Unions gave a mixed reception on Tuesday to a very mixed message from Labour’s new leader Ed Miliband.
Mr Miliband sought to damp down claims that he would reward unions, telling delegates that the party had to win public support and avoid alienating people.
“That is why I have no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes,” he said.
“The public won’t support them. I won’t support them. And you shouldn’t support them either.”
But, moments later, Mr Miliband was supporting “not just a minimum wage but … a living wage.”
He attempted to draw a line under 13 years of Labour government, admitting that new Labour had been wrong to claim it had ended boom and bust, to fail to regulate the City and wrong to go to war in Iraq.
Warning of the danger that austerity measures would slow down the economy and damage public services, he said: “When you reduce your economic policy simply to deficit reduction alone, you leave Britain without a plan for growth.”
Ed milliband
Mr Miliband indicated his backing for a banking levy, a living wage and an elected House of Lords.
He called on Labour to “reclaim the tradition” of civil liberties from Tories and Liberal Democrats, acknowledging that Tony Blair’s attempt to secure a 90-day detention period for terror suspects had been damaging.
But at the same time, he refused to guarantee opposition to the Con-Dem benefit cuts, merely saying that he will look closely at the government’s welfare plans.
Ed Milliband
Rail union RMT leader Bob Crow warned Mr Miliband that any Labour leader who fails to support workers in the frontline of defending jobs and services will get “slaughtered at the polls.
“He has to decide whose side he is on – the working class on the streets and on the picket lines or their corporate supporters.”
Civil Service union PCS general secretary Mark Sewotka added: “No-one chooses to take industrial action and the responsibility doesn’t rest on our members shoulders but on the government and employers.”
However Unison general secretary Dave Prentis welcomed Mr Miliband’s “optimism that we can deal with the deficit and still have a better, fairer society. This is a vision that we can all unite around.”
And Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson said: “Ed demonstrated he can break free from the worst of Labour’s past and present a realistic alternative to the coalition’s cuts.”
Mr Miliband hinted at a less aggressive and US-oriented foreign policy, called on Israel to lift the blockade on Gaza and branded the murderous attacks on the aid flotilla in May “wrong.”
Ed Miliband today launched Labour on a five-year campaign to regain power, saying he will lead a new generation of radical optimists determined to take on established thinking, speak for the majority and reshape the centre ground of politics.
In a carefully balanced speech, the new Labour leader also tried to put an end to the “Red Ed” tag that has dogged him over the past week by reassuring voters that he will not oppose every spending cut, and that he will have “no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes”.
Ed miliband
In a speech designed to mark a rupture with the later years of Blair-Brown leadership, he said Labour had to accept some painful truths about its collapse into old, established thinking. “It won’t always be easy. You might not always like what I have to say. But you have elected me leader and lead I will,” he said.
In a coded rebuff to the indecision of his old boss Gordon Brown, the former climate change secretary promised: “We will not be imprisoned by the focus groups. Politics has to be about leadership, or it is nothing.”
In another key passage he ruthlessly broke with the later years of New Labour, saying his party had to have the humility to admit its failures, reeling off a remarkably long catalogue of errors, ranging from tuition fees, the claim to have abolished boom and bust, a casual attitude to civil liberties and the consequences of immigration, and a naivety about the beneficence of the market, to timidity on regulation of the City.
“We must never again give the impression that we know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” he said. “The hard truth for all of us is that a party that started out taking on old thinking became the prisoner of its own certainties.
“New Labour, a political force founded on its ability to adapt and change, lost its ability to do. We came to look like a new establishment in the company we kept, the style of our politics and our remoteness from people.”
Ed Miliband
He also angered some senior shadow cabinet members, including his brother David, by saying Labour needed to be honest that Tony Blair’s government “had been wrong to take Britain to war”. As Harriet Harman, the party deputy leader, clapped at this criticism, David Miliband – who is likely to quit frontline politics tomorrow – looked at her with cold anger, and was overheard bluntly challenging her to explain her why she was clapping when she had voted for the war. Harman smiled back: “I’m clapping because as you know I am supporting him.”
Addressing how Labour will approach the critical issue of the pace and scale of deficit cuts, Ed Miliband gave few specifics, but insisted: “I am serious about reducing the deficit,” and admitted that the party had before the next election to regain its lost fiscal credibility.
