based "negotiation strategy" is the diplomatic equivalent of a toddler tantrum were drowned out by the blind jingoism of the right-wing press and the tide of insults from the Brexit enforced optimism mob. It's taken a couple of months but the reality of Theresa May's threat to launch a mutually ruinous nuclear Brexit if she doesn't get her way is beginning to hit home.

Under questioning from the parliamentary Exiting the European Union Committee the Brexit minister David Davis openly admitted that the Tory government has done absolutely nothing to establish what the economic consequences of a retaliatory nuclear Bexit would be.

This is an absolutely extraordinary admission. The Tory government have openly admitted that the central plank of their so-called "negotiation strategy" is to threaten to do something that they haven't even bothered to investigate the consequences of.

This is a textbook example of a shambolic government recklessly playing fast and loose with the economic future of the entire country. They don't care whether what they're threatening causes an absolute economic catastrophe. They don't care so much that they haven't even lifted a finger to establish how bad the economic fallout could be!

People should be absolutely outraged that Theresa May has been threatening to do something that she hasn't even bothered to investigate the consequences of, but as usual, the press reaction has been ridiculously timid.

As much as I have my political differences with Hillary Benn, at least he tried to hold the Tories to account in the Brexit committee, but the press have done nothing to explain the horrifying significance of David Davis' admission.

It was bad enough that after six tedious months of waiting for it, the Tory "negotiation strategy" was nothing more than "do as we say or we'll blow up an economic bomb and then you'll be sorry", but now it's absolutely clear that they didn't even bother to investigate how big the economic bomb is, nor whether the explosion will actually do more damage to the UK than the EU!

Surely such utterly reckless ineptitude is making it clear to even the most ardent of Brexiters that the likes of Theresa May, David Davis and Boris Johnson simply aren't competent enough to steer the UK through the most difficult diplomatic period since the 1940s?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

Ending the war on drugs

In this article I am going to argue that the "war on drugs" has been a catastrophic failure, and that it is about time the UK adopted a more scientific and evidence based approach to dealing with the inevitable use of substances which are currently prohibited by law.

Origins
The Americans were by no means the first country to dabble with the authoritarian idea of attempting to control public behaviour by prohibiting the consumption of specific substances, but they were the first great power with the economic might to turn their experiment in crude authoritarianism into a global orthodoxy.

Inspired by a fervour of moralistic puritanism and driven on by clear vested interests, the Americans set in motion the greatest tide of prohibitionist legislation in human history. The biggest wave of prohibitionist legislation came as part of the fightback against the youth counter-cultures of the 1960s and 1970s, and these authoritarian rules have been strengthened many times over by governments across the globe attempting to impress the reactionary elements of the press with their "tough on crime" posturing.

The "UK war on drugs"
The foundation stone of the prohibitionist laws in the UK is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 which divides the different kinds of proscribed drugs into three completely arbitrary categories. The Act has been amended many times over the years to add ever more drugs to the list of prohibited substances.

One of the most notable additions to the list of proscribed substances was the extremely rapid classification of MDMA (commonly known as Ecstasy) as a class A drug, as the establishment reacted against the rave culture of the 1980s. The evidence on MDMA is very clear, it is a relatively safe drug that actually has a lot of potential in the treatment of mental health conditions such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The thing that makes MDMA a "killer drug" is that it is supplied in irregular and often contaminated doses, often to naive and inexperienced youngsters, on the unregulated criminal black market.

Another highly contentious classification is that of psilocybin mushrooms (magic mushrooms) in the Class A group, alongside heroin, crack, cocaine and crystal meth. People have used naturally occurring psilocybin mushrooms since ancient prehistory. Research has shown that the effects of psilocybin include the development of feelings of powerful spiritual significance and a very long-lasting sense of well being. As with all substances, there are potentially adverse side effects such as mild paranoia, however in comparison with the utterly devastating effect of other drugs such as street heroin, crack and ketamine (which for some unfathomable reason is in the lowest Class C group), the negative effects of psilocybin are extremely negligible, especially given the fact that it is barely addictive.

In 2005 a report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee described the way substances are classified under the law as "arbitrary" "unscientific" and "based on historical assumptions, not scientific assessment". The report was especially critical of the classification of psilocybin mushrooms amongst the most dangerous and harmful substances and it concluded that a more scientific approach to drug classification should be taken.

As the head of the head of The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) the British psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt took up the challenge to develop a more rigorous and scientifically valid set of criteria for drug classification.

