So we’ve got yet another generation of the Labour party, if now-not-so-red Ed’s inaugural speech is anything to go by.

I know time goes faster the older you get, but wasn’t it just 13 years ago that 1997 took place? When New Labour replaced the old one, and things could only get better?

That, in my book, is not a generation away. Not unless you want to encourage Year 9s to carry out a bit of biology practical work behind the school bike shed to produce a new generation a bit prematurely, anyway.

No, that’s recently enough for most of us to remember standing in a polling booth and deciding whether to back outsiders Blair and Booth, or stick with the tried and tested Tories.

Now, I don’t mind a new broom. And Ed may well grow into the role of Labour leader as time passes. But on his first real outing as Brand Milliband, the younger brother has fallen into a rather obvious trap. If anything’s new, he and his speechwriters seem to think, it must by definition be good.

I suspect that any day now we can expect to see a slight tweak of the Labour party logo. There, just at the top right of the red rose, will be a white star nicked straight from a pack of washing powder. New … improved … Labour! it will say. Ah, it’s new New Labour. So that’s all right, then.

When I was in my teens and 20s, I worshipped new. New was exciting, and hadn’t been tried before. We were the first generation that watched telly every night – and then watched a man landing on the moon. How cool was that?

We wore lime green nail varnish, and disposable paper knickers, and mini skirts, and sometimes didn’t bother with bras, and didn’t waste space keeping used brown paper and string in our kitchen cupboards as our mothers had done before us. We could always buy more. Easy!

We realised that the key to a happy family life was a Mini Countryman parked in every drive, and a Dansette in the front room, which we now called the lounge instead, because the new name sounded much more, well, with it.

It was generally understood that by the time we reached middle-age (although most of us were determined not to let ourselves do any such thing) we wouldn’t wear dresses or wool two-pieces, but would all fly round in one-piece suits made of aluminium foil and silver boots with little jet packs on the heels.

That, we were convinced, was the new future. Medicine would have cured all ills, childbirth would be painless, the Moon would be the weekend retreat of choice, and life would be just one blissfully innovative experience after another.

That was then. But this is now. So what’s new?

Well, nothing much by the look of it. There are lots of good reasons not to get old. Hair greying, or falling out, or growing in the wrong places. Knees creaking, hips complaining, brain cells giving up.

But there are compensations. One is watching younger people wrestle with exactly the same problems as their forefathers faced.

That is when the natural human default position kicks in. I know. Let’s do something new.

What is going to be new about the new New Labour leader remains to be seen. I genuinely wish him luck. He’s got genuine conviction, and hopefully a brain.

But in the meantime, I’ve abandoned plans for a lunar trip. I’ve never managed to find an aluminium outfit, with or without jet packs. And I’ve been recycling wrapping paper and string for a couple of years now.