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We will, Ed Miliband has declared, be "a different party from the one we were in the past… a changed Labour Party".

Words that might have led some to believe that he was about to apologise for his party's role in creating the deficit.

Not a bit of it. Not only does the Labour leader not believe that his party's over-spending is to blame, he is also determined not to allow the Tory press to write headlines saying: "Labour says sorry for bankrupting the country."

The Labour leader's view is that his party will only regain economic credibility over time and by what it says about the future not the past.

So his message today was that if he becomes prime minister he will not be able to reverse many of the cuts that a number of his party's supporters want him to and that Labour will have to show that it can deliver fairness not simply by spending more.

He plans to do that by regulating companies more and making what he calls fairer choices in tax and spending policies. There was little detail today but the Labour leader accepts that, in stark contrast to Gordon Brown at the last election, Labour will have to publish clear costed plans.

For now, though, he has a different problem - getting anything heard through the noise created by poor polls and party mutterings about his performance as leader.