Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband Marries Justine Thornton
'Like it or not, Ed Miliband needs be seen out with his own photogenic family, for images to match Labour's family record.' Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Extreme caution marked most of Ed Miliband's first year and he paid the price in making little impact on the public. To borrow Roy Jenkins's famous image of Tony Blair, Miliband was said to behave as if carrying a precious vase down a slippery corridor. But that's over now, his people say. Taking a brave stand against Rupert Murdoch was a revelation, and now he feels liberated from the triangulation and calculation that makes politicians so mistrusted. The Great Speech is an annual nightmare but it does force leaders to crystallise their thoughts. He needs to sound like a man sprung free.

But the vase metaphor is wrong. Miliband was handed nothing but a rucksack full of stones. The past weighs as heavily on him as the national debt. So does fratricide and his union-delivered wafer-thin victory. The haunting frown of Gordon Brown re-materialises with each new self-indulgent memoir. Rocks fall on him from the parties in power, dishonestly heaping blame on Labour for the great bank crash. Rocks drop from his own side: interfering Blairites, some imposed on him inside his own cabinet, bearing old mantras. Hold to "the centre ground", wherever they choose to locate it. Let in no air between the parties. The only way to beat Conservatives is to be more like them. Move no inch beyond the minimalist "too far, too fast". Red Ed would be Dead Ed, their pamphlets warn. That's a heavy load to shed.

Opposition is ripe with temptations. Say anything, do whatever it takes, be all things to all people. There was nothing David Cameron wouldn't do, no opportunism too low, no flight of fantasy too high, promising the earth, joining every cause, sailing on every public whim. A wry snort greeted the inevitable announcement that Chase Farm hospital would lose its A&E, despite Cameron and Andrew Lansley on the picket line in opposition waving Hands Off! posters. How tempting for Labour to join every dishonest Save Our Hospital campaign. But Miliband has said he will under-promise and over-deliver, not behaving like Cameron.

How tempting to imitate Cameron's shape-shifting, as he signed child poverty pledges and carbon emissions targets, never meaning it. Should a pale blue Ed join every tabloid campaign on punishment, promising ever more prisons and police? He said he'd never outflank the Tories on the right on crime, but then wobbled and called for Ken Clarke's head. But he hit the right tone on the riots, a tone to use again on welfare and crime, tough-mindedness as essential as ever for Labour.

Some urge Miliband to offer his own eye-watering cuts, or marketising public sector "reforms", but these would only be swiped by the government, with taunts for more. Please God, block his ears to Blue Labour's "family, faith and flag". Yet family is everything and he needs to trumpet Labour's great family record. How cleverly Cameron does family, cutting children's benefits while filmed making porridge for his own, snapped "accidentally" on outings with wife and kids. Like it or not, Miliband needs be seen out with his own photogenic family, for images to match Labour's family record. (Mercifully, his wife could never sink to Sarah Brown's "My husband, my hero!")

Embarrassment is the best guide. Never knowingly do anything that makes him blush in the mirror: win or lose, he has to live with himself afterwards. Talk human, eschew both abstract nouns and toe-curling pieties that thud on to conference floors. Be himself. Though after weeks of speech drafts and experimental phrase-making it's easy to forget who that is.

Character will out: he is a serious, decent, thoughtful man, strong on empathy, a warm listener with few enemies, liked by all who know him, deeply driven by social injustice. That's who the country needs to know. He's not a natural show-off, so what possessed him to reach for the top remains something of a mystery, but it's time to show us the inner spirit and clear purpose that drove him to it.

Tell us where he stands. He has everything to gain and little to lose by boldness. Striking out in a new direction holds the best hope of shaking off Labour's past. So instead of finessing shades of difference on the economy, he is set to declare the death of neoliberalism, an end to 30 years of failed market idolatry. Look how the Thatcher/Reagan creed of unregulated markets, small government and undertaxed wealth derailed economies infected by it. There is no choice but to shape a better capitalism: better regulated, founded on long-termism instead of exuberant finance and property bubbles.

The Will Hutton stakeholder model briefly espoused by Blair is back on the table, better balancing capital, labour, shareholder and citizen. The next quantitative-easing money must not be swallowed again by banks but lent to cash-starved small business. Banks we own must be forced to lend, bonuses taxed. Public contractors must keep their profits on shore and hire apprentices, with a growth plan for construction and jobs for the young. Fairer sharing should resonate among the 90% of households where real incomes are falling so sharply. As people see valued services vanish before their eyes, it's time to celebrate the public sector.

Boldness in this crisis could win back credibility. One big apology admits that Labour jumped aboard the neoliberal express, applying no brakes. If the coalition hoists the train back on the rails, it'll crash again. With a second crisis upon us, it's no time for tinkering. If Miliband can convince on intervening to help productive industry, creative industries, skills and invention, he might turn the tide.

Labour is not yet trusted on the economy, the biggest rock. It's no use apologising for debts from a crash that was not Labour's fault, but as hyper-austerity kills UK growth, a vision of something better might seize the imagination in dark times. They may brand him Red Ed, but he has growing ranks of economists on his side.

Leaders who speak their mind earn respect for authenticity, even from those who disagree. The public has a well-tuned aversion to synthetic sincerity and an untapped appetite for seriousness and conviction in a time of crisis. If not, he's done for anyway, so go for it.