This has augmented the popular media’s predisposition towards arch cynicism and trenchant pessimism. Yet there is firm evidence to contradict their lazy assumptions. Just because Labour engaged in over a decade of dither and delay does not mean that a determined government, with the resolve of the House of Commons behind it, cannot succeed.

The Coalition Cabinet – both parties – is firmly behind the proposals, and the likes of Theresa May and Liam Fox have come out in force to speak up in their favour. Meanwhile senior Conservative figures in the Cabinet have always believed in reform: Ken Clarke and George Young (with whom I co-authored a report on reform ‘Breaking the Deadlock’ in 2005) are just two. Both George Osborne and David Cameron voted for an 80% elected House in 2007. No wonder the Prime Minister says, “I think that Parliament as a whole will be increased in terms of authority and respect. It is right to insert into the House of Lords some elected peers, so that we recognise that in the modern world, it is right to have two Chambers that are predominantly elected. That is the policy of the Government…to achieve what was in every manifesto: elections to the House of Lords”.

Even the recent debate in the House of Lords was not as bad as some of them have been. Of course, the self-satisfied arrogance of those who will not acknowledge the fatal weaknesses of the present House did dominate. It always will. But the perennial advocates of ‘expertise’ (much more chimerical in the Lords than many people realise, anyway) do not have a monopoly on wisdom. Former Labour Ministers Joyce Quin and Larry Whitty eschewed the divided, opportunistic line of their front bench to make passionate, cogent speeches in support of reform.

New Conservative recruit, and Tory Leader on Richmond Council, Nick True, questioned “the prevailing assumption that a committee of seven or nine people, chosen from the ranks of the great and good, should be charged by statute for all time with controlling the peopling of a whole House of Parliament.” He continued, “I cannot accept as readily as some that it is axiomatically wrong that 40 million people should have a say in who might come to this House, while it is right that seven people should determine in secret who comes and why”.

And in summing up the debate our own Tom McNally did a magnificent demolition job on those who would stand intractably in the way of reform. “it takes the breath away, he said, “when speaker after speaker, all of whom have been sent here for life, start lecturing us about the dangers of somebody being sent here for a limited 15-year term.”

A few days later the House of Commons debated reform. That morning, two articles appeared in the national press, one by Paddy Ashdown (see Times, 27th June: paywall) and one which I co-authored with a passionate pro-reformer in the Labour Party, Andrew Adonis. In the chamber, excellent Liberal Democrat speeches from Mark Williams, Dan Rogerson and Duncan Hames, supporting the case Nick Clegg made for reform were by no means the only positive signs. Would-be Labour Leader David Miliband said “The fundamental issue at stake is whether a stronger, more assertive, more legitimate House of Lords will be good for the governance of the country, not just in democratic theory, but in real life and practice. I believe that it would. I am a believer in strong government. I also believe that a strong governments get stronger and better when they are more accountable to a strong legislature…That is a recipe not for gridlock but for better government.”

Even Labour front-bencher Chris Bryant put his partisan disdain aside to support reform. The Conservative Party itself – unbeknown, I venture, to many of its own members – has been committed to a substantially elected Lords since its 2001 manifesto. Perhaps it’s little wonder then that recently elected Conservative MPs Thérèse Coffey and Laura Sandys made thoughtful speeches, advancing the cause of full democracy in our Parliament.

Perhaps the most notable Conservative of all is Mark Harper, the Minister responsible (save for the Deputy Prime Minister himself) for taking the legislation and the reform programme through. He is bright, well-briefed and articulate in equal measure and dealt with all the questions of detail brilliantly, while putting the remaining Commons dinosaurs in their place.

All in all, though the Labour Party is hopelessly divided (see an extraordinary spat between Sir Stuart Bell and his frontbench), and there are detractors in both other parties too, the political weather for progress is set fairer than at any point since the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act. So don’t listen to the doomsayers. A new chapter in this long story has begun, ending the decades-long hunt for an elusive, all-encompassing consensus. The Government’s solution may not delight any one single person in the reform movement, but it should please everybody who believes that the time has come to bring down the curtain on heredity and patronage as a source for seats in Parliament. It is time for merit and for mandates to have their day.

Paul Tyler is Liberal Democrat Constitutional Affairs Spokesperson in the Lords, and a former Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. Named links in the post above take you to the respective parliamentarians’ speeches on House of Lords reform during the 21st, 22nd and 27th of June 2011.

But maybe you think politics isn’t black and white, that there is good and bad in all the parties, and so working together is a good thing. Perhaps you think that the government should do what will work on law and order, rather than pander to the tabloid press, and that we shouldn’t run a deficit, to live better at our children’s expense.

In 1997, many took a good long look at the Labour party and liked what they saw: the party seemed to be committed to financial prudence, to reforming our outdated constitution and increasing personal liberty.