“I won’t oppose every cut the coalition proposes. There will be some things coalition does that we won’t like as a party, but we will have to support.”
In passages that pleased those hoping that Ed Balls will be made shadow chancellor next week, he said: “When you reduce your economic policy simply to deficit reduction alone you leave Britain without a plan for growth.”
Ed Miliband
In the recent past Miliband has vowed that he would never work with Nick Clegg in a coalition, and even promised to destroy the Liberal Democrats, but today he adopted a very different tone by making no mention of Clegg or the Lib Dems in his speech.
Instead he said that no political party had a monopoly of wisdom, and that many of his heroes were Liberals such as Beveridge and Lloyd George. He promised to back a change in the voting system in the May referendum, adding he would support the coalition’s plans to keep those on short sentences out of prison. Similarly he said he would look at the coalition’s welfare plans to see if they helped the unemployed out of the benefit trap. In probably the most important passage on his overall political strategy, he said his task was to “once again make Labour a force that takes on established thinking, does not succumb to it, speaks for the majority and shapes the centre ground of politics”.
Some shadow cabinet sceptics queried whether the speech had been too general and unchallenging, or simply a work in progress. But Miliband’s aides said his key aim was to set out his values, and show these can win the next election, and not simply be comfort food for the left.
Paul Kenny, the GMB general secretary, praised the speech. “No one can be in any doubt that the Labour party has a new, real leader in touch with people – a new generation is in town.”
Oona King, former Bethnal Green and Bow MP and London Labour mayoral candidate
“I think Ed made a very strong speech on responsibility in British society. He talked about responsibility of pay and the living wage, responsibility in terms of the tax system, responsibility in terms of politicians and politics, which is about having grown up politics. He dismissed the ‘Red Ed’ tag, which is really about journalists finding rhyming slang for their headlines and he also made a very strong case for optimism in politics and the Labour party being sure about itself. He offered a prescription for a Britain which feels it doesn’t have enough values in it. And Ed said, in way I haven’t heard any politicians do, he said ‘look, these are the values that we hold dear’.
“[On whether she really thought he wasn't cool enough to hang out with in school, as he mentioned in the speech] He was too brainy. That can’t be a bad thing, surely, not if you’re going to be prime minister.
Ed Miliband
“[On Iraq] I thought Ed was absolutely right, what he said. He didn’t make judgements on people who had taken decisions, in my case because I was campaigning for Iraqi human rights in 1998, 1989 – before George Bush was ever elected, before most people in Britain took any notice of what was happening in Iraq. For whatever reason, we got it wrong. And that’s my analysis, that’s what I’ve said on many occasions in public. We got it wrong. We undermined the authority of the United Nations. We should not have done it. Certainly in my view we should not have done it without the post-conflict planning in place because the catastrophe that ensued undermined several aspects of international relations and Britain’s standing in the world, not to mention Labour politics. As one of the highest profile, perhaps the highest profile, scalp as a result: we paid a price. That’s absolutely fine. I actually don’t think that’s relevant to what goes forward. What’s relevant in terms of the future is people understanding as Ed does that it was wrong and saying that clearly – that’s a good thing that’s he’s done.”
Chris Bryant, shadow Europe minister
“It was really good. Always what you get with Ed Miliband is his evident humanity. You’ve got a very human being there. But he’s also got steel. He’s not just going to tell the Labour party what it wants to hear. He’s also going to tell it what it needs to hear as well, as he did on immigration, welfare and many, many other things as well.
“[On Iraq] He was right to say it. We’ve got to draw a line under it. And he didn’t want to criticise anybody who in good faith voted the way they did. This is a new generation. We’re moving forward.”
Hilary Benn, shadow environment secretary
“I thought it was magnificent. That’s leadership for you. He spoke to the party, he was honest about the lessons we need to learn, but he set out a vision for the future. I thought it was hugely impressive.
“Ed was being honest about what he thought. He believes in being straight. That’s one of his great qualities as a leader. Really it was a speech about the future. What he said about optimism is what defines the difference in politics. Yeah, we need to deal with the deficit and he was very clear about that but we also need to have ambition – hope for what this country can achieve.”
Stephen Pound, Labour MP
“I think it was absolutely extraordinary. For years I’ve been justifying leaders speeches, going back before Blair and before Brown.That was incredible. He soared there. What he gave us wasn’t New Labour, but a renewal Labour. It was absolutely extraordinary. I think there’s something there which will touch something in the country. I actually feel, genuinely, we’re on the way back now with Ed as our leader.”
