David miliband

David Miliband just can’t leave his brother’s election defeat alone. After several brutally honest post-election interviews, Miliband Sr. popped up again on CNN last night to offer his harshest analysis yet on his brother’s leadership. Under Ed, David said, Labour actually went backwards: ‘What I think is important for all the candidates [to replace Ed Miliband] is to reflect on the very clear lessons of two devastating electoral defeats for the Labour party in the last five years, which have come for a very clear reason. ‘And the reason is that the public have concluded that instead of building on the strengths and remedying the weaknesses of the Blair years, the

Is David Miliband Labour’s prince across the water? The elder Miliband brother appears to be watching the leadership contest closely avidly from afar, without backing any particular candidate. Speaking to his friend Fareed Zakaria on CNN this weekend, he was keen to stress that he has no plans to return to British politics in the immediate future: ‘We don’t have a presidential system as you know well and I am leading the International Rescue Committee in New York. Already three candidates have declared in the UK and it’s obviously vital that Labour is able to provide the kind of modern progressive alternative that is essential in democratic politics. As in

In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the final appointments in David Cameron’s new Cabinet and what they show about Cameron’s approach to party management. We also discuss David Miliband’s brutal interview about his brother’s term as Labour leader and why Nigel Farage has decided to hang on as leader of Ukip. You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or iPhone every week, or you can use the player below:

Miliband finally got some good media coverage this weekend. Alas, it was David rather than Ed who was on the receiving end. The Labour leader’s brother was branded ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in a glowing profile in the Sunday Times. According to well sourced ‘friends’, the former Foreign Secretary turned Labour leadership loser has conquered America and is ready to ride back as a white knight. ‘David wants Ed to be prime minister. End of story’, says a spokesman. Yet reading between the lines, things are obviously still a little bit tense. On Budget Day, David failed to mention his sibling once despite tweeting all the way through his brother’s scatty response to Osborne’s budget.

David Miliband has refused to rule out a return to British politics in an interview with Vogue. Ed’s departed brother has not had much of an impact in New York, and is coy about his future: ‘I don’t know, is the answer.’ Intriguingly he also refuses to praise his brother’s performance as Labour leader: ‘I can’t say anything, because anything I say plays into the whole narrative. And I made an absolute commitment to myself not to play into the story … It’s not good for him and it’s not good for me for this to become a story.’ That would be true if David said something negative. Mr S

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_25_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Freddy Gray, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth on Cameron’s radicalism” startat=70] Listen [/audioplayer]No one goes to Birmingham to revive a marriage. But that is what David Cameron and the Conservative party must do next week at conference. They must find a way to put the passion back into their relationship, to learn to trust each other again ahead of the general election. For neither can win without the other next May. That election is there to be won. The Labour gathering in Manchester this week was not one of a party convinced that it is going to surge to victory in a few months. The atmosphere was subdued,

I have the impression that David Miliband’s valedictory essay in the latest issue of the New Statesman contains some really corking ideas; but I can’t see them through the words. David Miliband’s tragedy is not that he lost to his brother. It’s that he can’t express himself in plain English. He has five things to work on in New York: 1). Stop using conspicuously odd vocabulary: ‘Presidential elections are different from parliamentary systems, but there is read-across nonetheless.’ ‘Read-across’…? The only thing to be said for that word is that it distracts from the platitude at the beginning of the sentence: ‘Presidential elections are different from parliamentary systems’. Well blow me. 2). Resist the urge to

Andrew Marr was back on the Marr show this morning, doing a great public service by reminding Britain why we’re not missing David Miliband. The ex-Blair adviser formerly nicknamed ‘Brains’ is off to join International Rescue next week – and even Marr couldn’t resist a Thunderbirds reference. Miliband wasn’t amused. He’d come to give a message: I’m not ruling out a comeback. But after watching his performance, I rather doubt that Labour members will be begging him to attempt one. listen to ‘David Miliband on the Andrew Marr show, 14 July 2013’ on Audioboo

David Miliband’s decision to give up on British politics and take up the post of chief executive of the International Rescue Committee is an intriguing one. The former Foreign Secretary and once future Prime Minister said he was hoping to put a definitive end to the soap opera surrounding his rivalry with his more successful and ruthless younger brother. As his friend Philip Collins wrote in his Times column this week (£), the older Miliband has made a series of poor decisions. He chose not to stand against Gordon Brown in 2007, and he chose not to resign when James Purnell stood down from Gordon Brown’s Cabinet in June 2009.

Here is a selection of what various Labour big wigs, political commentators and media figures have made of Miliband’s decision and his parliamentary career. And we’re interested to hear your thoughts on Miliband’s career and departure. Please leave a comment in the box below. Ed Miliband: Having spoken to him a lot over the past few months, I know how long and hard he thought about this before deciding to take up the offer. I also know how enthusiastic he is about the potential this job provides… As for us, we went through a difficult leadership contest but time has helped to heal that. I will miss him. But although

David Miliband is quitting the House of Commons to go and work for the International Rescue Committee in the United States, the Daily Mirror has revealed this evening. Friends of both Miliband brothers have long thought that David, who expected to win the Labour leadership contest in 2010, was not really prepared to serve under Ed. David’s departure confirms that. I also suspect, as John Rentoul points out, that David had realised that he was never going to be Labour leader. Ed Miliband’s position is so secure that it is pretty much a certainty that he’ll lead Labour into the election. It was also always highly unlikely that Labour would

Reports of his return to frontline politics certainly seem to have woken up David Miliband. He has given a very energetic speech in the Commons this afternoon in the Welfare Uprating Bill: so energetic, in fact, that he managed to steal poor Sarah Teather’s rebellious thunder, speaking directly after the former Lib Dem minister. Shortly afterwards, he was spotted at the top of the Portcullis House escalators shaking the hand of admiring Labour MPs who passed by. As Dan Hodges points out on his blog, the Blairite MP was perfectly happy to attack the Welfare Uprating Bill from the Left, calling it ‘rancid’, and arguing that it undermined the Tories’