Is Ed Miliband the man to inject some passion back into our politics?

One of the most frequent criticisms made of politicians these days is that they spend too much time agreeing with eachother.

For many, politics has become too risk-averse, a game fought over a narrow strip of ideological terrain in which the most important rule is to avoid saying or doing anything that might offend the fabled 'floating voter.'

In truth, it's an analysis that is only half-right. If you're lucky enough to be in government, or if the tide of public opinion is shifting in your direction, there is still a fair degree of scope for radical thought.

But that's not, by and large, true for opposition politicians. Here, the watchword is "don't frighten the horses," and oppositions which have tried to challenge the political consensus, such as Labour in 1983 and the Tories in 2001, have tended to come unstuck.

So in one sense, it was refreshing to see Labour leader Ed – or is it Edward? - Miliband address last weekend's protest rally in central London against the Coalition's spending cuts.

It was absolutely inevitable that he would be crucified in the right-wing press for doing so, particularly once the protests got hijacked by criminal elements which were nothing to do with either the Labour Party or the organisers.

Some in his own party even joined in, with disgruntled Blairites muttering that "Tony Blair and Gordon Brown never went on protest rallies."

If this comparison was somehow supposed to diminish Ed Miliband in the eyes of the voters, I suspect that it will actually have had the opposite effect.

Like many in the upper reaches of the Labour Party, Mr Miliband has in the past come across as something of a machine politician – a man whose career progressed seamlessly from university to researcher to special adviser to MP to Cabinet minister and finally to the party leadership without the intervention of anything resembling real life.

So the fact that he sounded, for the first time last weekend, like a leader of genuine passion and conviction is, for me, a point in his favour.

Sure, it's a gamble, particularly if the passions and convictions he is articulating turn out not to be shared by a majority of voters.

But there is just a chance that the country, bored by years of 'Blatcherite' policy clones fighting over the 'centre ground,' could warm to a leader who seems prepared to inject some genuine political idealism into our national life.

Two substantive charges have been made against Mr Miliband over his Hyde Park speech last Saturday.

The first was that he claimed to be speaking for the 'mainstream' when he wasn't – but David Cameron and George Osborne are perhaps a little too eager to dismiss people's concerns about the cuts – and the possibility that the Labour leader might be genuinely reflecting them.

The second, more serious charge is that Mr Miliband told us "there is an alternative" without actually saying what it is.

But this, too, is slightly disingenuous. As I wrote last week, Labour has fairly consistently said throughout the last election and beyond that it would aim to halve the deficit in four years – a difference of about £40bn in spending terms from what the Coalition is doing.

What the Tories really mean by the latter criticism is that Mr Miliband should tell us which cuts he agrees with rather than allowing voters to be given the impression he opposes all of them.

Here they are on slightly stronger ground. Although Mr Miliband specifically denies he is against all the cuts, he can be seen to be guilty of trying to have it both ways in this regard.

Sooner rather than later, the Labour leader will have to answer this point if he is to become a genuinely credible contender for power at the next general election.

But for now, the fact that he is starting to discover his own distinctive voice will surely stand him in good stead.

'Miserable pipsqueak' won't rescue Balls

Ever since the new coalition came into office, the consensus has been that its political honeymoon would last only as long as it took for real cuts in public services to start happening.

While people seem happy for ministers to talk about efficiency savings and even 25pc cuts to government departments, they become rather less so when that starts to impact on local schools, hospitals and police.

So this week's announcement of the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future programme, aimed at refurbishing every school in England, was one announcement the government needed to get right.

And as we all now know, Education Secretary Michael Gove managed to get it totally and spectacularly wrong, producing at least four different lists of the schools affected each of which contained inaccuracies.

In this region alone, the original announcement led to building work being halted at 46 schools including five in South Tyneside.

However it later emerged that all five of these schools had been mistakenly included on the list and that the work would, after all, be continuing as planned, although other areas were not so lucky.

Those who long to see a bit of passion restored to the political arena will have loved Labour MP Tom Watson's Commons attack on Mr Gove after the minister was forced to make one of several apologies for the blunders.

Former whip Mr Watson concluded his onslaught with the words "You're a miserable pipsqueak of a man, Gove!" – incurring the wrath of Speaker John Bercow who swiftly ordered him to withdraw.

Ultimately, though, it is not the chaotic presentation of this announcement which is the real issue. It is the fact that cuts to school building projects should be happening at all.

Once again, the government has tried to pin the blame on Labour, arguing that the Building Schools for the Future programme was wasteful and bureaucratic.

This would be all very well, had Mr Gove outlined how the new government proposes to refurbish our dilapidated school buildings in a more cost-effective and less bureaucratic fashion.

His failure to do so leads one to assume there is no such plan, and that they will consequently be left to rot.

One consequence of this week's fiasco has been talk of an upturn in the fortunes of Labour leadership contender Ed Balls, who has led the attack on Mr Gove.

The Shadow Education Secretary is currently trailing in, at best, third place behind the Miliband brothers in the race, but with voting not due to happen until the end of August, much could theoretically change before then.

For my part, I don't think it will. While accepting that Mr Gove's hapless performance this week has given Mr Balls a chance to shine, I think the party has by and large made up its mind about him.

Sure, they want to see his combative political skills used to good effect in a senior role - almost certainly Shadow Chancellor – but my hunch is they want someone more emollient as leader.

The longer-term impact of the week's events is likely to be less on Labour and more on public perceptions of the coalition.

Even within the North-East, the scrapping of the rebuilding programme runs the risk of creating a postcode lottery between areas such as Newcastle, where all the projects had already been approved, and Durham, where 14 have had to be cancelled.

It is invariably going to create a huge sense of injustice in those areas unlucky enough to miss the cut-off point and which now face an indefinite wait for new facilities.

And at some point, that sense of injustice is something the coalition will need to address.