Ed Miliband will use a speech in London on Tuesday morning to distance himself from the policies of the previous Labour government - and blame the Tory government that preceded New Labour for contributing to the spending policies of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
The Labour leader is seeking to revive his personal fortunes after a string of blunders brought a difficult start to 2012. He's expected to tell a gathering in central London that if he is elected in 2015, he would still be facing a budget deficit, and that this would call for a different approach than that taken by the New Labour governments.
"The ideas which won three elections between 1997 and 2005 won’t be the ideas which will win the election in 2015," he will say, adding that Labour were spending money to "patch up the failures of the economy we inherited" from 18 years of Conservative government.
Critics might be skeptical, but Ed Miliband is attempting to find a balance between acknowledging New Labour's mistakes without upsetting the wing of his party which is committed to higher taxes and spending. Some believe that the Labour leader needs to go further in upsetting the vested interests in his party.
“We will have to make difficult choices that all of us wish we did not have to make," Miliband will say. "Labour knows what fairness means. It always will. But we must rethink how we achieve it for Britain."
Labour sources suggested that Ed Milband would call for a narrowing the range of areas in which spending would take place to tackle social problems.
"In the past we tended to spend money in several areas to tackle a problem," said one source close to Ed Miliband.
The Labour leader appears to be taking the advice of his elder brother David, who on Monday spoke of his "frustration" at Labour being in opposition, saying the party had to be "humble" about its "mistakes", but proud of what it had achieved in power.
His comments - a rare intervention in domestic politics since he lost out on the leadership to his younger brother - came in an interview with Indian newspaper The Hindu.
"I think for everyone in the Labour Party, it feels very frustrating at the moment. Because opposition is a permanent lesson in frustration; you can talk but you can't do anything," he told the newspaper.
Following two serious gaffe last week - one involving a disastrous typo on Twitter from Ed Miliband's account, the Labour leader insisted that he was in for the long haul, telling the Guardian of his "grit" and determination to succeed.