Tonight, I am deeply honoured, proud and humbled to have been elected Leader of the Labour Party.
After a long campaign, spanning four months, a new generation has taken charge of Labour. It’s a new generation that understands the need for change — in our party and in our country.
I want to say a special thank you to David, Ed, Andy and Diane. All four of them have energised our party and our movement. Each has unique talents that they will bring to bear for the future of our party and our country. We are stronger for their remarkable efforts, and I look forward to working with them as we build the new winning majority that will take Labour back to power.
I also wanted to express my deep gratitude to you, the ordinary Labour and trade union members who have powered this campaign from the start. It is because of your efforts and your dedication to our party that we are now able to begin the work of change so that we can return Labour to power. Thank you.
Now, our task is for Labour to begin to speak to the country again. We will fight to win back people’s trust, and we will re-connect with the ordinary voices in communities in every corner of Britain. Labour will once again be the radical, reforming choice — a new force of British politics and on the side of ordinary people the length and breadth of the country.
We will seek to build a new kind of economy that works for people. We will address inequalities and expand opportunity. And we will place values at the heart of our society: values of family, time, work, community and the environment around us.
I am grateful for the trust that’s been bestowed in me. I will repay it every day of my leadership, by unifying this party and taking Labour back to power.
Now the work of the new generation begins.
Thank you
Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband
Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is the Leader of the Labour Party and the Leader of the Opposition of the United Kingdom. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005 and served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Gordon Brown.
Born in London, Miliband graduated from Oxford University and the London School of Economics, becoming first a Labour Party researcher, and rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown’s confidants, being appointed Chairman of HM Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers. Miliband was elected the Member of Parliament for the South Yorkshire constituency of Doncaster North in the 2005 general election.
As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown appointed Miliband as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office in his first Cabinet on 28 June 2007. Miliband was subsequently promoted to the post of Secretary of State at the newly-created Department of Energy and Climate Change, a position he held from 3 October 2008 to 11 May 2010. On 25 September 2010 he was elected Leader of the Labour Party with the support of 50.654% of the electoral college.
He is the son of Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband and the younger brother of David Miliband, a leading Labour politician who also contested and was narrowly defeated in the 2010 Labour Leadership contest by his brother. Together the two were the first siblings to simultaneously sit in the British Cabinet since Edward, Lord Stanley and his brother Oliver in 1938.
Behind Ed Miliband as he made his maiden speech as party leader sat a handful of assorted Labour youth, solemn and impassioned by turns, the Greek chorus to his protagonist.
The speech began with a narrative of the Miliband family history: the escape from Nazi persecution; the finding of the “light of liberty” in Britain; the search for betterment. Rhetorically, this was a smart move.
According to Aristotle, there are three parts to rhetoric: logos, pathos and ethos, or argument, emotion and character. Telling the family story is about establishing character, a personal narrative that the audience can believe in (Obama knew it when he did something similar at the start of his keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic convention). The point was to allow the audience to discover him afresh.
Miliband clearly knows how to throw in the odd rhetorical flourish: The nicely rhythmic “you’ve elected me leader, and lead I will” is a chiasmus, the two cognates “leader and lead” emphasised at the centre of the sentence, pulled out of natural word order and flanked by their verbs.
His description of Blair and Brown as “reforming, restless and radical” is both nicely alliterative and a tricolon, a classic grouping of three. By piling up repeated words at the start of sentences – “Optimistic about our country. Optimistic about our world. Optimistic about the power of politics” – he is using a technique called anaphora.
But he needs to lose his cliched, overused fallback, “let’s be honest”.
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It wasn’t until he opened his front door to the waiting press pack on Wednesday afternoon that the world knew for certain that David Miliband’s front-line political career was over.
But, in truth, the man himself had known for the best part of a week. The previous Friday evening, his campaign manager, Jim Murphy, had been on the M6, heading from Scotland for the Labour leadership announcement in Manchester, when he heard some news that brought him to a standstill.
The announcement that Ken Livingstone had been selected as Labour candidate for the London mayoral election should not have been of great interest to the Mili-D campaign – or anyone else beyond the bean-counters and trend-trackers in the deep backrooms of the campaign teams. But the news that the union turnout was below 10 per cent was a bombshell; if the low turnout was repeated in the leadership election, the elder Miliband was in trouble.