What professor Nutt came up with was hardly surprising stuff on the whole. His study showed that life wrecking drugs like street heroin, crack, cocaine and barbiturates are by far the most dangerous and addictive drugs; alcohol and cigarettes occupy the middle ground, whilst several currently illegal drugs such as cannabis, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms and LSD turn out to be only mildly addictive and relatively safe.

The New Labour administration reacted with fury to these findings and worked tirelessly to drive professor Nutt out of his job for daring to question the orthodox ideology. One of the most extraordinary aspects to this furious response from the government was the truly absurd accusation that David Nutt was guilty of creating "confusion" with his scientifically grounded advice. Here's what Alan Johnson (the Home Secretary at the time) said in his letter demanding Nutt's resignation:

"I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as chair of the ACMD" [source]

The idea that the source of "confusion" was Nutt's scientific advice rather than the arbitrary and unscientific government policy (driven largely by tabloid hysteria) is so backwards it would be laughable if it weren't so serious. What is the point of parliament seeking independent scientific advice on an issue only to sack the man responsible when they don't like the findings?

After making the clearest demonstration imaginable that UK drugs policy is based on ideology rather than sound reasoning, the UK establishment has slipped back into the reactionary groove. Alan Johnson conducted an ideological purge of the AMCD, with several eminent scientists and experts forced into resignation by the intransigent attitude of the government.

Since the Tories came to power they have followed the same agenda of ideological authoritarianism, even going as far as banning Khat, which David Nutt's research had classified as the least addictive substance on the whole drugs spectrum.

It seemed like the UK system was simply going to revert back to type, the same old ideologically driven hysterical moral puritanism taking precedence over rational analysis, but in February 2014 a petition initiated by the Green MP Caroline Lucas received enough signatures for parliament to consider her proposal that a thorough cost-benefit analysis on the prohibitionist drug regime should be conducted.

Such a cost-benefit analysis could potentially be the the starting point in the move towards liberalisation and a more rational/pragmatic approach to substance use. Given the growing global trend towards liberalisation (detailed in the next section) the idea of liberailisation in the UK seems a lot less outlandish than in decades gone by. The thing that will determine the success of rational drugs policy will be the public demand for it. If hundreds of people write to their MPs to request that they adopt a rational evidence based approach to drugs policy, they'll be far more likely to do it than if people don't bother.

International liberalisation

Undoubtedly the most famous example of drugs liberalisation can be seen in the Netherlands. Most people know that the Netherlands have liberal marijuana laws, but fewer know that since the laws were liberalised, the use of more dangerous and addictive drugs in Dutch society has fallen. Their experiment has been such a success that several other European countries (including Belgium and Germany) have considered the introduction of Dutch style cannabis laws.

There are other examples of substance liberalisation strategies elsewhere in Europe. In 2000-2001 Portugal enacted legislation to decriminalise the possession of small quantities of drugs. Many of the statistical indicators that suggest this policy has been successful in reducing drug related harms include: A reduction in the number of adolescent drug users; A reduction in HIV infection rates amongst drug users; A reduction in the number of drug related deaths; Increased take-up of treatment; A reduction in the drug related crime workload in the criminal justice system; And a significant decrease in the street value of most street drugs.

Many of the most progressive drug liberalisation strategies can be witnessed in South America. In 2009 the Argentine Supreme Court passed a landmark ruling that it is unconstitutional for the state to prosecute civilians for their own personal consumption on the basis that citizens should be free to make lifestyle choices without the interference of the state.

Before he was removed from office by a right-wing coup d'etat, the President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya had called on the United Nations to legalise drugs in order to reduce the alarming levels of drug gang murders in central American states that are used as staging posts in the global drug smuggling trade.

Uruguay was one of a tiny minority of countries never to criminalise the possession of drugs for personal use. In late 2013 Uruguay became the first nation state to officially legalise the sale of cannabis.

One of the greatest ironies in the global move towards drugs liberalisation is that after pushing their policy of moralistic prohibitionism across the globe, the United States is one of leaders in the move towards liberalisation. The sale of medical marijuana has become accepted policy in 17 states already, and in November 2012 the people of Colorado voted for theirs to become the first US state to legalise the sale of recreational marijuana, with proceeds from marijuana taxes to be used to fund the education system.

It is absolutely clear from the examples I've provided that there is a growing trend towards liberalisation, and that any countries that follow the trend now are unlikely to be treated as international pariahs.

