Seumas Milne: 'The most radical speech delivered by a Labour leader for a generation'

Pro-government corporate media are already crying foul. And no wonder. Ed Miliband's speech today was the most radical delivered by a Labour leader for a generation.

Sure, it was low on policy detail and there were predictable issues that plenty of his supporters will disagree with, from welfare to Afghanistan.

But Labour's leader made an unmistakable political break today with the unrestrained market consensus of recent decades: denouncing the "failure of a system" that had delivered a "crisis of the promises made over the last 30 years".

There was no doubt who was in the frame: the bankers and vested interests of the corporate world, rigged markets, big energy conglomerates, companies "powerful enough they can get away with anything" and cosy cartels that set top pay (while he promised to put a worker on every company pay committee).

And turning on its head the Tory and New Labour charge that such talk is "anti-business", Miliband raised the prospect of a "new economy", ditching the "old set of rules": backing producers against predators, wealth creators against assets strippers, real engineering instead of financial engineering. Of course, whether he turn all this brave talk into policies that match the rhetoric is another question.

But even the Blairite ultra Hazel Blears sitting next to me – who listened to some of the sharper attacks on corporate power through gritted teeth – admitted Miliband needed something strong to "cut through". And compared with the usual bland fare of British politics, it was certainly that.

Julian Glover: 'To be cruel, Tony Benn has got his party back'

Red Ed is back – and he'd like us all to be red too, in a gentle, concerned sort of way. The merit of his speech was that it contained an argument. The problem was that it is one Miliband will lose. It amounts to the claim that Britain now believes socialism is right, New Labour was wrong, and the job of the state is to intervene directly in the morality of a managed economy.

At the end I asked a former Blair aide what his former boss' reaction would be. "Head in hands depression". That's about right. Not since October 1974 has an election been won by a leader as leftwing as Miliband showed himself to be today.

The core was this line: "it's all going to change – we need a new bargain based on new values". New values that also happen to be old values and Ed's values. Or, to be cruel, Tony Benn has got his party back. No wonder some in the hall booed Tony Blair's name. It suited the mood.

Miliband has concluded that the lesson of the financial crash and Labour's defeat is that the party should tell everyone what it really believes. That's honest, at least. But I don't think it is wise for parties to extrapolate national virtues from their own prejudices: not for the Conservatives when they tried in opposition and not for Labour now. Voters can tell when they are being patronised.

There is a good case to be made for social democracy in a time of economic crisis. The pity is that Ed Miliband didn't make it today.

Jackie Ashley: 'Some closed circles may be just too difficult to crack'

"I'm no Tony Blair" declared Ed Miliband, to much applause. Indeed he isn't, for Blair's delivery is much, much better. But this was a speech that Blair could never have made: short on jokes (though there were couple of good ones at the beginning) and long on radicalism.

The scale of Miliband's vision was awesome, taking on vested interests from right and left, while trashing some of Labour's record and praising some of the Tories' achievements. From welfare scroungers to top executives, Miliband has ideas to change things.

But will they work? Giving priority in social housing to those who contribute to the community seems a risky path, bypassing the question of need. A young mother with three kids might not have time to put much in, but she still needs a roof over her head. And will just one employee on the board of companies' pay committees really manage to curb excessive pay deals?

What might work though is using government procurement, along with different tax and regulation deals to encourage businesses to train apprentices. This, and the focus on small businesses, scientists and innovators, making things and selling real services and products, were the best parts of the speech.

There remains one big problem though for "the guy who is determined to break the closed circles of Britain." As soon as the speech was over a large circle of journalists and commentators formed just outside the hall. Ten minutes of chat and laughter and "the line" was declared – the speech was a flop. Watch for that in tomorrow's newspaper. Some closed circles may be just too difficult to crack.

Martin Kettle: 'An eloquent restatement of the old-time religion in difficult times'

Ed Miliband's intellectual background steeped him in the ethical socialism with which this 2011 party conference speech was saturated. This was a speech rooted in the ethical socialist tradition of Robert Owen, John Ruskin, William Morris and RH Tawney – though interestingly one of the few intellectual influences whom Miliband actually acknowledged in the speech was a great liberal rather a great socialist, William Beveridge. This was a speech which evoked the world of Walter Crane's etchings about the dignity of labour and Robert Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

It was not, though, a backward-looking speech. The historical roots of this speech were powerful, but he didn't draw overt attention to them. I thought Miliband said what he has always wanted to say, that he wants the Labour party to remake Britain – and in particular the British economy on the moral basis that ran through the speech from beginning to end. Robert Owen came to mind many times. Owen's great treatise about reforming the industrial capitalist system was titled the New Moral World and it was a new moral world which Miliband laid out in his speech.

One of the obvious differences between Owen and Miliband, of course, is that Owen's alternative universe was a fundamentally socialistic one. Miliband did not use the word socialism once. Everything about the speech was socialistic, though. It was a statement of values – the word "values" recurred throughout the speech far more often than any other – not a programme or a manifesto. It may ignite real enthusiasm in some Labour voters. But it may sink like a stone with others, who in such difficult economic times wanted policy pledges, material promises and something more than an eloquent restatement of the old-time religion in such difficult times. I worry that it was the speech of a new George Lansbury not a new Clem Attlee.