Ed Miliband UK Labour Leader

Written By: - Date published: 10:29 pm, September 26th, 2010 - 11 comments
Categories: uk politics - Tags: , ,

Ed Miliband has narrowly beaten his brother David to become the new leader of Labour in the UK.

It was a very tight race – Ed only got to the required 50 % and indeed only surpassed David in votes for the first time after 4th preferences were counted – and the other 3 candidates fully eliminated.

First to go was Diane Abbott, the only backbencher, who was from the left of the party and the union’s choice.  Next was Andy Burnham, the Cambridge graduate1.  Last was Ed Balls, Gordon Brown’s right hand man.

David Miliband was Foreign Secretary, and is currently Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesman – he will no doubt continue a high profile role under his brother’s leadership; perhaps Shadow Chancellor (finance spokesman).

The UK Tories are already rolling out the lines of how they ‘fear a lurch to the left’ and how Ed Miliband is ‘in the pockets of the unions’.  Those lines will no doubt get tired very quickly, as he’s no Michael Foot.  At any rate, following his progress should be interesting – these are generally politically interesting times in the UK, with the Tory-Liberal coalition government, economic woes etc.

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1All but 2 UK Prime Ministers since the Second World War went to Oxford.  The 2 exceptions, Winston Churchill and John Major, didn’t go to university at all.  The other UK Labour leadership candidates were all Oxford educated.

11 comments on “Ed Miliband UK Labour Leader ”

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  1. Jeremy Harris 1
    26 September 2010 at 11:41 pm

    All but 2 UK Prime Ministers since the Second World War went to Oxford.

    I think that shows just how shit their “democracy” is…

    The seriously need to get rid of the house of lords and FPP asap…

    • RobertM 1.1
      6 October 2010 at 5:32 pm

      So have many Australian PM’s and leaders. Fraser, Gorton, Hawke, Beazley and Abbott. The interesting thing is New Zealanders with an Oxford background tend not to shine in kiwi society or politics or even academia. Think David Kirk or Laidlaw. Possibly after the heights of Oxford or Cambridge it is not possible to be sufficiently downwardly mobile to adapt to NZ society.
      The idea of elite rule let alone elite inheritence of talent and leadership ability seems offensive to NZ’s democratic society. And it is not to our benefit.

  2. prism 2
    27 September 2010 at 9:11 am

    The Guardian journo on Radionz this am said that Ed hadn’t told David that he was going for the PM position, and if David had known he might have chosen to go for a high-powered Euro position he was looking at. Ed sounds like a tricky dicky. The assessment is that he can’t stick too close to the unions as that would make him unpopular and every work argument and strike would be sheeted home to him.

    Your school counts for a lot it seems! I have heard that French politicians are picked from a bunch who all attended the Sorbonne or somewhere ‘politically correct’.

  3. outofbed 3
    27 September 2010 at 11:27 am

    Interesting from the Guardian about the win

    Youth is a good weapon. In the hall are visitors from Sweden, bringing warnings from their recent social democratic defeat. Why did they lose an unprecedented second election? Because the same old ex-ministerial faces who lost last time offered the same old policies, no change.

    I think there is a strong message there for NZ Labour

  4. Bill 4
    27 September 2010 at 11:36 am

    Given that many contributors here (myself included) would like to see the NZ Labour Party move to the left I’ve found some of the analysis around the UK Labour Party a bit disquieting. eg Who’d have thought that a supposed slight leftwards shift by Brown was the reason for the Tories getting in?

    On the basis that the NZ Labour Party was more or less a clone of the UK Labour Party in terms of ‘third way’ nonsense and such like, I find it odd that any shift to the left by the UK Labour Party is being touted by commentators there as political suicide and that Miliband has found it necessary to announce that he will not be moving to the left.

    Given that the party has drifted to he right for donkeys years, it should be no surprise that a left leaning leadership candidate would not gain the majority of votes from MPs. (The left was exorcised from the party years ago) It’s not even surprising that a moderately left leaning candidate would fail to gain a majority among party members either as (presumably) left leaning activists would have bailed during those years.

    That he came close in those two unsympathetic constituencies hopefully indicates the beginning of the death throes for the nonsense right wing tosh that ‘Labour by name only parties’ of the Anglo-Saxon world have subjected us to these past decades.

    Thank god the unions were able to push Miliband over the line. Not a victory for the left in my book so much as less of a defeat. And perhaps a reason for some modicum of hope moving forward.

    • Pascal's bookie 4.1
      27 September 2010 at 4:17 pm

      Here ya Bill.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NASicF9yTI&feature=geosearch

      Steve Earle on the reelection of Clinton in 96.

      It’s Christmastime in Washington
      The Democrats rehearse
      Gettin’ into gear for four more years of
      Things not gettin’ worse
      The Republicans drink whiskey neat
      And thank their lucky stars
      said, ‘He cannot seek another term
      They’ll be no more FDRs’
      I sat home in Tennessee
      Staring at the screen
      an uneasy feeling in my chest
      And wonderin’ what it means

    • millsy 4.2
      28 September 2010 at 8:15 pm

      If a left wing party cannot feel it has to stick to the core values and policies that it was founded upon, then it might as well close down.

      I always felt that Tony Blair was in the wrong party. He would have made a great* Tory PM.

      * as in more suited to them

  5. Juan Manuel Santos 5
    27 September 2010 at 10:36 pm

    Good piece, but Diane Abbot was not the unions’ choice. Ed Miliband won most of the union endorsements.

  6. RobertM 6
    6 October 2010 at 5:36 pm

    Ed Miliband should be given a chance. Blairs adoration of Margaret Thatcher, his grovelling to to the Murdoch Press and his refusal to touch such third rail areas as NHS reform, all made Blair offensive and pretty much on the level of Paul Henry.

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