Today, the picture is very different.

Labour fuelled a consumer debt bubble, ran large deficits in a boom, and failed to regulate the banks properly. Its constitutional reform programme stalled after the first term, and it pandered to the tabloid press with ever more authoritarian measures.

After the last election, with 57 MPs, the Liberal Democrats had a limited hand. But unlike Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005, they have actually delivered a referendum on AV. Nick Clegg has recently announced progress towards an elected House of Lords. Lib Dem influence has allowed moderate Tories like Ken Clarke to introduce progressive policies that would have been unthinkable under either the Conservatives or Labour.

Opponents of the Lib Dems constantly refer to Tory policies which we’ve failed to stop, and to the austerity caused by the deficit. But considering the massive deficit, and that the Tories have over five times as many MPs, it’s amazing what has been achieved.

The Lib Dems are attacking the poverty trap, taking many of the low paid out of income tax and giving vital backing to IDS’s Universal Credit. We’ve restored the link between pensions and earnings, and we’re changing the funding of schools to give an incentive to take on pupils from poor backgrounds.

And that’s just the headline grabbing initiatives. By the end of this parliament, there will be a myriad of low profile policies in place which help the underprivileged, protect our freedoms and enhance our democracy. Behind the scenes, our MPs and peers are battling to limit Tory initiatives which are poorly thought out or which hurt the poor. They don’t win every battle, but they’ve had a lot of success.

Some Labour supporters pretend that the structural deficit can be fixed with cyclic growth. They argue that Labour cuts wouldn’t hurt, despite what we can see happening in local government.

But perhaps there are Labour members reading this article who know better. Maybe you voted for David Miliband, because you wanted a leader who would be more honest about the country’s financial problems. Perhaps you are appalled to see Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor.

Loyalty to friends and colleagues is commendable. But, if you believe both in social justice and financial responsibility, you have an alternative.

Joining the Lib Dems won’t be popular, and working to deal with the most serious peacetime deficit on record will be incredibly difficult. But anyone who joins out of both idealism and realism has a lot to contribute. And that is reward in itself.

Ed then unveiled his road to Damascus moment – on civil liberties, Iraq, banks, AV and justice reform. Spot on, Ed. His keynote speech said cuts were bad in general, but some were needed. But not which ones.

Or when. He implied he now thought the Lib Dems not quite as bad as when he campaigned for leader. You sort of felt the nice line he had about not being willing to work with Clegg in a coalition was being quietly shelved.

However, David Miliband had enough of the sniping, bullying and griping and walked out, quitting with a flourish. The press, who spent the week speculating about his future and generally egging him on to quit, then spun round and cried hypocritical crocodile tears when he finally walked.

So, Ed, is this really “Brothers in arms”? Brothers with qualms, more like.

So, what to make of this?

Firstly, now David has performed an exit stage right, what happens to his supporters, the rump of the Blairites? Will they slip quietly away? To paraphrase David Steel, are they about to return to their Islington trattoria and prepare for Tagliatelle? Where are the celebrated 1,000 new community organisers going? And for David, Mr Blair-lite himself, is he gone for good?

Secondly, was it just me or was there a faint echo of Michael Foot’s election as party leader ? Foot had an early “image makeover” where he was taken to C&A to swap his donkey jacket for a suit. Likewise Ed Miliband felt a little forced and sounded a little clunky in the GMEX hall. Timing is everything in politics. You just wonder whether Miliband is the wrong man at the wrong time. With the wrong vision?

Thirdly, at the centre of Ed Miliband’s narrative there is a paradox. The more Miliband tries to prove he is not New Labour the more he will be seen as Old Labour. He’s presenting himself as the new guy with a clean pair of hands. Yet he is very much the old guy, in the thick of New Labour’s rise and fall from the start. And in the background there is the “hand of Brown” reportedly anointing him and the Unions funding his campaign. A hand up and a hand out. As someone else from Islington once almost said.

So, I disagree with Ed Miliband’s assertion about his united and happy “Brothers in Arms”. What I saw this week in the Ed and David show wasn’t so much Labour in Dire Straits, it was more like Rolf Harris’s “Two Little Boys”*:

* With apologies to Hartlepool United.

Hamish Renton is a Liberal Democrat member in Torbay.

To lose the Labour leadership for which he fought long and hard is a tough thing. To lose it by a wafer-thin majority having won over, pretty convincingly, majorities of the party’s membership and his parliamentary colleagues is a tough thing. To lose it to his younger brother is a tough thing. To lose it and know that this may, just may, mark the end of his career in front-line politics is a tough thing. That’s a lot of tough things to ingest in a few days.

