Are you overwhelmed by the hugeness of Ed Miliband and what he has to offer? Is Labour’s small poll lead faltering because it offers too much?

Some of the current Labour leadership think so. They are part of what is called the “Shrink the offer” lobby. 

They think the secret to getting more votes is offering less. Labour’s current commitments are much milder than they were in 1997 — when Labour promised dramatic changes like the minimum wage. 

But Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls and others think the small promises made are too big a target for the Tories, so, in wonk-speak, they advise “shrinking the offer.”

Essentially they want to get in without being attacked by the press or frightening big business, so want a modest manifesto. They want Labour to be careful not to inspire hope.

Caroline Flint is another offer-shrinker. She recently told Progress magazine that Labour “should campaign as we intend to govern, and that is not necessarily thinking that there is a simple answer to every situation.” 

She means Labour will govern in a very uninspiring, pro-business way that lets down voters. So the campaign should be an uninspiring let-down as well.

Flint has experience of government — as public health minister under the last Labour government, she was determined not to challenge big business over obesity and food labelling. 

A minister who is scared of Kellogg’s and gives in to the Biscuit, Cakes and Confectionary Alliance won’t want to see the big guns of capitalism challenged. 

She warned of “all sorts of pressures coming from all sorts of directions on Labour to have an answer to every single concern that people raise.” 

So if, say, Labour voters ask for renationalising rail, Flint thinks hard and says… no. 

Because in truth Flint does have an easy answer — never challenge big business. 

Tony Blair’s 1997 manifesto might look wildly militant to them now, because the “journey” he took them on was steadily rightwards.

By contrast, Miliband is treading — very, very gingerly — to the left. But even his small steps have caused a mild panic in the Tories. 

As I reported from inside last year’s Conservative conference, the energy price freeze promise actually freaked the Tories out quite badly.

More recently, Miliband made a somewhat weak and confusing promise on rents. He said he was going to make three-year rather than one-year contracts the norm for private tenants. 

And during contracts he was going to in some way peg rent rises to some new benchmark. It was a bit unclear how the new contracts will be enforced. 

And Labour suggested the new benchmark rent rise rate might be based on average rent rises, which would be very weak as rent rises are too high — fixing rent rises to average rent rises is a bit like saying rents can’t rise any higher than, er, rents. 

All the same, anything that stops the annual trudge from one private rented property to another more expensive flat with higher rents and a mouldier bathroom is to be welcomed. 

Labour simultaneously proposed a vote in Parliament to ban letting agents charging tenants fees — Labour thinks the landlord should pay. So the party put together a modest package for “generation rent.”

This was enough to panic the Tories. They rushed out a policy that “letting agents will be required to publish full details of the fees they charge.” 

Currently letting agents who charge hidden fees only face being “named and shamed” by the Advertising Standards Association. 

But as landlords’ pimps have no shame, this has no effect. Tory Housing Minister Kris Hopkins announced he was “banning hidden fees.” Any agents who broke the rules would be fined, rather than merely “shamed.” 

Hopkins admitted he was aiming his policy at Labour, with a squawk that to go further would be bad as “short-term gimmicks like trying to ban any fee to tenants [which] means higher rents by the back door.” 

For the Tories, the landlords rule, but Labour has embarrassed them into some reform. On a modest scale, Labour’s small, but unshrunken “offer” had an effect without even an election. Imagine if the party were bolder?

I fear we will mostly have to imagine it, because the offer-shrinkers are still a very powerful part of the Labour leadership. But small steps like the rent promise or the energy price freeze show that bigger strides could be made.

Working from home with the radio on means I’ve been drowning in the “Britpop anniversary.” 

The main reason that this “anniversary” is a big deal is people who were twenty-something-old Camden groovers in the 1990s are now forty-something radio and TV bureaucrats and feeling nostalgic. 

The actual music, which mostly extinguished itself in a cloud of retrograde Union-Jack-waving conservatism, can’t be the reason. But all scenes have a good part — Pulp, obviously. 

At the very beginning of Britpop, S*M*A*S*H produced a song called I Want To Kill Somebody, which had a political bite. The band have rerecorded it with updated lyrics which put Cameron and co on the death list. 

If you like some bouncy buzz-saw guitar with a sort of sad-angry singing — in a good way — you can buy the single for just £1. Just search for “S*M*A*S*H” (don’t forget the asterisks) on the Bandcamp website.

Employment Minister Esther McVey is in charge of Iain Duncan Smith’s Help to Work — the scheme which includes making the long-term unemployed work for free for six months. 

McVey herself is used to the idea of doing things for free. In the latest register of MPs’ interests, the Merseyside MP enjoyed a free day out at the Grand National courtesy of Aintree Racecourse. 

The “corporate hospitality package for two people” was worth £1,160, but was free to McVey, so she was presumably being very well-supplied with dinner and champagne in one of the nicer lounges at the racetrack while she mulled over the government’s latest plan to force the jobless to work for nothing.