“We always thought that a turnout of around 12 per cent would have clinched it for us, because that would have meant more moderate voters in the mix,” a senior member of David Miliband’s campaign team said. “At 14 per cent it would have been a walk in the park.”
Murphy pulled on to the hard shoulder and called David who, apparently, took the news quietly. Barely 24 hours later, he was forced to grin and bear it as, after trailing him for the first three rounds, his younger brother took the prize he had been groomed for. The strong man was beginning a final, fatal falter.
A family drama, a political soap opera played out less than a mile from the Coronation Street set. The choreographed announcement produced an uncommonly exciting start to a Labour Party conference, but the order ended there.
The announcement and, in particular, the unusual familial circumstances dominated events in Manchester last week. It could have been a coronation for a new leader who had been afforded the luxury of several weeks to find his feet following a shorter election campaign earlier in the summer. Instead, those Labour members who bothered to turn up in Manchester witnessed an uncomfortable affair, as a new leader struggled to imprint himself on a backdrop and an agenda designed by someone else for no one in particular. And into the vacuum rushed the farewell speeches, the gossip about the shadow cabinet candidates and the particular family trouble afflicting the Milibands.
As the blame game continues, Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, is never far from the top of Team Dave’s list of culprits.
In the days after the general election defeat, and in a major departure from Gordon Brown’s dominating style, the party’s acting leader consulted the Shadow Cabinet on the timing of the leadership election – particularly the idea of delaying the result until the eve of the September conference. Beginning with Alan Johnson, the shadow home secretary, each member of the Shadow Cabinet said it was a “crazy idea” or “just mad”. But, after Ms Harman took the conclusions to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee, they were rejected.
Ed Miliband’s campaign team say they always favoured a longer contest, needing time to erode David’s position as the front-runner. Publicly, Ms Harman did not back any candidate. But her closeness to Ed Miliband, who worked for her in the 1990s, adds to the theory that she had plotted the timetable for his benefit. That her husband, Jack Dromey MP, was credited with wooing the unions to Ed’s cause adds to the impression that the Harman household favoured one candidate, of whom she joked on the last day of the conference: “I can tell you he was always punctual, always neatly dressed, and makes a lovely cup of tea.” Certainly, few could imagine Ms Harman giving such an affectionate speech about David.
Private tension between Harman and David Miliband became all too public when the cameras caught him asking her why she was applauding the new leader’s condemnation of the Iraq war as “wrong”. It was seen as a not-very-heavily-coded “up yours” from the younger brother.
The carping from the David Miliband camp was a regular refrain; in the face of a shocking and shattering defeat, the response of many of them was to lash out against those deemed responsible. If it wasn’t Harriet Harman, it was the capricious MPs who drifted away from the elder Miliband (one last-minute switcher was described as “a snake in the grass”). If it wasn’t those backbench MPs, it was one of the most important grandees in the Blairite firmament.
The uneasy truce between siblings who had striven not to attack each other during the campaign was shattered twice by Peter Mandelson. First, during an interview with The Times while in Edinburgh, he warned that the more left-leaning Miliband would lead the party into “an electoral cul-de-sac” if he attempted to create “a pre-New Labour future”; later he criticised Ed’s role in the compilation of Labour’s general election manifesto. “I’m absolutely mystified by the manifesto on which we fought,” Mandelson said, “because its creator and author, Ed Miliband, has distanced himself from it, criticised it sharply and created the impression it’s not the manifesto on which he would have fought the election.”
Mandelson’s intervention revived huge divisions within the Labour Party. Ed’s campaign manager, Sadiq Khan, immediately claimed the “New Labour attack machine” had been unleashed against the younger brother. “It gave the impression that [Mandelson] was running the campaign,” one Mili-D senior explained. It was David who suffered most.
Teresa Pearce, the sort of new MP that the former foreign secretary would have hoped to have signed up, ultimately went for Ed Balls. However, when it came to her next preferences, she was undecided between the brothers; Mandelson made her mind up.
