The day David Miliband lost the Labour Leadership

I’ll never forget the day David Miliband lost the Labour leadership.

No, not the dramatic moment in Manchester in September 2010 when the result of the leadership election was finally declared. I’m thinking of a warm summer’s evening three months earlier, when the frontrunner’s campaign rolled into south London for a jolly hustings event.

The slim, sleek candidate hopped up on stage in a large marquee that had been put up in the playground of our local primary school. He was to be grilled in a firm but fraternal way by the journalist David Aaronovitch.

It was a friendly audience. Miliband senior spoke fluently, looking every bit the favourite to win the leadership. He didn’t pander to the Labour faithful that day. He said crisp and grown-up things about what the party would need to do to regain the electorate’s trust. He was met, not with wild enthusiasm, but with warm and respectful appreciation. It was a safe, reassuring performance. The next leader of the Labour party clearly knew what he was doing and, even if he did not get political juices flowing, he looked and sounded the part.

Round about this time Peter Mandelson’s political memoirs, called “The Third Man”, had come out. This presented Miliband’s interrogator with some useful material. “Do you want to know what Tony Blair said about you?” Aaronovitch asked in a gently teasing manner. Miliband grinned broadly. “Go on then,” he replied.

A passage from the new book was read out – Mandelson’s account of an exchange he had had with the former prime minister. “What do you think of David [Miliband], then?”, Mandelson quoted himself as asking. “Well,” Blair had apparently replied, “he’s not perfect… but he has improved.”

Everyone laughed. Miliband’s broad grin broadened. Then, when the laughter had died down, he lent forward and, in mock conspiratorial tones, asked his interviewer a question of his own.

“Can I let you into a secret?,” Miliband said. “I didn’t think he was perfect, either.”

Zing! I mean, zing! What a moment. The Blairite heir-apparent, the shoo-in, the orthodox and mainstream candidate was outing himself as a not completely 100% true believer. He was striking out.

For those who had been paying attention this would not have come as a complete surprise. Miliband senior had, after all, left his earlier role as head of policy at No.10, being seen as not quite Blairite enough. During the war in south Lebanon in 2006 he had challenged Blair in cabinet over his seemingly unquestioning support for the Israeli government. And now here he was dissing the Big Guy. Here was a platform, surely, from which David could make an appeal to all parts of the Labour movement and secure a convincing victory.

Wrong. We heard very little (if any) Blair-scepticism from the front-runner through the rest of the leadership campaign. Miliband failed to assert his own clear, independent identity. He was seen as the full-on Blairite candidate. And this, crucially, cost him the support of significant parts of the Labour electorate. Allied to a lofty manner which alienated some fellow MPs, this opened the door to the more effective and sophisticated campaign being run by his brother.

Why could Miliband senior not break free from the grip of Blair and senior Blairites? Perhaps he didn’t want to. Maybe he was still a little in awe of them. Over-excited Freudians – the worst kind – might claim to detect a reluctance to challenge a father figure. Whatever the reason, the leadership campaign had surely been David’s to lose. And lose it he did.

It could have been different. We will never know. But I know what I saw that summer. It seems to me that big brother’s date with destiny was not Saturday 25^th September 2010. It was rather Tuesday 27^th July of the same year, when, at a south London primary school, the candidate revealed just a glimpse of the political leader he might have become, only to withdraw into a more comfortable and less adventurous shell.