U.K.'s Labour Moves From Rivals' Split to Sibling Psychodrama
The new leader of the Labourt Party Ed Miliband
Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
The new leader of the Labourt Party Ed Miliband.
The new leader of the Labourt Party Ed Miliband. Photographer: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Derek Scott, economic adviser to former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997-2003, talks about the opposition Labour Party's new leader Ed Miliband and his support from the trade unions. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "The Pulse" with Andrea Catherwood. (Source: Bloomberg)
David Milliband
Nelson Ching/Bloomberg
Today David Milliband must decide whether to remain in frontline politics by being a candidate in a vote to choose Ed’s team of opposition spokesmen.
Today David Milliband must decide whether to remain in frontline politics by being a candidate in a vote to choose Ed’s team of opposition spokesmen. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg
Britain’s Labour Party, dominated for most of the past two decades by the fractured alliance of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has moved on -- to a battle between two brothers, Ed and David Miliband.
The 40-year-old Ed’s surprise victory over his older brother in Labour’s leadership election Sept. 25 left the party’s annual conference in Manchester “numb,” according to lawmaker Richard Caborn. Today, David must decide whether to remain in frontline politics by being a candidate in a vote to choose Ed’s team of opposition spokesmen.
Supporters including former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling have urged David, 45, to stay on. Fresh in the minds of David and other party members, though, is the story of how things deteriorated between the last two men to fight for control of Labour. In his memoir, published this month, Blair described how his relationship with Brown went from “intimacy” to “difficult, then fraught and finally dangerous.”
“It risks being like Blair and Brown again, except this time they really are brothers,” said Steve Fielding, director of the Center for British Politics at Nottingham University. “If he stays, people will be looking for any nuance of difference between them. It might be for the best interests of everyone if David just walks away.”
‘His Decision’
In a series of radio and television appearances this morning, Ed said it was entirely David’s choice and refused to answer directly when questioned whether he already knew what his brother had decided.
“He’ll make a big contribution to politics in the future and people have different ways of doing it; either inside the shadow Cabinet or outside the shadow Cabinet, but I think that’s his decision,” Ed told BBC1 television. He said he didn’t think “it would cast a shadow” over Labour if David quit.
The difficulty is heightened by the nature of the victory by Ed, a close aide to Brown for five years. David, a protege of Blair, received more votes in two sections of Labour’s electoral college, from party members and lawmakers. Even so, Ed outscored him in the third section, the labor-union members, by just enough to give him 50.65 percent of the overall vote.
While David immediately urged the party to rally behind his brother, the conference was stunned.
‘Surreal Atmosphere’
“It was a surreal atmosphere,” Caborn, who had supported Ed, said yesterday. When David first appeared on the conference platform two days after the result, he was greeted by a standing ovation.
After an off-the-cuff address that drew on his planned victory speech, and in which he assured his listeners, “I will be fine,” those in the hall rose to their feet and cheered again as the two brothers embraced.
Earlier that day, Ed had insisted there was no rift with his brother.
“There is no psychodrama,” he told reporters. “David and I have been extremely close during this contest, before the contest and after this contest, and the graciousness he has shown since Saturday speaks volumes about him as a person.”
Backstage, according to the BBC, things were more difficult. David’s wife Louise was in tears, it reported, and the two men held a brief private meeting.
‘That’s a Lie’
It was in the same Manchester conference center exactly four years ago that Brown, having finally forced Blair to set a retirement date so he could succeed him as premier, protested his closeness to the other man, while Blair’s wife was heard to remark, “Well, that’s a lie.”
In his book, “A Journey,” Blair described the decline of his friendship with Brown, comparing them at the start to “lovers desperate to get to lovemaking” and then moving through the “shock and betrayal” Brown felt when Blair moved past him in 1994 to lead the party.
This year’s rift comes as the new leader has just three weeks to marshal his team and prepare a strategy for attacking Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats when it outlines on Oct. 20 how it will reduce spending to narrow a record budget deficit.
“There won’t be a unified view in the Tory high command about whether David Miliband’s departure is good or bad for the coalition,” former Conservative lawmaker Matthew Parris said in an interview in Manchester. “Some will see him as a strong and reassuring figure whose loss weakens the opposition, and they’ll be cheering. Others had been looking forward to a continuing psychodrama in which every twitch of David’s eyebrow signified a new Labour split. They’ll be sorry he’s gone.”
In the Bar
Ed began his keynote conference address yesterday with another tribute to his brother’s “graciousness” in defeat. That sentiment wasn’t shared by all David’s allies. While Ed’s staffers give high-fives and hugged each other in front of the stage as the speech finished, a small group of David’s had decided they couldn’t face going into the hall and watched on television instead from a nearby bar.
David left the conference yesterday after his brother’s speech. A lip reader watching him during the speech for ITV News caught his reaction as his brother described the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which David backed as a lawmaker before Ed had entered Parliament, as “wrong.”
“You voted for it; why are you clapping?” David asked Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, according to ITV, as his own hands stayed still. “I am clapping because, as you know, I am supporting him,” she replied.
To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in Manchester, England, or rhutton1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net.
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