“I supported Ed Balls but it seemed unlikely he would have enough support to win, so I realised my second preference would be important,” the Erith and Thamesmead MP said. “I found it difficult to decide between the Milibands but eventually went for Ed after the intervention of Lord Mandelson in criticising the manifesto and Ed’s role in its drafting.” When Balls was eliminated after the third round, Pearce’s vote transferred to her second preference, Ed Miliband, helping him to achieve his narrow victory.
David’s supporters claim Mandelson’s Edinburgh intervention alone prompted five Labour MPs to switch to Ed. Peeling just six more MPs from Ed would have given David an extra 0.762 per cent in the final round – a tiny amount, but enough to have secured him victory.
Asked what he would change about the campaign, one Mili-D backer wistfully said he would have kept Mandelson away from Edinburgh that Bank Holiday weekend and consigned him to the bottom of a river, “in concrete boots”. In a clear signal that the candidate shared his anger over the peer’s behaviour, he added: “If David had won and Mandelson had phoned to congratulate him, he wouldn’t have taken the call.”
David Miliband’s team also complained about their lack of access to union membership lists – for campaigning purposes – which they claim were provided to his brother. When David’s backers went to town halls to gather the names of local authority shop stewards, they were told data protection laws prevented them being released. A senior Mili-D campaigner later received, via his own union, literature urging him to vote for Ed.
It was clearly an excruciating campaign for David Miliband, but a series of critics have now urged him to look to his own team to explain why he has been confined to a life of back benches and casual shirts.
“Loads of Labour MPs were never going to vote for David first,” one veteran explained. “But the trick was to get him ahead of Ed in the preferences, even if it was fourth instead of fifth. But they assumed too much – they didn’t try hard enough to pick up the newer MPs who they thought would support him, and when they realised they were getting away, they were too heavy-handed with them.”
His brother’s team took a more direct approach, partly through their insistence on running an “insurgent campaign” – a description which troubled one of their older members (“I told them I didn’t want to be involved in any campaign that didn’t set out to win the contest”). David’s campaign pulled in more than £200,000 in individual donations, relied on an army of helpers and a “top down” Facebook campaign designed to attract nurses and teachers to his cause. It was not enough; Ed’s people claim they were using the site to get to the same people.
The results of the divergent campaign strategies were all too evident on Saturday evening. His closest allies admit Ed Miliband is “not the finished article”, but he has demonstrated his potential – and, above all, his steely resolve – over the past three months. It has been a chastening experience for the man who has out-performed him throughout their lives.
On Saturday night after the result, David hosted a meal in a Manchester curry house where he told his team: “No one has anything to be ashamed of.” The team now talks of the great lessons they have learned from the experience – unfortunately, they will not get the chance to put them into practice.
The victory, if not the campaign, had been meticulously planned; less so the defeat. David’s team have not so far been able to delete his planned leader’s speech from their BlackBerrys; the older brother had already allocated jobs in his first Shadow Cabinet. But why, therefore, the agonising hiatus before he announced his future plans?
David’s wife Louise Shackelton was “key to the decision” to quit frontline politics, someone close to the late-night discussion over his future admitted. Ms Shackelton, an American-born violinist with no political background – and little interest in the machinations of the Labour Party – is regarded as a “grounding influence” by the couple’s friends. She is believed to have been cool on previous potential leadership bids, although she supported her husband this time. Ms Shackelton was visibly upset at the result, and subsequently urged her husband to step back.
The Milibands themselves went through a difficult period at the start of the campaign but were described as “acting like brothers again” at the TUC last month. Their relationship is now described as “strained” by one friend of both. “They need a break from each other,” he added, “but they’ll come round again.”
But, ultimately, after witnessing the friction between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for so long, David Miliband decided he should go. As one friend said: “If he walks, he looks like a bad loser; if he stays, he becomes a perpetual plotter. How would it work at shadow cabinet meetings? Every time he spoke up people would say he was taking over but if he sat quietly, he would be ‘brooding’.”
In his longing for a position he saw as naturally his, in his failure to move for it and, when he did, to reach out to his rivals, in his brooding and disruptiveness over just four days, he has appeared more the heir to Gordon Brown than to Tony Blair.
Leadership buzz words: Red Ed’s geek tragedy… or is it a psychodrama?
The election of a new Labour leader has been a case study in use of English for Media Studies GCSE courses all over the country.
