The Tories will go hard on Ed Miliband being the prisoner of the trade unions. He'll be watched like a hawk after a result that delivered him victory only thanks to the trade union section.

<snip>

I spoke to Derek Simpson of Unite and he insisted the leadership hadn't been leaning on its members, but with turnout that low they would've been mainly counting votes from the most highly politicised who tend to think like the union leaderships they elect. That low turnout probably did for David Miliband.

So, in the end, it was the unions what won it. David Miliband's refusal to pander to the left, either by attacking New Labour's record or hinting he wanted to spend more time wooing the Labour base, cost him dear.

The reasons for doing this seem noble enough. It was a principled stand, and he always wanted to frame himself as the most likely to win a general election. In doing so, he made it hard to win the contest to lead his party.

On reflection, after refusing those opportunities to topple Gordon Brown, it was another sign he lacked the ruthlessness to be PM.

On Saturday, David Cameron won the next general election. As Ann Black, the chairwoman of Labour's National Executive Committee, announced the results of the fourth round of the contest and it became clear that Ed Miliband had won by the narrowest of margins (50.65 per cent compared to his brother David's 49.35 per cent), a collective sigh of relief rippled through the ranks of the Coalition. Could Labour truly have hurled itself so gormlessly into the abyss, or, more accurately, to the sidelines? Could the party that governed for 13 years so lazily settle now for being soothed rather than being challenged? Could it really have chosen the wrong Miliband? Yes, it could.

If you'd like your child to be a Labour politician when he/she grows up, don't give them a name that rhymes with 'red'. Press love that.

Cameron and now Miliband have been elected leaders in their second Parliament. Clegg was elected during his first term (although he had been an MEP before that). Longer apprenticeships used to be required.

Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan and Foot were all first elected to Parliament in 1945. They became Labour leader in 1955, 1963, 1976 and 1980 respectively. Kinnock and Smith were first MPs in 1970 and leaders in 1983 and 1992. Blair and Brown arrived at Westminster in 1983 and became leaders in 1994 and 2007.

Ed Miliband, MP from 2005 and now leader in 2010, has less prior Parliamentary experience than any of his post First World War predecessors.

I do not know if Miliband is going to be a good leader. He seemed to me to be the best of an appallingly low quality field. Like Cameron before him, we will only find out how good he is over time - he has not done enough before becoming leader to enable me to hazard a guess.

As the son of a North London Marxist intellectual, you might expect Ed Miliband to have a less than conventional approach to traditional family values.

And the birth certificate of his 15-month-old son, Daniel, would appear to bear this out, as it includes everything except any mention of the boy's proud father.

Although the section headed `Father' is blank, Daniel's mother Justine Thornton is named, along with her Manchester birthplace and profession, barrister.

MPs who supported David Miliband warned that Ed Miliband's reliance on the union vote was a "disaster" for the party - leaving it open to charges that its leader would be in the pocket of its leftwing paymasters, and wide open to attack from the Tories and rightwing elements in the media.

Was it not a problem that NuLab was in the pocket of its rightwing paymasters?

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan

The Labour leadership was perhaps the least polled recent party leadership contest, but projections that the race looked neck-and-neck, and that Ed Miliband might just prevail were borne out in the result.

However, analysis of the final results (full details) present the intriguing theory - an unprovable hypothesis perhaps - that Parliamentary reactions to the YouGov polling of the race might just have had a decisive influence on the knife-edge outcome.

Labour's leadership race There are great opportunities for whoever takes the crown. The party does not need a huge leap in parliamentary seats to win the next election. Polls already put it close to the Tories--before its new leader is unveiled and the coalition's austerity drive bites. Even if no candidate matches David Cameron, the prime minister, as a political performer, Labour could have a stronger front-bench team than the coalition. They have many politicians with the profile cabinet experience bestows, but who are still young enough to represent the future.

But daunting challenges await the new boss too. Labour may be rising in the polls precisely because it is leaderless: voters are not being asked to choose between the government and a specific, perhaps less attractive, alternative; the Tories do not have an enemy to attack. (Having once feared Ed Miliband more than his brother, they now see David as the bigger threat.)

The race has pointed up serious internal problems too. On tax-and-spend, many in the party--including many unions, who help to fund it--are to the left of even the two Eds, and hope vaguely that tax increases on the rich can close the deficit. Reforming the state is just as contentious. Many at the top of the party know that opposing government plans to expand choice in areas such as education and policing could make them look like enemies of the voters. But there is intense hostility to those ideas among the many public-sector workers who support Labour.

These splits matter. Unless someone wins a crushing victory (unlikely), power will be spread among an oligopoly of shadow-cabinet big beasts and union leaders. That could make for a fractious party.

Ed Miliband has insisted Labour will not "lurch to the left" under his leadership and he will not be in thrall to the trade unions, despite winning with the backing of their members.

"I'm my own man," the new Labour leader told BBC One's Andrew Marr show.

He said he was on the centre ground of politics and rejected the nickname "Red Ed" as "rubbish".

Thank goodness for that. And to think we were all worried there was going to be a lurch towards Socialism.

The next year is going to be very interesting indeed.

It's not so much the Unions which are potentially important now, as their membership.

I've been saying on Labour List for some time - Unions - the Big Society is You - that the 'Big Society' represents the greatest opportunity for Labour and the Unions in 100 years.

I read a good line the other day to the effect that the 19th century was the century of Liberty; the 20th century that of equality; and that the 21st century will be the century of Fraternity - to which I would add Solidarity and Equity.

Every day that goes by confirms my (no doubt utopian) view that the networked, decentralised and collaborative society now emerging will be defined by Fraternity.

Ed Miliband may just have sufficient flexibility of mind to grok this and develop it.

