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Ed Miliband has urged the coalition to take a more "balanced approach" to reducing the deficit.
Introducing a new catchphrase, Miliband said the coalition was undermining the "British Promise" that the next generation would have more opportunities that the last.
"Less than one out of ten people think the next generation is going to have an easier life than them," he told an audience in Gateshead today.
"What I hear going round the country is that they feel that promise is under threat."
Miliband returned to the themes of his first speech as leader where he claimed that the party was now in the hands of the "next generation" which would take Labour back in to power.
In his speech today he said that the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance and trebling of tuition fees was not malicious but simply misguided.
"I believe David Cameron and Nick Clegg do want the next generation to do better than the last," he said.
"They are doing it because they think the best long term thing to do for the country is to cut the deficit as far and as fast as we can.
"I disagree with them; I would take a more balanced approach to cutting the deficit.
"It's the worst of short-termism to cut the deficit in the way they are doing. It's not long-termism to take away the ladders from future generations."
Miliband also said Cameron and Clegg failed to understand the sense of "shared responsibility" which came from young people staying in education.
"We all have not just a responsibility but an interest in kids staying on at school or college," he said.
He said Britain would be "not just a better country socially, but a better country economically, if we are a country where that British Promise is kept".
Also speaking at the event, Ed Balls called on the government to change its mind and reverse some its programme of public spending cuts.
"It's not working, stop digging, go on an alternative path," he said.
And he defended Labour's stewardship of the economy while in government. The shadow chancellor said the reason the country accumulated such a large defecit was due to the "global recession".
"Did we spend every pound of public money in the best way, of course we didn’t," he said. "No government gets everything right".
He added: "The reason we have a deficit is because of a global recession.
"It is a nonsense to say it was caused by too much spending or British profligacy."
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