Over at Tory Radio, Jonathan Sheppard sums up Mr D. Miliband’s problem succinctly:

… the media is fascinated by having two brothers who actually have different views on things jostling within the same party. That is why David could never be Shadow Chancellor or even Shadow Foreign Secretary while his brother is leader. He would either have to agree with everything his brother said as leader, which frankly we know he does not, or fight his corner which would play right into the hands of the media. So David is damned to silence and collective responsibility, or he could speak out and perhaps do irreparable damage to his brother’s leadership. For that reason there is only one option. … David Miliband has to leave front line politics.

It’s hard to argue with the logic here. David Miliband has played as straight a bat as is humanly possible since Saturday’s announcement, making clear “this is Ed’s week”. Yet the media scrum which engulfs him at every turn points to the press’s fascination with the new psychodrama at the top of the Labour party.

Perhaps this would die down… perhaps the press would get bored, or perhaps the Milibands would find a way of working together tightly, seamlessly. More likely, every sentence would be parsed to find a cigarette paper’s gap between the two brothers’ public utterances, while any private disagreements would be repeated and if necessary embellished.

To an extent, Labour has only itself to blame: so hard did they push the line that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were always and everywhere in accord that now the truth of their internecine warfare has emerged it’s that much harder to claim this time around that all is sweetness and light.

Yet I find it hard not to regret that David Miliband — who, whatever his faults, is an intelligent, articulate politician — is likely now to find himself crowded out of making a contribution at the highest level as a result of our collective inability to allow politicians to disagree with each other, whether publicly or privately, while buckling down to the task at hand.

1. He’s going to have to work hard to prove he’s his own man. There’s no doubt the right-wing press and the Conservatives will do all they can to show Ed Miliband is little more than a puppet of the unions, given he won Labour’s electoral college thanks to the votes of trade unionists, having lost the vote among party members and MPs/MEPs. The pressure will be on for him to show he can stand up to union power or risk letting that impression be cemented among the public.

2. The blogs and pollsters called it right. Congratulations are due to Left Foot Forward and YouGov for managing, quite remarkably, accurately to predict the result of such a close contest in a complicated electoral system. Mike Smithson at PoliticalBetting stuck his neck out to tip Ed as a result. Indeed, it was ironic watching the BBC coverage this afternoon to hear Nick Robinson call the result for David Miliband at exactly the same time as LFF’s Will Straw tweeted that Ed was now a “dead cert”. It just showed how specialist knowledge of an organisation can often trump the broadcasters’ generalism.

3. Ed Miliband’s election could be good for progressive causes. Ed Miliband is a strong suppoter of the alternative vote: “Yes. I am in favour of AV and will campaign for it if there is a referendum.” He is also in favour of equal marriage for LGBT, a policy formally adopted by the Lib Dems this week: “I want to see heterosexual and same-sex partnerships put on an equal basis and a Labour Party that I lead will campaign to make gay marriage happen.” Not only is this right in principle, but the common cause it will forment across the currently bitter Lib/Lab divide might also usher in a slightly more grown-up discourse between the two parties.

4. David Miliband’s stock will now rise, which makes him a powerful figure within Labour. The older Miliband brother clearly won the leadership contest among Labour members, and among the ranks of MPs/MEPs; yet he lost. As the rapturous applause for Gordon Brown showed, Labour loves a dignified loser, and no-one can have failed to have been impressed by David’s poise as this personally devastating result was announced today. Moreover, he fought the campaign on his own terms: he could’ve tacked left, he could’ve made glib promises to the unions, yet he refused. It may have been bad politics, naive campaigning — but it will have earned him the respect of many in and beyond the Labour party.

5. Ed’s first priority now must be to come up with a credible economic policy. Much will hinge on his choice of shadow chancellor. If it’s David, then we can expect a more centrist Labour opposition, attacking specific Coalition measures but recognising Labour would’ve also had to make unpopular decisions. If it’s Ed Balls (or Yvette Cooper), it will suggest Ed’s strong backing for all-out attack on the Coalition in favour of avoiding cuts and a much slower deficit reduction plan.

But whichever of the Milibands wins through, here are three issues they will need urgently to address heading into the party’s Manchester conference…

1. How will Labour credibly oppose the Coalition cuts?

To date, Labour has skirted the issue, but the new leader will not be afforded that luxury any longer. Labour’s refusal to hold a comprehensive spending review before the election to avoid handing any hostages to fortune to the Lib Dems or Conservatives sort of worked as a tactic (Labour can pick and choose which cuts to oppose without the inconvenience of an audit trail showing what they’d have done in government) — but it’s not a strategy.

The timing of the economic and parliamentary cycles doesn’t help Labour. If the British economy avoids a double-dip recession, it is likely the economic outlook in four years time will be cheerier than today. The Coalition partners will be able to argue they took tough, decisive action: it hurt, but it worked. Labour will be left, more weakly, arguing they’d have done it just as well but with less pain, an unproveable claim that’s likely to work better with sympathisers than floating voters.