The economics of the "war on drugs"

One of the major problems in conducting economic analysis of the "war on drugs" is that due to the illegality of the market, it is essentially impossible to provide completely accurate economic data. There are plenty of estimates from either side of the debate (prohibition supporters and liberalisers), however it is difficult to accept any of their figures at face value, given the inherent opacity of the illegal market and the fact that so many estimates are produced by agenda driven organisations. Therefore I have decided against cherry-picking specific estimates and conducting a rudimentary counting exercise, in favour of presenting the potential cost savings that could be achieved through liberalisation.

Petty crime: The biggest cost associated with moralistic prohibitionism is crime. Tens of thousands of people who are addicted to substances like street heroin and crack cocaine resort to crimes such as burglary, shoplifting, pick-pocketing and muggings in order to pay the extortionate black market prices that these drugs command. It has been shown time and again that treatment (rather than punishment) results in dramatically reduced crime rates. If extremely addictive drugs were made available on prescription, then the crime rate would fall dramatically, meaning a huge improvement in economic and social well being.

Insurance: Given that a huge percentage of burglaries are conducted by drug addicts seeking cash for their next fix, provision of prescription drugs instead would dramatically cut the rate, and therefore result in falling in home insurance policies (especially in high crime inner city areas).

Organised crime: The illegal drugs market is a fundamental source of revenue to criminal gangs. If the majority of drugs were fully legalised (or made available through prescriptions in the case of highly addictive substances) these criminal gangs would lose their market share. If you support prohibitionism, you support the criminal gangs that run the illegal drugs market.

Terrorism: It is undeniable that terrorists use the illegality of the drugs market in order to make money for their cause (just look at Afghanistan). Bringing the drugs market under regulation would cut off a significant source of untraceable revenue for terrorist organisations.

Enforcement: The cost of enforcing ideologically driven prohibitionism laws is absolutely enormous. Not only do the police waste billions each year fighting their losing battle against the drugs market, but hundreds of thousands of hours of court time is wasted on dealing with non-violent drugs offenders too.

Imprisonment: The cost of keeping a non-violent drugs offender in jail is £40,000 per year, and the cost of building each additional prison place is £119,000 per year. This is all money that could be spent on more sensible things. Another positive aspect to not locking up thousands of non-violent drug users is that more prison spaces would be made available to keep people who are a genuine danger to society (violent offenders, paedophiles, rapists etc).

Health consequences: The use of drugs that are supplied in irregular and often contaminated doses on the black market, and the sharing of needles are factors that create terrible health consequences, the costs of which are borne by the taxpayer. If drugs were properly regulated, the number of overdoses and toxic reactions would be cut dramatically, meaning NHS staff would be free to focus more of their time and resources on other things.

Preventable deaths: The supply of drugs in irregular and often contaminated doses on the black market result in hundreds of deaths per year. If you support moralistic prohibitionism, you essentially believe that these people deserve to die. A more rational (and humanitarian) drugs policy would be to make sure that drug users are not killed by irregular or contaminated doses, and to focus on education and rehabilitation. Teenagers and young adults will always be tempted to try mood-altering substances (especially in a society where alcoholism is rife), so it is better to make sure that they can experiment safely and survive to become productive members of society, rather than die because some unscrupulous criminal sold them a contaminated dose.

Lost tax revenues: If recreational drugs were regulated and taxed, the potential revenues would be significant. The vast majority of recreational drug users would prefer to buy their drugs from a regulated retailer and pay tax on the purchase, rather than spending their money in the criminal black market. The potential tax revenues from selling drugs like cannabis, magic mushrooms and ecstasy would more than cover the cost of regulation, education and rehabilitation, meaning £billions in extra revenues to invest in valuable areas of the economy, or to reduce the budget deficit.

Employment: The transaction tax on the sale of drugs wouldn't be the only source of additional government revenue. As the drugs trade is shifted from the black market to the real economy, more and more people working in the drugs market would migrate into legitimate employment (licenced producers, chemists, pharmacists, cannabis cafes, regulatory agencies ...) meaning increasing tax revenues via income tax and NI contributions as the number of people employed in the tax-exempt black market is reduced.

Public safety: The demand for cannabis has resulted in the creation of thousands of makeshift cannabis factories in residential neighbourhoods all over the UK. Many of these unsafe and unregulated factories burn down due to electrical fires. If the production of cannabis was regulated in a sensible way (ordinary people can grow a few plants in their shed, mass producers would have to follow industrial regulations and health and safety law) scores of house fires would be prevented every year.

