Ed should do his demographics homework

Speeches at political conferences are not renowned for their intellectual brilliance but they do provide, especially when it is the first one of a new party leader, a good idea about their major ‘branding’ themes.

So it was with Mr Edward Milliband the new leader of the Labour Party.

Two images tell you everything.

First, look at the eye-candy that was sprinkled around the new leader. Lots of ‘bright’ young things. Second, have a look at the word cloud of his speech.

The top scoring word 'generation' appeared 30 times.
Gordon Brown appeared once. Even the much abused word ‘society’ could only make 17 appearances.

Clearly, young Edward was trying to establish a single brand message – Labour is young – Labour is all about the “new generation”.

A free bit of consultancy to the guy. This is a very fickle, numerically small and anti-political base upon which to set your hopes. It will be interesting to see how long it takes him to get a few older faces into the picture - literally. Interesting to see that the Guardian shares my view. Dick Stroud