One of the oddities about Ed Miliband and Labour is how it has failed to tap into popular sentiment in areas which ought to be an open goal for a left-of-centre opposition.

Perhaps this should be no surprise since the party's cupboard is bare of policies.  All it has is tactics which do not amount to a strategy.  Hopefully for Labour its new local government innovation commission will draw on the considerable expertise and genuine innovation provided by its supporters at a local level.

Milband's pre-conference pledges were also tactics, rather than a strategy  His commitment to scrap the ‘bedroom tax' is a belated nod to mounting publicity about the one aspect of welfare policy over which the electorate is ambivalent.

The rest of welfare reform goes down well with working voters, especially housing benefi t caps.  His proposal that jobs for immigrant workers should be matched by apprenticeships is meaningless, since EU citizens are entitled to work anywhere within it, so he may as well just announce enforced apprenticeships for UK employers.

Soundbites about posh Cameron and Osborne and their ‘City friends' are getting old hat.

Yet, a glance through the right-of-centre tabloids, the natural enemies of the left, shows they are tapping into a populist sentiment which ought to have been colonised by Labour.