It’s time to stop playing ‘Pin the David Miliband on the Labour Party’

Everyone has at some point played the children’s party game “pin the tail on the donkey”. Most find that – despite their confidence – their efforts are wide of the mark.

Recently the media have been playing a similar game, stoked up by elements within the Labour Party. The rules are the same, except the role of the tail is played by David Miliband. And the role of the donkey is played by the Labour Party (no jokes please). Alas the results are similarly wide of the mark, albeit more serious, because we’re talking about people’s lives and careers and the possible next government.

Over the past week – in print, in public and in private – I’ve been told that David Miliband is set to imminently assume one of the following (shadow) roles – Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Election Co-ordinator, Work and Pensions Secretary and Education Secretary.

I’ve made it clear in the past (and more recently) that having David Miliband return to the front bench would be a good thing (although he can’t wait forever). But in their enthusiasm to bring back the elder Miliband, some have posited theories that are as unhelpful as they are inaccurate.

Let’s take the two that have been most widely sprayed around the media this week – Shadow Chancellor and Election Co-ordinator. Ed Miliband has already confirmed that Ed Balls will remain Shadow Chancellor until the next election and with good reason. Whilst Balls may have his detractors and an image problem (to say the least), removing him would be a clear signal that Labour has been wrong on the economy for the past two years, which is simply not the case. In fact Balls was among the first to correctly describe what would happen to an Osborne-led economy in his prescient Bloomberg speech. He has been on the money countless times since.

David Miliband becoming election co-ordinator is an even stranger proposition. The elder politician has never really shown a particular interest in heading up a large political machine, nor (save a visit to America last year) immersed himself in the detail and minutiae of campaigning tactics (if he had – campaigning harder in the affiliates section in 2010 for example – he might be leader now). By contrast, the party’s campaigning face and presumptive 2015 election supremo Tom Watson is a campaigner to his core. In a ground war (which is all Labour can really fight with depleted resources) a streetfighter like Watson who understands the party machine and is a campaigner to the risograph ink in his fingertip is a huge asset. The person who is said to really want the 2015 election co-ordinator role, incidentally, is Douglas Alexander (the co-author of David Miliband’s Obama piece), who ran the party’s 2010 campaign. But it seems highly unlikely that anyone but Watson will be running the campaign – unless he’s given one of the big cabinet posts, of course.

The Sunday Telegraph reported yesterday that David Miliband won’t be making a comeback. If so that would be a shame as his return could be a transformative moment for the party. But unless he does, the media – and some within our own party – will continue to try and pin David Miliband on the Labour Party. It’s a tactic that’s damaging for David Miliband, and for those who he is said to be replacing, and for the party. The past week has almost been enough to make you wonder if that’s exactly the point of the whole exercise…