Ed Miliband, welcome to the coalition – but don't stay too long | Simon Jenkins

The Labour leader's sanity on cuts is what the economy needs. But long term, a healthy democracy needs real opposition

A double-dip recession is a national emergency, or it should be. If there were no coalition already in place, something like one would surely be demanded. It worked for Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 and Winston Churchill in 1940. Now that Labour's Ed Miliband and Ed Balls acknowledge the need to remedy the excesses of the past and find a measure of economic truth and...