The case for liberalisation

Supporters of the prohibitionist regime love to create the straw-man argument that those that favour drug liberalisation want some kind of lunatic free-for-all, where heroin and crack cocaine are put on supermarket shelves alongside kids sweets and fizzy pop. Nobody is actually arguing for that, it's just a pathetic tactic to discredit the voices of reason.

A sensible drug liberalisation strategy would be to legalise relatively safe drugs (cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, khat, mephedrone ... ) for sale in licensed establishments. More dangerous drugs (heroin, crack, ketamine, crystal meth ...) would only be available on prescription.

I'd want the decision over which substances fall into either category (sold to adults on licenced premeses or prescription only) to be made by a scientifically grounded cost-benefit analysis.

For naturally occurring substances like cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms, it would make sense to allow individuals and/or small community groups to produce a limited supply for personal consumption (but not for commercial sale).

There would still have to be enforceable laws to regulate the drugs trade, some of the most important offences would be:

• Supplying controlled substances to children.
• Supplying contaminated drugs.
• Tax avoidance (selling drugs without paying tax on the proceeds).
• Drug driving (to be treated in the same way as drink driving, with bans, fines or imprisonment).
• Unlawful supply of prescription only drugs.
• Production and/or distribution of controlled substances without a licence.

A liberalisation strategy like this would be socially and economically beneficial. The main benefit would be the transference of the sizable drugs economy from the untaxed and unregulated black market to the legitimate market. Other socio-economic benefits would include reduced crime, increased public safety, reduced law enforcement costs, increased tax revenues and increased provision of education and rehabilitation facilities.

Conclusion

The ideological "war on drugs" has been a catastrophic failure. If anyone argues against that, they're not arguing against an opinionated assertion, they're arguing against observable reality.

It is high time the UK took a rational, evidence based approach to the subject of substance use, with an emphasis on reducing socio-economic harms.

The reactionary core of authoritarian politicians and the right-wing media will kick up an awful stink about it. The vested interests (people involved in the drugs black market, the breweries and tobacco companies, drug enforcement employees) will also try to argue against evidence based analysis, but if we are to have any hope for humanity at all, we must believe that the evidence will eventually  win out over ideological posturing and vested self-interest.

What you can do

If you believe it is about time the UK abandoned the ideologically driven "war on drugs" in favour of a more rational and scientifically grounded approach to substance use, you should write to your MP.

In your letter you should:

• Explain your reasoning (you can link to this article if you like).
• Ask that your MP support Caroline Lucas' call for a cost-benefit analysis into the current drug laws.
• Include your full name and postal address (this means that your MP has a statutory obligation to reply)

You can find contact details for your MP here:
Find Your MP

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

More articles from
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 

       
The case for ... evidence based policy
                          
The Tory ideological mission
           
The contrasting fates of Alan Turing and Lord Sempill
                  
The incompatibility of Christian ethics and modern Conservatism
           

Why do right-wing people support Iain Duncan Smith's Stalinist Workfare schemes?
     

Richard Dawkins and the far-right extremists
   
The republican science-deniers
                    
The Tory "War on Justice"

             

The JP Morgan plan for Europe
                    
         David Cameron's Orwellian word games
           

Silly Ed and his austerity-lite speech

It seems that Ed Miliband is a hopeless Labour leader. The only thing that is keeping his party ahead in the polls is the Tory led coalition's combination of elitist venom and their abject incompetence (the "omnishambles" in popular parlance or "this dog of a government" as Tory grandee Norman Tebbit describes them).

The sheer scale of Ed's incompetence is perfectly illustrated by his poorly chosen words at the October 20th demonstration against Austerity in Hyde Park, London. There was so much wrong with his speech that if I offered any kind of comprehensive criticism this blog post would swell to an enormous size so I'll stick to two criticisms, one criticism focuses on the sad rhetoric of austerity-lite, for which he was roundly booed, the other focuses on the cheap political points scoring, for which he was actually cheered by the partisan crowd.

I'll buzz through the partisan political point scoring comments first before getting to the more important austerity-lite comments. Having a dig at George Osborne's fare-dodging might get a cheer from the crowd, but as a stand alone argument is is actually quite weak. He should have said something along the lines of "Osborne's team can't even buy a train ticket properly, this surely reflects badly on their ability to run the economy of the entire country". 

Miliband got a few cheers for his lame digs at the general conduct of the Tory party but the political story of the day was surely the sight of a Labour leader getting roundly booed by a bunch of Trade Unionists, public sector workers, left-wing activists and Tory critics (people that should be an important part of the Labour demographic). Here's a transcript of what he said to provoke the boos and heckling.

