If It’s Either of Them It Should Be Ed

It’s been clear to me for some time that David Miliband, eager to be liked by all of the people all of the time, hasn’t had the drive needed to become Prime Minister. And as New Labour declines towards its inevitable, ideology-free end in May, it’s also been clear that new thinking and new presentation – a whole new attitude is needed to guide a rump Labour Party to its next incarnation. It should be Ed Miliband, and others are starting to agree:

Miliband Jr has four strengths, goes the thinking. He is a more natural media performer than his brother, as his assured appearances at Copenhagen showed; he connects more easily with the party, which he has been courting assiduously as co-ordinator of Labour’s general election manifesto; and he would find it easier to unite the party, whose left and right wings are warming to him. As a 40-year-old, who has only been an MP for five years, he represents more of a break with the Blair/Brown era.

There is another factor that is being whispered: he may have worked for Brown, but Miliband Jr has not been afraid to stand up to his master. A year ago he irritated the prime minister by wringing out environmental concessions before signing up to the third runway at Heathrow.

“Heathrow was Ed’s coming of age,” one member of the cabinet says. “Ed, who made life quite difficult for Gordon, had a big influence on the decision. But he is collegiate and he has stuck by it.”

He’s by no means perfect. His lofty words about the green economy are rarely matched by deeds (Vestas anyone?), but in my mind he’s the only choice to lead the party away from the utterly discredited Blair/Brown era. Time will tell if it happens, and more importantly if he chooses bring an actual ideological bent to it, the complete absence of which after all is what caused voters to be alienated from it in the first place.

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