Ed Miliband has said Labour will “change the way the country is run and who it is run for” as he launched his party’s election manifesto.
Saying he had been tested as opposition leader and was “ready” for power, Mr Miliband said Labour would be a “party of change and responsibility”.
He ruled out a “shopping list of proposals”, guaranteeing all policies would require no extra borrowing reported BBC.
But PM David Cameron accused Mr Miliband of trying to “con” the public.
The 86-page manifesto, which is 20,421 words long, sets out Labour’s main policy pledges
Speaking in Manchester, Mr Miliband said the first page of Labour’s manifesto “sets out a vow to protect our nation’s finances; a clear commitment that every policy… is paid for without a single penny of extra borrowing”.
Labour would not promise anything it could not fund, he said, contrasting this with the Conservatives which he described as the “party of sums that do not add up and commitments that cannot be kept”.
He added: “The plan we lay before you is no less ambitious because we live in a time of scarcity.
“It is more ambitious because it starts from a clear commitment to balance the books and more ambitious because it does not stop there.
“It meets the scale of the challenges we face today with not one policy funded by extra borrowing.”