2. How can Labour win back the south?

There’s a fascinatng article by Lord (Giles) Radice at Policy Network pointing out Labour’s big issue with voters in the south:

In the south and the midlands, where general elections are determined, Labour holds just 49 out of 302 seats, and the swing against it was over 9% in many seats. … The party already has a dominant position in northern and Celtic Britain. Even if it does better at the next election, there are not enough seats in Wales, Scotland and Northern England for Labour to secure a convincing parliamentary majority. The key to recovery lies in the marginal constituencies of the south and the midlands.

Worryingly for Labour, voters in the areas it needs to win back are most likely to mis-trust the party. Labour risks mirroring the Tories problems from 1997 to 2005: retaining solid popularity among its core vote, but failing utterly to reach out beyond. The temptation for the new Labour leader will be to stick within the party’s comfort zone and assume the electoral pendulum will do the rest. That’s a highly risky strategy.

3. How will Labour restrain its anger and win back moderates?

The backlash aganst the Lib Dems among Labour party members is real; so therefore is the inclination of its leadership to reflect and project that anger. Ed Miliband has already done so, somewhat rashly pledging he would demand Nick Clegg’s resignation before contemplating a future Lib/Lab coalition. It’s an announcement that probably felt good, and doubtless won a round of applause within Labour ranks. But this kind of angry message is exactly what the new Labour leader will need to repudiate in order to reach out to moderates.

There is, I’m sure, much mileage to be gained by opposing the Coalition, and in particular by love-bombing current and former Lib Dem voters. That won’t be achieved, through, synthetic anger. Many voters are worried by the Coalition’s austerity measures; many Lib Dems, especially those who work in the public sector, worry the medicine is too harsh. But there is broad sympathy for the Coalition, and understanding that tough decisions would be implemented no matter who was in power. There is a tricky, balanced, nuanced tone of reason to be struck, and it’s going to be damned difficult for whichever Miliband wins today.

What do Voice reades think?

This Saturday we find out who will be the next Labour leader. The assumption is it will be neck-and-neck between the Brothers Miliband, David and Ed. David has been the favourite throughout the summer-long contest, but in the last few weeks theres been a sense that the race has tightened with many folk now tipping Ed to sneak victory.

We asked our sample of Lib Dem party members two questions about the Labour leadership; two questions which we last asked at the end of May. It’s interesting to see how views have changed in the past few months.

First, we asked: Putting aside your Lib Dem allegiance who do you think would make the best Labour leader from the Labour party’s own point of view? (Figures from May in brackets.)

• 38% (17%) – David Miliband
• 31% (37%) – Ed Miliband
• 14% (9%) – Andy Burnham
• 10% (25%) – Diane Abbott
• 5% (3%) – Ed Balls

(Excluding Don’t know / No opinion = 13% (24%).)

As you can see, there’s been a heck of a turnaround among Lib Dem members in perceptions of the Labour leadership hopefuls. Back in May, party members saw Ed Miliband as the best potential leader for Labour, with Diane Abbott in a strong second place, and David Miliband languishing in a distant third place, on just 17%.

Spool forward four months, and it’s David Miliband who is now reckoned by Lib Dem members to be the best choice for the Labour party: indeed, he’s doubled his ratings. To be fair to Ed, though suport for him is lower, he’s still a strong second. But it’s Diane Abbott whose support among Lib Dems appears to have collapsed, down from 25% to just 10%. Though she has taken a strong and principled line on civil liberties, her campaign has been lacklustre, with little of originality to say about Labour’s future. Indeed, it’s Ed Balls who has made the running as the left-leaning candidate with most to say on the biggest issue of them all, the economy.

Next we asked: And which of the following declared Labour leadership contenders do you think would be to the best political advantage of the Lib Dems? (Figures from May in brackets.)

• 38% (47%) – Ed Balls
• 37% (22%) – Diane Abbott
• 10% (5%) – Ed Miliband
• 8% (6%) – David Miliband
• 7% (6%) – Andy Burnham

(Excluding Don’t know / No opinion = 12% (24%).)

Put bluntly, this question asks, ‘Who do you think would make the worst Labour leader?’ Back in May, Ed Balls was the runaway winner with 47% of the vote. However, his lively campaign appears to have — if not won Lib Dems over — at least shown that the combative Mr Balls could pose a threat to the party if he were elected. That said, he still tops our poll, which tells its own story about his perceived credibility. Quite simply he’s seen as a tribalist bully, an unattractive combination which party members feel will play badly with the wider public.

Again, it’s Diane Abbott who appears to have lost out most during the campaign, with many more Lib Dems now perceiving her as the weakest potential Labour leader, up from 22% to 37%. As in May, neither of the Milibands, nor Andy Burnham, are seen to be much to the political advantage of the Lib Dems: to damn them with faint praise, they are seen as safe pairs of hands.

You can catch up with the results of all our previous party members’ surveys by clicking here.