"There will still be hard choices and with borrowing rising, not falling, I do not promise easy times. You know it's right that we level with people; that there would still be hard choices. I have said that whoever was in government now, there would be some cuts, but this government has shown that they're cutting too far and too fast. Self-defeating austerity is not the answer. It is not the answer to Britain's problems. We would make different, but fairer choices..."

One problem with this kind of approach is that millions of people don't want to hear austerity-lite from the Labour party, they want to hear a viable alternative to the ideological agenda of "cut, cut, cut". A much more obvious problem is that you will never be able to sell your austerity-lite agenda to a partisan crowd of anti-cuts protesters, no matter how much you dress it up as "levelling with them". It should have been absolutely obvious to Ed and his PR team that getting booed for using phrases like hard choices and some cuts would be a PR disaster. The Tories and the right-wing press were always going to attack him for even having attended the event, whilst anyone looking for a viable left-wing alternative would be given a clear moment of political drama to concrete the idea that Labour certainly isn't any kind of alternative to orthodox neoliberal pseudo-economics. What Ed managed to do by making an austerity-lite speech at an anti-austerity demonstration was to leave himself open to criticism from both sides of the political spectrum.

I'm not saying that Ed's idea of "levelling with people" and admitting that some areas of spending may have to be cut is a completely terrible one, in fact the poll results (that modern politicians put so much faith in) probably show that he may even get significant traction using it with a centre ground audience. However to a partisan anti-austerity crowd he needed to focus more upon the ideological nature of the Tory austerity agenda and present some of the concrete economic evidence that Osborne's austerity has driven the UK back into recession.

Firstly he should have presented the new evidence from the IMF that in the current economic climate, government spending is vastly more beneficial to the economy than it normally is. Secondly he should have presented the evidence from George Osborne's own brainchild, the OBR, that if the returns on government investment are as high as the IMF are claiming, then their research shows that the double-dip recession was actually caused by Osborne's austerity.

If you are unfamiliar with this new evidence (hardly surprising given the mainstream media have avoided it like the plague) here are a couple of articles to get you clued up on it.

What is... Fiscal Multiplication?

An entirely avoidable "Obsbornomic" recession

Next he needed to make the case that the continuation of austerity when the economic evidence (even from right-wing organisations like the IMF and the OBR) shows that it is damaging the UK economy would be an absolutely clear demonstration that these measures are not even intended to deal with the deficit, but actually form part of an ideological agenda to smash the welfare state and sell off the pieces. If the economic evidence says that these cuts have harmed, and are harming the economy, the continuation of these policies must therefore be ideological.

The problem is that Miliband's team seem to have completely missed the importance of the new economic evidence coming from the IMF and the OBR, and instead of nailing David Cameron to the wall with these damning reports during Prime Minister's Questions, a few days before this speech, he actually feebly allowed Cameron to repeat some time worn economic fallacies and even get some sly digs in at Labour's economic policy. 

Perceived economic competence is now the only area in which the Tories retain even a slight advantage over Labour and the way for Labour to remove this advantage is for them to change the assumption that indiscriminate austerity is necessary. This is the fundamental point Labour need to hammer home, and that Miliband should have made in his speech: 

The economic evidence (from the IMF and the OBR) demonstrates that austerity is far more destructive than the Tories had assumed, and in light of this new evidence, any attempt to continue with indiscriminate austerity must be considered an ideological, not an economic decision.

After presenting the evidence that Osborne's austerity is harming the economy, Miliband should have moved on to present what Labour should do instead; which should be to devise an evidence based policy on government spending. He should have told the crowd that Labour would actually increase spending on areas that can be shown to promote economic growth, (and provide positive social and environmental outcomes) whilst cutting spending and implementing reforms in areas that have demonstrably poor economic, social and environmental outcomes.

Thus the final conclusion should have been that the Tories are ignoring the evidence to push on with their socially and economically destructive ideological austerity agenda, whilst Labour are committed to instituting evidence based spending reviews to ensure that government spending provides the best possible value for money to the taxpayer.

That is the kind of message even a partisan crowd would lap up, but in reality it is almost exactly the same message as "hard choices" and "some cuts", only the choices wouldn't be "hard", because they would be evidence based and any cuts would be balanced out by increased spending in areas where the taxpayer gains significant returns on their investment.

See also

What is... Fiscal multiplication? 
  
The case for evidence based policy in UK politics
 

Austerity and the double-dip
 
  Why I blame the left for the economic crisis
 
The catastrophic failure of "Osbornomics"
  

Osborne's indiscriminate "austerity"