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The new generation get up early. Ed Miliband found time for a radiowith me - at 645am in the conference hall here in Manchester.

The pre-breakfast chat took in Iraq, public spending, and the Barnett formula that effectively decides slightly more than half public spending in Wales. Oh, and his brother got a mention or two.

The new Labour leader says his party "can't be in denial" about the need to cut public spending. He said Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones would have to make some difficult decisions about his priorities. But he said he still disagreed with the UK Government about the scale and pace of the cuts.

In his speech yesterday, Mr Miliband said Labour had to be honest about the need for cuts that would have happened had Labour been in government. Asked whether that meant Carwyn Jones should make cuts, (with Labour in government in Wales), he said:

"No, what it says to Carwyn Jones is, that, and Carwyn is a fantastic first minister, is that he's obviously going to have to make difficult decisions in Wales about his priorities and I think it's a good illustration of the point that I'm making, which is that we can't be in denial about the need to make cuts.

"Now, we have a very different view about the scale and pace of those cuts, and I think what the coalition is proposing is quite damaging to our economy and our communities. But I'm not going to pretend to the British people something that isn't true we had a plan before the election. It would have involved some reductions. I think the way the coalition is going about these reductions is extremely dangerous."

Asked about criticism of his recent defence of the Barnett formula as one that had "served us pretty well", he said: "I don't think I said it served Wales well, I said it served the whole of the UK well and that we need to look at the particular circumstances that Wales faced and this is something that we acknowledged in the manifesto".

Carwyn Jones now says the formula short changes Wales by £300m a year - a point he says he didn't make while Labour was in power at Westminster because he didn't have the evidence. The Miliband response: "We're about to embark on a process of looking at policy across a whole range of areas but obviously this is one of the things that we'll want to look at, the particular circumstances of Wales in relation to the Barnett formula."

He confirmed his brother David would talk about his future plans later today - and I got the impression those plans don't include the shadow cabinet:

"Yes, I think he's a great asset to British politics and a great asset to whatever he does but the most important thing is that he does the right thing for himself that's what he obviously will have been thinking about he'll be talking about his decision today."

The new leader may have declared the era of New Labour over, but some of its vocabulary remains. The phrase "move on" peppered his answers - and, yes, he wants to draw a line under it, as politicians do.

"We are moving on from Iraq and I want to draw a line under it but in order to draw a line under it I have to be honest about my own view and I don't think it will come as any surprise to people that David has a slightly different view on Iraq because at the 40 or 50 hustings we did it came up a lot of times"

I asked whether he could only win by trashing the record of the Labour Government of which he was a member: "I'm a great defender of our record, I think we did great things in government but you don't lose elections because you did everything right: you lose elections because you made mistakes and if we spend our time blaming the electorate
saying it is their fault we are out of power we won't get back into power.

"That's why it is so important that we are humble about the mistakes that we made, we recognise and look into ourselves for the mistakes that were made and recognise our mistakes. That is base camp if you like for moving on"

In case you were wondering, after four days in the job he's "very much enjoying it". He was pleased with the way the speech was received in the hall and by the public: "We must unite and move forward as a team".

But it looks as if that team won't include his brother.

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