According to pollster YouGov, Ed Miliband is set to sneak victory by the closest of margins after second preferences are taken into account; though the poll didn’t appear to take into account the votes of MPs and MEPs who control one-third of Labour’s electoral college. This is not, after all, a party which believes all votes should be equal, whether in Parliamentary constituencies or in their own leadership race.

I pinned my colours to the mast a couple of weeks ago, saying I thought that Labour would be best-placed choosing David Miliband as their leader: he’s the only one of the five candidates who has the necessary credibility.

However, in common with most Lib Dems I know, when I took part in the online Vote Match survey, I learned that Diane Abbott is actually if narrowly closer to my views on a range of issues than the other Labour contenders. This is probably not that surprising: back in June, the Voice noted that Diane is the most liberal of the five.

We polled Lib Dem members on their views of who would make the best Labour leader at the end of May, when the contest has barely begun. At the time, Ed Miliband was widely regarded as the ‘one to watch’. We’ll shortly be asking party members again to see if views have altered over the summer.

But in the meantime, let’s open it out to the thread: if you were a Labour party member — or are a trade unionist or other affiliated association member who actually does have a vote — who would you vote for to be the party’s next leader? And why?

Over to you…

How to interpret this? Is Dave’s backing of David a cunning bluff: the Tory leader backing the most New Labour-identified candidate to put Labour members off backing him? Or could it be an even cunninger double bluff: the Tory leader, knowing his endorsement could be read as a bluff, backing the most media-awkward candidate in the hope Labour members will vote for Mili-D to spite the Tories? Or could it be the cunningest of triple bluffs: etc, etc?

On this occasion, I incline to the simplest reading: that David Miliband genuinely is indeed the Labour leader the Conservatives – and indeed the Lib Dems – should most fear. It’s not hard to see why.

Mili-D started with both the benefits and dis-benefits that comes with being the front-runner: on the plus side, his campaign is well-financed, enabling him to mail-shot Labour members early in the campaign; on the downside, he is first in the line of fire from his four opponents, and has to resist the urge to play a safety first campaign which allows him to be portrayed as complacent.

But Mili-D’s campaign has impressed me. It has been disciplined (contrast it with Brother Ed’s rather silly attempt to spread the rumour that Charles Kennedy was about to defect), but he has risked some original ideas – such as training 1,000 Labour activists to become ‘community leaders’ – and delivered a thoughtful keynote lecture arguing that Labour needs to re-discover its mutualist roots, rather than assuming the state must always be the answer to any societal problem.

Ed Miliband has proved the big disappointment of the campaign. Initially, his was the candidacy which most worried me from a selfish Lib Dem perspective; Lib Dem Voice readers also seemed to agree he was the candidate with the best chance to ‘do a Cameron’ – as brainy as his brother, but a lot less geeky-seeming.

Yet his campaign has been uninspiring, lacklustre and nervy. His ‘Letter to Lib Dems‘ highlights one of his strategic errors: addressing voters according to tribal labels, rather than opening a conversation with all voters (including those who voted Conservative this time). And it’s hard to see today’s attempted blackmail by the Mili-E-supporting GMB union – threatening to withdraw its party funding unless their anointed candidate wins – proving helpful to him: rather it helps define him as the puppet of the trade unions.

We need not detain ourselves with any of Ed Balls, Andy Burnham or Diane Abbott: each in their different ways would be dream Labour leaders from a narrow Lib Dem perspective. (There is, by the way, a rather fascinating Q&A with all the candidates in today’s Independent: it perhaps is more revealing than might have been expected. Mr Burnham clearly tries to present himself, as he has throughout the campaign, as Mr Ordinary: his gauche, jarring answers are anything but.)

A couple of months ago, I switched on the radio to hear a politician whose voice I coudn’t immediately place talking about Gaza: he was eloquent, sensible and had gravitas. I suddenly realised – to my genuine surprise – it was David Miliband. He’s no Clegg or Cameron, still less a Tony Blair: he is not a great communicator, and it is hard to see him connecting with Labour’s core voters. But out of all the candidates he is the one it’s possible to imagine standing on the steps of Number 10 as a credible Labour Prime Minister.

But is a new Prime Minister what Labour party members actually want to vote for at the moment? Or will they be more comfortable choosing the candidate – Mili-E, for example – who will make them feel great about remining in opposition? Their choice of leader is going to tell us a lot about Labour’s appetite for an early return to government.

Then, however, I got to this part:

Read your guests a page about David Miliband. But remember, as it’s in the first person, pretend that these are actually your thoughts!

Oops.

Update: Um, got that story a bit wrong as the text quoted isn’t from the Miliband campaign guide itself but rather TP’s commentary on the suggested comments written out for people in the first person. Providing verbatim comments written as ‘I think…’ is also fair game for some poking fun, but not quite in the same league as what I’d originally said. Also changed the headline to reflect this.

