Britain's new opposition leader Ed Miliband attacked government plans for deep spending cuts and signalled a tough line on banks on Sunday but denied he would "lurch to the left" or be a stooge of the unions. Strong trade union support helped Miliband, a 40-year-old former cabinet minister, beat his older brother David by a whisker in a dramatic Labour Party leadership election on Saturday.
-- Signals backing for higher taxes; regulation of banks
He hinted on Sunday that he could tone down the Labour Party's deficit-cutting plan, already far less ambitious than the ruling coalition's proposals for deep spending cuts to rein in a record peacetime budget deficit.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition's plans were "economically dangerous and there are warning signals in our economy," Miliband told the BBC. "Deficit reduction 'yes', but at a cautious pace and in a way that is going to help our economy not hinder it," he said.
He said he would raise taxes on banks because "they caused the crisis" and to protect people dependent on public services.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown quit as leader after Labour was ejected from power after 13 years in a May election, but Labour has since recovered in the opinion polls to level pegging with the Conservatives.
The 5-month-old coalition blames Labour mismanagement for running up the deficit and says Britain risks losing investor confidence unless it takes drastic action to reduce it. The coalition is drawing up plans to cut ministries' spending by up to a quarter, which it will detail on October 20.
Miliband's reliance on trade union support to win the leadership vote and his left-leaning views have led right-wing newspapers to nickname him "Red Ed" and suggest he would be beholden to unions - charges Miliband rejects. "I'm nobody's man, I'm my own man and I'm very, very clear about that," he said, speaking before the start of Labour's annual conference in the north-western city of Manchester.
"It's not about some lurch to the left, absolutely not. I'm from the centre ground of politics," he said. Nevertheless, he signalled a break from the New Labour brand of centrist, pro-business policies that brought former Prime Minister Tony Blair three consecutive election victories.
"I think the era of New Labour has passed," he said. Miliband said he saw the proposal on which Labour fought and lost the May election - to halve the deficit in four years - as a "starting point as to the timing of the deficit reduction."
"I think we should keep looking at that perhaps to see how we can improve it, so for example, I think we can do more on taxation from the banks," he said, adding that he accepted the need for some spending cuts.
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