Miliband pledges to oust Cameron

Ed Miliband has vowed to restore Labour to power in the next general election, insisting that he is "ready to lead" and will focus on driving the coalition out after a single term.

The new Labour leader made the pledge during his first leader's speech at the party's annual conference in Manchester today (Tuesday).

Mr Miliband told the conference that he represented a "new generation" with "different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics".

He also said that his party had been wrong to go to war in Iraq and in its failure to tackle the culture of deregulation in the City.

He admitted that Labour had also failed to address the impact of immigration on communities and had encouraged a culture of debt.

"We need to learn some painful truths about where we went wrong and how we lost touch," Mr Miliband said. "We must not blame the electorate for ending up with a government we don't like - we should blame ourselves.

"This new generation that leads our party is humble about our past and idealistic about our future. It is a generation that will fight for the centre ground, not allow it to be dominated or defined by our opponents."

Labour would be "responsible in opposition" and would not simply attack everything proposed by the coalition government, he insisted.

He also emphasised that he was "serious" about reducing the deficit, but signalled a possible move away from former chancellor Alistair Darling's plan to halve the deficit in four years.

Ed Miliband's first speech as leader of the Labour party coincided with a new poll indicating that Labour are currently more popular than the Conservatives for the first time in three years.

The YouGov survey, commissioned by the Sun, found that support for the Conservative party is now on 39 per cent, while backing for Labour has risen to 40 per cent.