The Happy Warrior was among friends.

The comrades started off with a polite applause as from the Old Granada TV studios in sunny Manchester (it was indeed not raining), their chief set forth trying to emulate the essential message put forward by New Labour i.e. social justice coupled with economic credibility and responsibility in the hope it would end with the same result; victory.

Not, of course, that Red Ed would for a minute ever say he was the political son of Tango Bravo but the polls - Scotland aside - have been showing some positive signs of opening up a gap with the Tories. Is Britain beginning to fall for Ed?

Surrounded in a blackened TV studio with banners extolling how "Britain can be better" if only it chose the geek from North London, the chosen few had the messages of "an NHS with time to care", "controls on immigration" and "strong economic foundation" beamed down on them.

The polite applause that began the Labour chief's oration to Britain began to rise in volume as Red Ed mentioned how his party in government would end the scourge of exploitative zero hours and up the minimum wage.

The speech was filled with tick-box buzzwords. "Success" and "succeed" were mentioned umpteen times as was hard-working people. Labour, insisted Mr M, was "pro-business but not business as usual". More whooping.

Tried and trusted favourite cliches began to roll off the Miliband tongue and get the audience going as the chief comrade targeted those nasty spivs and charlatans who ran the banks and the energy companies. Cheers now were louder. There were even whistles. And members of the Shadow Government began to wake up, remember where they were and applaud enthusiastically.

The key theme of the event was to convince those election-pummelled folk at home that Labour had changed, indeed was the change the country needed and would be responsible with its hard-earned money.

But while Red Ed insisted there was a triple lock on fiscal responsibility, it was suggested by one of Her Majesty's Press that the lock was one Houdini might have used and was easily pickable.

As the comrades began to growl at some of the reporters' impertinent questions, their leader urged them to respect the feral beasts, as Tony Blair once called us, as they were only doing their job.

When this feral beast raised the uncomfortable subject of Scotland and the latest poll that placed the SNP en route to victory and Scottish Labour en route to total annihilation, Ed sighed, leant on his lectern and said there was a long way to go and not everyone in Scotland, he believed, had made up their mind.

The chief comrade insisted that he had been tested through the fire of opposition and had proved his resilience. Was he ready for government? "Hell yes." But maybe Red Ed will only survive in Downing Street with a little help from Nicola and Co.