The starting point for policy should be to address the deficit by cutting 'unproductive' financing costs, rather than the productive people in the public and private sectors who genuinely create value rather than extract it.

I'm making a presentation next month re a 'debt/equity swap' to the top 25 UK housing associations. To refinance existing debt with quasi-equity in 'Rental Pools' would release literally billions of £ in funding, simply by stripping out debt repayments and compound interest.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

There is a feeling on the right that with the election of Ed Miliband it is back to the good old days. The thinking goes that Labour have elected a lefty as leader and it is time "to do `em over just like we did back in the day".

But this is overly-simplistic. First of all, Ed Miliband is certainly to the left of Tony Blair but he's nowhere near as far left, compared to the public, as Michael Foot or Tony Benn, or anyone like that. Second, the right in the `80s had three fronts on which to attack left-wing politicians: economics, culture and national defence. Now, it only really has one.

EdMili @ PLP reception, greeting MPs lined up to the right of him: "I want to apologise for walking in + lurching to the right"

Vote Ed be dead, vote Andy be dandy.

Ed Miliband would be a disaster as leader. Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley want him to win, Tony Blair and Mandy don't. Which one of those duos won more general elections? I think I'm more inclined to trust the judgement of Tony and Peter.

Ed Miliband has conducted his campaign in an unnecessarily vicious way. He has his supporters briefing the press against his brother trying to provoke a response and then says `Oh, it's nothing to do with me.' Whilst David has kept a much more dignified silence and had to suffer at the hands of his brother's dirty tricks.

If anyone has read Seldon - Blair Unbound, you'd know who the real Ed Miliband was. As an aide with Ed Balls working for Gordon Brown at the Treasury, it was Miliband (not Balls) who was the real bully - stirring trouble amongst MPs behind the scenes and destabilising the party leadership and undermining policy. At one point in 2004, in his capacity as a spad, he stormed into Number 10 and reportedly screamed at one of Tony Blair's aides: `When will he [Blair] be f-king going?' Somehow believing that as an unelected backroom adviser he had the right to demand a change of party leadership.

He makes Ed Balls look like a harmless kitten in comparison and if he becomes leader, Labour will be dead.

Somehow I just don't see the logic of its argument, but they looked worried even before the vote.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the British organization which organized the boat sailing for Gaza on Sunday, has over 1,600 signatories including Marion Kozak, the mother of recently elected Labor leader Ed Miliband, according to its Web site.

In an interview over the phone from the UK, Naomi Wayne, a co-founder and acting treasurer of the left-wing group, confirmed Kozak's support and laid out her organization's manifesto.

Any attempts to demonise Ed and his background would be just as applicable to David who seems to have become the acceptable face of Labour as far as Tories are concerned.  Thus they are hard to sustain, as are attempts to suggest that Labour is "split" if the two of them continue to appear to work together.  

Ed's "I love you, David,as a brother and admire the campaign you ran..." pressed all the right buttons.  No one wants a family to be split and attempts to do so are frowned on in conservative and/or polite society.  

Additionally Ed had achieved the appearance of a change to a new generation post New Labour even though he was a cabinet Minister in the last Government.  Tories can hardly criticise his lack of Government experience given Cameron had even less.

Labour badly need to get past Blair-Iraq and the Blair-Brown rivalry, and now in one bound they are free.  Within a few months a party badly sullied by years of establishmentarian Government can (half) credibly present itself as the party of the people again.

It will be interesting to see how the referendum on the Alternate Vote System goes.  Will both Labour and the Tories sabotage it and leave the Lib Dems in Limbo?  The coalition Government will be badly split if that happens and the very concept of coalition itself somewhat discredited.  Within a little over a year Labour could again be considered the Government in waiting putting a lot of Pressure on a Government bent on an unpopular programme of spending cuts.

The Tories could also lose their anti-EU credentials and vote as they are forced to play the EU game with little sympathy/support from France/Germany. Having Lady Ashton as (an ineffectual?) EU Foreign Minister will not help them much either.

So all in all, those who feared the UK might successfully engineer a paralysis of the EU may be able to breath more easily.  The only problem is that German/France seem to have taken on that role...

Index of Frank's Diaries

"I" in this case meaning Machiavelli:

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them.

Miliband falls into the European statist trap

Britain's Labour party has chosen an opposition leader over a would-be prime minister. The decision drives it into an electoral cul-de-sac. A glance at the dismal condition of centre-left parties across Europe explains why. Railing against unfettered capitalism and promising to put up taxes does not do the trick.

Ed Miliband's defeat of his elder brother David suggests Labour is about to repeat the mistakes of its Continental cousins. The new leader has shown he prefers to denounce the wicked spending cuts planned by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition than to acknowledge any uncomfortable choices of his own.

Some of his colleagues are already muttering as much. The narrowness of Mr Miliband's victory, his reliance on the support of the trade unions and the possible departure of his brother from frontline politics has left many at the party's Manchester conference in sombre rather than celebratory mood.

Foolishly, Mr Miliband has encouraged such pessimism by proclaiming the conference a requiem for New Labour - overlooking the inconvenient fact that the broad coalition assembled by Tony Blair won the party three general elections.

Tony Woodley, the joint head of the Unite union and one of Mr Miliband's principal backers, goes further. New Labour's time in office, Mr Woodley told the Financial Times this week, had been "a dark period for our party and our country". Better to embrace the purity of opposition than the awkward compromises of government.

Labour is thus heading into the trap that has snared parties of the centre-left across Europe.

(...)

Capitalism may yet claim another political victim.

Ooooh, Europe's statist trap. A party of the left pushing ideas of the left like increasing taxes on the rich rather than cutting services for the poor? Unsustainable "purity" Oooh.

Wind power