Let's start as if this was an AA meeting: my name is Jean and I'm a member of the Labour Party. Somebody has to do it and I've been doing it on and off since 1966. I don't always vote Labour: in local government elections, I vote Lib Dem to keep the Tory out. In the independence referendum, I've no idea how I'll vote. But my basic loyalty lies with Labour.

Up till now I've had a handle on the different Labour party leaders because I understood their backgrounds. Blair: popular with the English mercantile class because he was one of them - an entrepreneur to his fingertips with a bit too much of a liking for money. Brown: a decent man but a nightmare to work with or for, micro-managing the government with total insensitivity to anyone else's views or feelings.

But I have no understanding of Ed Milliband: how he thinks, what he thinks, what his ambitions are. He's alien territory to me. He's from London, from a family of academics. He went from uni to politics without even a short pause in a real job, which I think is essential for any politician: getting up to show up in every weather and in every state of health and work for people who don't give a rat's arse about you and will lay you off with a click of their fingers. So I was pleased to see an in-depth profile of Ed Milliband in this week's New Statesman. I think I have a clearer view now of  what he's like and what he's aiming to do,

His 'project' starts from the basis that people are 'out of love' with uncontrolled capitalism but are uneasy about the power of the state. Although it seems clear to me his ideas are still 'in development', I like it that he favours a green economy, devolution of power, local government, finding a mechanism to tax the rich rather than the middle or the poor. He knows there will have to be cuts but at least equality is on his agenda.

And he certainly seems to understand the Coalition. It looks as if the Lib Dems have - sadly - hitched themselves to a bunch of Tory incompetents, whose plan for recovery has failed and who can't think their way round it, no matter how much their Lib Dem colleagues push them, because they have the extreme right of the Tory party on their back. And I've seen and heard for myself that Milliband has got the measure of Cameron and Osborne in Parliament.

That leaves his personality. It's good that he rates his family as number one in his life, rather than his job. It's good he's bold (you'd have to be bold to shaft your brother the way he did in the leadership contest), that he has managed to hold the LP together in opposition (it hasn't often happened) and that he's a good manager of people.

But right in the middle of this profile there is the phrase: 'unbreakable self-belief.' Don't get me wrong: self-belief is good. You don't get to do what you aim to do in life without that quality. It's the word 'unbreakable' I've a problem with. It suggests to me a 'my way or no way' attitude. It suggests a refusal to compromise. I've worked with and for people with that kind of self-belief and I've encountered them in clubs and voluntary organisations. And it's not just the male of the species that takes this attitude.

Personally, I like compromise. Compromise is the quality you find in most people's family life. No black and white, just shades of grey (but not 50!) in people's dealings with each other. Room for everyone's views. A bit of tolerance. At least a willingness to listen.

 I hope the writer of Milliband's profile is wrong to use this word. We'll see.