Ed Miliband

Fighting to get rid of poverty and all sorts of things!
Just a few days ago you might have thought that Labour was willing and able to leave its past behind. The drubbing at the general election hurt them but, looking on the bright side, it got rid of Gordon Brown. Labour's recent past is riddled with problems stemming from the Blair/Brown feud. The wishful thinkers in Labour's membership would have hoped that the new leader could have shut the door on this period and the party move on but as we have said before Labour loves a fight, any fight. So it was foolish to imagine this could happen and not to see the trouble brewing during the leadership contest. While Brown appears to have no shame, subtlety or remorse about him after his and the party's defeat, he did at least show he can pick a winner, he anointed Ed - more on this below. Blair went all lofty as usual and spoke, publicly, only about Blairism, no doubt aiming to keep his 'legacy' pure; while Alan Johnson and Peter Mandelson, like other 'heavyweights', publicly supported David Miliband. But as Ed Miliband won it has shut the door on them instead!

Red Ed and Brown friend
We wrote about one aspect of the Labour leadership battle here, suggesting it was about to get interesting. About time too! Several Labour people, David Blunkett for example, have admitted that it was a dull thing. It was wrong to imagine that anyone other than the political anoraks of the left would welcome such a long drawn out stunt. No doubt there will be a lot of thought as to what the result might have been had a more compact time frame been in place. In particular, did this mad marathon help the trade unions dominate the whole thing? It's about to become interesting as Ed Miliband has won the leadership battle and has done so with help from the trade unions. This contest and its outcome must be seen alongside the other winner, Ken Livingstone, now the Labour party's official candidate for the Mayor of London elections. These will be held in 2012. So the result, like the campaign, will watched by those looking for indicators as to how the general election, scheduled for 2015, might turn out.