Ed Miliband has many challenges – but the spending review isn’t one of them

George Osborne’s immediate priorities shouldn’t distract Labour, which instead must focus on how it plans to cut the deficit

Whether Labour matches the spending totals set out by George Osborne in the spending review is deemed to be one of the most significant questions in British politics and the sternest test yet of Ed Miliband‘s leadership. But like many self-evident truths that emerge from Westminster, it’s a bit wide of the mark.

To be sure, Miliband faces some major judgment calls before the election – above all on the public finances. But whether to match the coalition’s spending review proposals isn’t one of them. What’s more, the main reason for this is that the coalition has inadvertently let him off the hook.

To understand why, it is important to register that regardless of whether Miliband’s underlying strategy is to hug theConservatives close or to unleash a major boost in spending over the parliament, it would make little difference to what actually happens in the spending review period, which covers 2015-16. This is for the utterly practical reason that a future Labour government is highly unlikely to hold its emergency budget until summer 2015, so it would be surprising if a significant amount of extra Labour money, in the event there were any, could get out of the Whitehall door before April 2016. (And if Labour’s early focus were on capital spending this would be even more likely to be the case.)

Sure, at the margins it will be possible to do some mid-year shuffling of resources between departments, or to top up some priority budgets that are capable of being quickly spent. The coalition made a few mid-year cuts in its first year and Labour could try to make its own modest adjustments. If the civil service is taking the prospect of a Labour government seriously then perhaps progress on a top priority such as the proposed job guarantee might get under way during late 2015. But the far bigger truth is that any real shift in spending would wait until April 2016. To repeat: this is about pragmatism, not principle or personnel. In the highly unlikely event that Miliband decided to sack Ed Balls and Rachel Reeves and replace them with Paul Krugman and Len McCluskey, it would still apply.

It could have been different. If we were about to have a proper spending review – running until 2017 or 2018 – then Miliband would truly be on the spot. He would clearly be in a position to change course on spending totals and where the pain will fall over this period. His decision on what to do would be meaningful. It would have merited the political, even ideological, significance that this question is currently being freighted with. But coalition politics means that a proper spending review isn’t on the table; so the issue doesn’t arise.

It’s also the case that prior to the 2015 election Osborne will set out overall spending assumptions for five years. Doubtless some will argue that the big question is whether Miliband sticks to these. But I’ve yet to hear a single person make a credible case that the leader of the opposition should commit to this for a full five-year term.

Does this mean that all this angst about Labour’s stance on spending is totally misplaced?

Hardly. Above all, Labour needs to choose the path of deficit reduction that it will commit to. This leaves open the question of the mix of tax and spending decisions that would be used to achieve this. If – and it’s a very big if – Labour were to accept the current coalition target of removing the cyclically adjusted deficit on a rolling five-year basis then, as of now, it would mean having fiscal plans aimed at securing balance by 2017-18; though even under this scenario it wouldn’t necessarily mean signing up to Osborne’s spending totals. Alternatively, Labour could set out a new deficit reduction plan, shifting the whole path of spending cuts and tax rises. This is genuinely a strategic issue for Labour – and one that needs proper debate. But it is a different question as to Labour’s immediate stance on the forthcoming spending review.

It’s also the case that well in advance of the next election the Conservative party is likely to set out proposals for further far-reaching welfare changes, together with the detail of how its so-called AME cap will work. There will be a great fanfare about the size of the expected savings over the next parliament. Labour will then be challenged – remorselessly, day after day – to back these measures or face that most familiar of charges: that it is planning a tax bombshell (with the added piquancy that this time the increase is needed simply to pour money into what will be billed as a broken welfare system). Labour needs an answer that can withstand the heat of a campaign.

Even before any of this arises, Miliband has to work out what sort of body language he adopts about austerity beyond 2015. Regardless of the exact spending totals and deficit plan he commits to – which rightly won’t emerge until nearer the election, but will under any scenario make for truly grim reading – there is growing pressure to open up about at least some of the broad areas that the public can expect to be cut under a Labour government.

These are all very real and pressing challenges. Unlike, that is, the spending review non-issue that is being set up as Miliband’s big test.

This post originally appeared on The Guardian’s Comment is Free