Owners of homes worth more than £2m should pay an annual “mansion tax” to help the poor, Labour leadership contender David Miliband said today. The shadow foreign secretary said the levy would raise £1.7bn to restore housing benefit for the least well-off.

The proposal – outlined in an interview with the Evening Standard – appears designed to drive a wedge between the coalition partners, as well as appealing to Labour grassroots.

Business secretary, Vince Cable, put the idea in the Liberal Democrat general election manifesto – but it was lost during negotiations with the Tories. Under the plan, owners would have to pay a 1% levy on a property’s value above £2m.

Actually Mr Miliband has many times said he supports the mansion tax, including in The Guardian six weeks ago: “We should not be afraid of a mansion tax on £2m houses”. His support is at variance with Labour’s response at the time, with Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Sarah McCarthy-Fry denouncing the proposal as a “muddle [that] is typical of the Lib Dems”.

The mansion tax of course remains Lib Dem policy – a fact missed today by the Daily Mail which inaccurately suggests “it was dropped before the election following an internal party revolt.” Erm, not exactly. Good old Daily Fail.

The attraction of the idea for Mr Miliband is clear. It not only positions him slightly to the centre-left at a time when his brother, Ed, is actively courting the second preferences of Ed Balls and Diane Abbott, also both seen as candidates of the left (somewhat ludicrously in Mr Balls’ case). But it also seeks to drive a wedge between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives, who demanded the policy be dropped during the coalition negotiations.

In the longer-term, of course, Mr Miliband’s strategy is clear enough: to occupy the progressive centre of British politics, with the simultaneous aim of weakening the Coalition partnership in Parliament and appealing to disaffected Lib Dem voters in the country.

The strategy is easy to identify. The question for Lib Dems is how we deal with it.

Now the BBC reports:

David Cameron will campaign against changing the voting system, his spokesman said, in a referendum expected next May.

His spokesman said the PM would be asked his view and “clearly his view is that he’s not in favour of it”.

There’s been some ambiguity about whether Cameron being against AV constitutes him campaigning against the reform – the Prime Minister’s own spokesman doesn’t yet seem sure:

He will be campaigning against AV. I can’t predict precisely how the campaign will unfold but clearly he is going to be asked his views during that campaign and he will make them clear.

His view is that he is not in favour of it.

Last month Mr Cameron said that his role in the “no” campaign would not be an active one: “I will have other things to do as well,” he said.

Whilst the Tories supported the principle of the referendum as part of the coalition agreement, this was “without prejudice to the positions parties will take during such a referendum.” Therefore the Tories are free to campaign against the outcome – AV- that their coalition partners prefer.

It seems that David Cameron’s word is his campaign, leaving the press and his party to do the rest.

I think that it’s important that we move to a system where every Member of Parliament has at least 50 per cent of the vote of their constituents.”

It’s a welcome move. Although the Labour manifesto promised a referendum on the alternative vote, it was conceivable they would jettison the pledge; after all, Labour has already reneged on its manifesto commitment to fixed-term parliaments. So Mr (D) Miliband’s endorsement is a welcome move.

It also increases the pressure on David Cameron to confirm what role, if any, he will play in the referendum campaign. The Tory right-wing – mainly opposed to voting reform – will want their party leader to side with them. But Mr Cameron may well not wish to be out-flanked as a reformer by both Nick Clegg and (if elected) by Mr Miliband.

Moreover, what argument will Mr Cameorn level against the alternative vote? As I noted last month:

The principal argument Cameron has used against AV in the past is that it leads to weak, unstable government – which is a tricky case to argue while simultaneously leading a coalition government which you’re presenting as the face of ‘new politics’.

And of course Daniel Finkelstein floated the idea this week in The Times that the alternative vote would enable the coalition government to square the circle of how they fight the next election against each other while simultaneously defending their joint legacy: by urging their party supporters to cast their second preference for their coalition partner.

I think it’s highly unlikely Nick Clegg would attempt to tell potential Lib Dem voters to place the Tories second – what, after all, would be in it for the Lib Dems? We’ve already hitched our star to the Tories for the next five years, so why would we want to promise to renew the deal before the electorate has even spoken?

But I can see the attraction to David Cameron: it would be the ultimate liberal love-bomb.

If next May’s referendum is won, a smart Labour leader will spend the next four years ensuring that Lib Dem voters are prepared to place Labour second, and not the Tories. Tribal Labour supporters may be enjoying shouting ‘betrayal’ at the Lib Dems at every opportunity, but it’s a sure-fire way of driving away those moderate centrist voters which every party needs to woo.

Diane Abbott
Ed Balls
Andy Burnham
David Miliband
Ed Miliband

The response from all quarters about the list first that its very ‘samey’, with much said about tokenism and the inclusion of Diane Abbott, not because she’s black or a woman but because she represents the old left of the party. That got me to thinking about who would be the best from a Lib Dem point of view.

