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(D) Miliband’s last chance gone?
Posted by Darrell Goodliffe
Sunday, 10th January 2010
John Rentoul thinks not. Sunny Hundal isn’t too bothered if it is (preferring, much like myself, the younger Miliband) while comments on the LabourList thread indicate a growing sense of unease with David Miliband’s hesitancy and trustworthiness.
Some of Rentoul’s commentary is baffling such as the assertion that there is;
"...evidence of a new alignment in the party between Jon Cruddas, the most important figure on the left, James Purnell and Miliband."
Why Cruddas would choose to align with the candidate who will clearly be the Blairite one of choice is beyond me. Some of the commentary however underlies what will lay beneath any future ‘Battle of the Milibands’;
"If Labour in opposition turned to his brother or to Ed Balls, it would lurch to the left and could be out of power for a long time."
David will be presented as the choice of the sensible, Blairite centre where as Ed will portrayed as leftist outlier. However, in his piece for the Observer the younger Miliband shows he has a clear sense of which way the wind is blowing for Labour;
"We need to rebuild our economy in a different way from the past, with more jobs in real engineering not just financial engineering."
It is probably working the climate change brief that gives him a greater appreciation of the necessary role government must have in society. Whatever it is, it shows he has a greater understanding of the need for a definitively Labour cause and purpose than his brother has. Probably unsurprising since it took his brother 7 hours to make-up his mind whether to support Gordon Brown or not.
Of course, all of this is to leap ahead of ourselves because the election has not happened yet. However, realistically the upper levels of the Labour Party are already triangulating the post-election shake-down (on the assumption they will at least lose their overall majority) so there is nothing wrong with an indulgent blog or two…
