What would you do if you were David Miliband?

Let’s leave to one side, at least for the purposes of this post, David Miliband’s record as foreign secretary in the last Labour government. It would take a heart of stone not to feel sympathy for him over the events of the last week.

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.

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17 Comments

  • The news media are always going to find something to go on about. It might as well be about brothers as anything else. This single issue shouldn’t hold David back. Instead he should think of the best interests of his party, his Brother and himself. If he has something to contribute, which I think he has, and if the party’s leadership want him on the team, then he should not rule himself out.

    That said, David is still young. There’s time for him to stand back for a while and wait for next time.

  • Terry Gilbert 29th Sep '10 - 11:00am

    Some top job in NATO or the EU surely awaits?

  • I can understand completely why, on a personal and political level, D Miliband woud want to leave front line politics. Whatever he does, and however he does it, would be analysed in extraordinarily minute detail for any sort of hint of a split with his brother. To me, the real question is not just whether he would quit the Shadow Cabinet, but whether he will actually leave the House of Commons too for the same reasons.

  • There’s been talk of him going off to some plum foreign role – IMF, EU, something like that. I don’t really see that happening, to be honest. Bagehot, over at his blog on the Economist website, has done a good job of explaining why the various positions one might expect him to go to aren’t available to him.

    What i imagine David Miliband finds particularly galling is that his brother advised him not to go for the Labour leadership against Brown and to wait until after the general election. Still, the whole series of events marks him out as really pretty weak and nowhere near ruthless enough. For all his empathetic pose – one i think he struck quite well during portions of his speech yesterday – Ed has displayed that ruthless streak. As someone pointed out a few days ago – i think it was Iain Martin – ruthlessness is a necessary but not sufficient quality for leadership.

  • Hank Quinlan 29th Sep '10 - 11:52am

    Why is such a big deal made of this? He can continue in the Shadow Cabinet, maybe even continue his role in the Shadow Foreign Office. Sure, he was meant to win but he didn’t as he lost to his younger brother… Life moves on. So what if it’s his brother in charge? People are obssessed with making this into a big deal.

  • Richard Hill 29th Sep '10 - 12:03pm

    If I were he I would go onto the back benches. From there I would undermine my brother and wait for his fall. Then I would step up, sware I was not involved, lie through my teeth and try to claim the leadership for myself. After all if I were he I would be Labour and that is what they do best.

  • Richard Hill 29th Sep '10 - 12:09pm

    Either that or join the Libdems

  • George W. Potter 29th Sep '10 - 12:12pm

    The best bit about this “brotherly infighting” nonsense is that it’s distracted the media from their “coalition splits” nonsense 🙂

  • Hank Quinlan 29th Sep '10 - 1:20pm

    Can’t say I feel particulary sorry for him, I couldn’t really care less if the truth be told.

    But I still don’t understand the thinking posted in the above thinking. I don’t feel sorry for people necessarily based on their incomes. I don’t automatically feel sorry for someone if their income is low, and I don’t automatically not feel sorry for someone because they happen to be rich. It’s not really got much to do with anything.

  • I think DM would not have taken it so hard if the result hadn’t been so closed and the nature of Ed’s victory in the affiliated section of the Electoral College. The turn out was abysmal, less than 9% of political levy trade unionists voted in Labour’s leadership election. Socialist society turn out was better, but groups like the Jewish Labour Movement/Poale Zion have memberships only in the hundreds. Ed was helped enormously by the fact that turnout in this section was very low and as we all know low turnout elections are won by the people getting their vote out. It was the three unions that endorsing Ed – UNITE, the GMB and UNISON, particularly UNITE, which made the difference. For of all the first preferences that were cast for the new leader in this section well over half were by members of UNITE.

  • Can’t help but think that Ed Miliband has been a bit of a prick, running while his brother was running. But back to the question, it looks as though David is gonna leave, and I can’t disagree with that assessment.

    I fear Labour might regret their decision, but lets see.

  • “Yet I find it hard not to regret that David Miliband… 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.”

    Stephen, I agree with your concluding thoughts, but doesn’t this contrast somewhat with your previous post on Ed Miliband’s voting record re: Iraq?

  • Matthew Huntbach 29th Sep '10 - 2:19pm

    What he should do is take on a job on government and do it. He’s lost an election. So what? It happens to us all. The idea that you should stomp off in a sulk if you didn’t get elected to the top job is ridiculous. We need a more collegiate style of government which is less leader oriented anyway, in which case it would be less of a big thing not getting that job.

  • South Shields voter 29th Sep '10 - 3:37pm

    Why is he waiting until 5pm? Problem is who would replace him at a time like no other when SSh requires a heavy hitter to represent our interests. Without naming names one potential candidate is ,sadly, already the victim of scurrilous, defamatory blogs on some rather unpleasant local sites.

  • Patrick Smith 29th Sep '10 - 6:05pm

    David Milliband was probably totally shocked as it suspends beleif that he waas `nyt elected as Labour Leader given that he gained the majority support in the PLP and Labour rank and file outside the there main Unions who were his oponents in the tight contest.

    I would say DM has done very well in his role as Foreign Secretary wher he demonstated real sang froid in the M

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