A Leftie

Dianne Abbott is the only real left leaning candidate. A Labour party under her ministrations would either regain its left leanings or it would lead to the breaking of the party into two and a creating of Nu-Labour and Socialist Labour parties. She’s been a committed member of CND and described herself has being hard-left in a piece on Michael Foot. Over the last few years she’s campaign on civil liberties, right to trial and extraordinary rendition to the point where she argued in the House of Commons with David Miliband.

Whether Labour splits or just lurches it should end in benefits for the Lib Dems. A left leaning Labour party will loose some of more middle ground supporters (hopefully to the Lib Dems) but it would be a different voice that would be easy to challenge on the ground. A split would leave four parties fighting for seats in parts of the country and (hopefully) pave the way for PR as politicians begin to realise there is more than just a simple Red/Blue split in the country.

A Centerist

The other four candidates all seem to have come from the same mould, and would be a case of more of the same unless they can find something that is different about them. I’ve tried but, to be honest, I’m struggling to find something that actually sets them apart from each other.

Ed and David Milliband and Andy Burnham all come from the post Blair/Brown Primrose Hill Gang, believing more in Social Democracy that the traditional routes of the Labour Party whilst Ed Balls is a Fabian with a strong economic reform agenda.

Ed Balls has managed to upset many parents (especially home educators) with his continued mission to regulate the education of children – even when the evidence is counter to the decisions being made, especially with some of the interpretations on the figures being supplied. If elected to leader many suspect that he would follow Gordon Brown approach and promote further nannying by the state.

Andy Burnham is different from the rest in that he’s representing his local area and has a strong local connection to the north. Politically he’s been in favour of increased regulation in many areas but has displayed the greatest right leaning of the candidates by advocating that the tax system recognises marriage and in his responses to the They Work for You survey prior to the election.

Ed Miliband emerged from the expenses scandal as a saint and is (arguably) the most likely winner following his support from Neil Kinnock and Tony Benn. However, some see him as a political lightweight that has yet to have much responsibility and that his time is not now but after whoever wins this time.

David Miliband, Ed’s older brother, would seem the most natural next leader, providing a ‘change’ from Brown and Blair. But some within the party seem him as upstart following his implied challenge to Brown in 2008. In his time at the Foreign Office he has made a few mistakes, notably related to terrorism and its justification during a Radio 4 documentary.

From a Lib Dem point of view it is the least attractive option as politics will become ‘more of the same’ and we could lose some of our left to support to a revitalized Labour (that’s predicated on the revitalisation of course).

The five candidates for the Labour leadership are now official – so we can now see how their voting record compares, and name the contender who is, officially, the most liberal potential Labour leader …

(NB: if you click on their name you can see how their voting record stacks up).

1. Diane Abbott.

36% authoritarian, 64% liberal.

2. David Miliband.

62% authoritarian, 38% liberal.

3. Ed Miliband.

76% authoritarian, 24% liberal.

=4. Andy Burnham.

83% authoritarian, 17% liberal.

=4. Ed Balls.

83% authoritarian, 17% liberal.

Diane Abbott is the most liberal of the Labour leadership candidates – as a backbencher, of course, she did have the freedom the other candidates lacked to vote against the party whip more regularly. Nonetheless, there were plenty of other Labour backbenchers who willingly voted for their Government’s increasingly authoritarian measures – and in an inner-city constituency such as Diane’s it might have been the easy choice, too. So kudos to her for sticking by her principles.

What’s perhaps surprising is that there is quite a difference between the five candidates. Diane is the only who emerges as more liberal than she is authoritarian. But David Miliband, and to a lesser extent his brother Ed, are markedly less authoritarian than their fellow male rivals, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls. (Though in David’s case at least this might be the result of his absence from key votes while serving as Foreign Secretary).

I can understand the principle behind the campaign, of course. Frankly, if I were in the shoes of a Labour member (as I was for a number of years), I would welcome a wider choice than the two Eds and two Milibands on offer.

But the idea that MPs should nominate a rival who otherwise cannot attract sufficient support strikes me as the most patronising tokenism imaginable.

Labour requires each contender to obtain nominations from 12.5% of MPs, which equates to 33 MPs. 33 out of a total nominating electorate of 257 really isn’t that many. As Tom Harris has pointedly remarked, with some justice, if the candidates “can’t secure the support of one in eight Labour colleagues, then on what basis can they claim to provide leadership for their party?”

As it happens, the nomination process for Labour leader isn’t so different to that which exists in the Lib Dems. While Labour requires nominations from 12.5% of MPs, the Lib Dems require 10% of MPs to nominate our candidates. However, as a party less hidebound by hierarchy, and less establishment than Labour, the Lib Dems also require that any candidate obtain the support of at least 200 party members from at least 20 different local parties.

