David Miliband's main speech to conference may have seemed mediocre, but the foreign secretary more than made up for it with an address to activists on the fringe.

At a packed Institute for Public Policy Research debate on a progressive foreign policy, the elder half of the Miliband duet appeared ever-humbled by the rapturous reception he received.

So much so that he even felt it necessary to apologise for having to dash off to prepare for a meeting at the UN over the escalating violence in Burma.

When Miliband speaks you can see his mind churning, he listens intently and answers questions directly. The youngest foreign secretary in 30 years also acknowledges that his role involves addressing some issues to which there is no simple answer.

The man touted to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership may be an ex-policy chief of and key ally to Tony Blair but he used his keynote speech in Bournemouth to distance himself from the foreign policies of the Blair years - particularly the war in Iraq.

He spoke of a "new chapter" in politics and while he commended the progress made since Labour came to power a decade ago, he stressed the need to move on and look to the future.

There have been rumours that a limit was put on the amount of time ministers get on the conference floor in order to keep the spotlight on the prime minister. And perhaps that is why the chairman of the IPPR event agreed with the secretary of state when he said he had just five seconds to go into each of the key issues he would focus on in his new post.

But despite his relatively short address, the minister set out his stall for tackling key issues including religious extremism, global inequality and climate change.

Very few people dislike David Miliband. Perhaps that is because he epitomises the gleaming optimism of the Brown camp, perhaps because he has displayed unwavering loyalty to the Labour Party over the years.

Perhaps it is because, despite recognising the importance of his grand title and occupying a palatial office in King Charles Street, he manages to avoid an air of self-importance.

Or perhaps, in the new supposedly spin-free era, it is because he seems to have the political dexterity to properly renew Britain's standing on the global stage.