In fact, the Lib Dems did, in our 2006 leadership election, allow our MPs to nominate more than one candidate – a loophole which Labour would appear to be keen to borrow. It invited ridicule, and the party rightly decided to ditch this provision by the time of our 2007 leadership election, allowing MPs to nominate only one candidate each for leader.

I have to ask those Labour bloggers calling for this special dispensation: what kind of party, what kind of candidate, would want a pity nomination?

Surely every Labour MP owes it to their own reputation, as well as to their party’s, to ensure the MPs nominated are those they feel to be best suited to the task of leading Labour?

I don’t suppose quoting Edmund Burke will win over those on the left, but, still, his words ring true, especially when those 90 Labour MPs yet to nominate come to consider the personal qualities necessary for the post of leader:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Labour members do, I feel, deserve a better, broader choice than the three candidates currently on offer. (Just as, incidentally, Lib Dem members deserved a better, broader choice than Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne in 2007).

But the idea that Labour MPs should feel emotionally blackmailed into nominating a colleague they feel is utterly unsuited to, and unsuitable for, the role of leader is ridiculous – even if it does offer the illusion of “the widest possible field”.

David Miliband’s populist pandering – suggesting he would use his own personal nomination to help a rival secure the necessary 33 MPs – is the kind of emetic posturing which displays, yet again, Labour’s unappealing habit of top-down patronage.

Labour MPs should do the right thing. It’s simple really: nominate the person they feel would do the best job of leading the party. You really do have to question the motives of anyone who would ask them to do anything other than that.

LDV asked: Putting aside your Lib Dem allegiance who do you think would make the best Labour leader?

Here’s what you said:

37% – Ed Miliband
25% – Diane Abbott
17% – David Miliband
9% – Andy Burnham
8% – John McDonnell
3% – Ed Balls
(Excluding Don’t know / No opinion = 24%)

Though David leads many of the polls still, it’s brother Ed who has attracted most of the early smart money, being just as smart but a little less ‘wonkish’.

More surprising, perhaps, is the strong showing of Diane Abbott. Lib Dem party members are not out-of-step in naming her among their top choices as Labour leader: the public, too, (including Lib Dem voters) are also intrigued by the thought of the only female candidate in the race emerging as leader, according to one recent poll.

Interestingly, there was a small-but-noticeable write-in campaign for three candidates who have ruled themselves out: Alan Johnson, Jon Cruddas and John Denham. And a larger write-in campaign for the option, ‘None of the above’.

LDV then asked: And which of the following declared Labour leaders would be to the best political advantage of the Lib Dems?

47% – Ed Balls
22% – Diane Abbott
16% – John McDonnell
6% – David Miliband
5% – Ed Miliband
5% – Andy Burnham
(Excluding Don’t know / No opinion = 20%)

Ed Balls was an overwhelming winner, pointing to the fundamental flaw in his candidacy: the petty partisan tribalism which has earned him admirers within the Labour party repels him from most people beyond the Labour party.

Diane Abbott’s second place in this category, too, points to her ‘Marmite’ candidacy: for every person who likes her there is an equal and opposite reaction against her. Andy Burnham is narrowly judged the least advantageous leader for the Lib Dems – perhaps because his candidacy is, so far, pretty anonymous, and likely to end soon, unless he can scrape together the necessary MP nominations.

Except, of course, in the topsy turvey political days that we live it was a Labour government that was accused and it is now a Conservative foreign secretary, in a Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition, announcing plans for the judicial inquiry.

The inquiry itself is extremely welcome, particularly given the severity of some of the allegations that have been made. It will also come with an interesting political twist because one of the Foreign Secretaries whose record will be under scrutiny is that of Labour leadership contender David Miliband.

I’ve known for David Miliband for twenty years, I’ve known Ed Balls for twenty years, but I don’t know what they stand for.

However, one of them is not what it seems: [click on image to enlarge it]

It looks exactly like David Miliband’s personal website, http://www.davidmiliband.info, right down to the photo slideshow, and work has clearly gone into making it come out well in Google search results (known as Search Engine Optimisation).

If you Google “Miliband for Leader” the seventh result on the first page is http://www.milibandforleader.co.uk.

The giveaways are the typo in the copy (“re-elcted”) but more important (and potentially damaging) is the text on the right which criticises Gordon Brown:

I will be looking to run as Leader of the Labour party once Gordon has finally accepted that he has lost the Election and can no longer cling onto power. He will go down as the only British Prime Minster to have ruled for 13 years having never been elected by the people. I will stand as the candidate for change in New New Labour.

Compare it with David Miliband’s real website:

…and the holding page for his campaign website, “New site to be launched next week.”

Not a spoof, but a convincing copy. What can be done about such websites, and will we be seeing more of them in politics?