Top cliché is, of course, “Red Ed”, with 145,000 Google hits in the past week. It has been translated into many languages – Ed le Rouge, Der Rote Ed, Ed El Rojo and even Crveni Ed in Serbian. But it has been a good week too for the “family feud”, with 26,600 Miliband-related references.
The elder Miliband’s decision to step down from the shadow cabinet, to spend less time with one member of his family, has also prompted “sibling rivalry” 21,300 times, “brotherly love” 17,000 times and “brother’s shadow” 16,900 times. Surprisingly little interest in “Cain and Abel”, a mere 379 mentions, “fratricide”, 271, and “geek tragedy”, 206 times.
The “geek tragedy” phrase was first applied to the Milibands on Monday last week by Phil Collins, Tony Blair’s speechwriter, who is now a leader-writer on The Times. The whole thing has been a “psychodrama”, 16,100 times, although it has perhaps been a theatrical production that tells us as much about the psyche of the press as that of the brothers themselves.
David Miliband today confirmed he was quitting frontline politics, but promised to serve the Labour party and his younger brother’s leadership to his utmost from the backbenches.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, responded by saying his door was always open for his brother to return to the front bench in the future.
The defeated Labour leadership candidate insisted that stepping back from the political limelight was the “cleanest and clearest thing to do although not the most obvious or easy thing to do” in order to allow Ed Miliband to set the future direction for the party free of permanent scrutiny of any potential differences between the two men.
Ed Miliband, looking notably relaxed as he spoke outside Labour’s Manchester conference, said that while it would have been “fantastic” to have had his older brother as part of his team, David’s decision was “thoughtful and gracious”.
“My door is always open for him to serve in the future,” Ed Miliband said.
Other colleagues paid tribute to David Miliband, who has served on the frontbenches since 2002 – a year after he was elected to parliament – and was seen as a frontrunner in the Labour leadership until the final few days of the race, when the odds switched in favour of his younger brother.
The shadow foreign secretary and MP for South Shields, who was defeated in the leadership race by his younger brother by a narrow margin on Saturday, confirmed he had decided not to put his name forward for the shadow cabinet elections in a letter sent to his constituency party chair, Alan Donnelly, this afternoon.
The party was his younger brother’s to lead and he needed to be able to do so as “free as possible from distraction”, he wrote.
Ed Miliband said his “new generation” would take Labour back to power, in his first big speech as party leader.
He praised the party’s achievements but said they had to face “painful truths” – such as the Iraq war being “wrong”.
In an hour-long speech he pledged to be a “responsible” opposition leader and not oppose every proposed spending cut.
But he said David Cameron offered a “miserable” view of what could be achieved and said Labour were the “optimists” who would change Britain.
Ed Miliband was greeted by enthusiastic applause from delegates in the packed hall at the Manchester Central venue as he arrived with his pregnant partner Justine.
Civil liberties
He struck a very personal tone at the start of his speech, talking about his upbringing and how his parents’ experience as refugees fleeing the Nazis had shaped his values and paying tribute to his “extraordinary” brother David.
Activists cheered as he said Labour had appeared “casual” about civil liberties and said he would not let the Tories or Lib Dems “take ownership of the British tradition of liberty”. And they applauded his comment that Labour’s foreign policy should be “based on values, not just alliances”.
However his comments about Iraq appeared to annoy his brother David, who he narrowly beat for the party leadership.
Mr Miliband has only been an MP since 2005 and was not part of the government during the invasion of Iraq – a decision which proved divisive for the Labour Party.
“I do believe we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain into war and we need to be honest about that,” he said.
However his comments about Iraq appear to have annoyed his brother, who was filmed asking Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman: “You voted for it, why are you clapping?”
BBC political editor Nick Robinson said it suggested the older Miliband brother, who has returned to London, would almost certainly announce on Wednesday that he was stepping down from front line politics.
‘Don’t agree’
He, Alistair Darling and Andy Burnham all voted for the war in 2003.
Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of the invasion, told the BBC the new leader was not an MP at the time so had “greater freedom to say we didn’t get it right, but I don’t agree with his view”.
In the wide-ranging speech, Ed Miliband pledged to vote “yes” in a referendum on changing the voting system to AV, said Labour should have recognised concerns about jobs and wages resulting from immigration. He said he supported reducing the deficit but growth should be the priority.
The former energy secretary, 40, was named Labour leader on Saturday having won the ballot of MPs, party members and trade unionists by just 1%.
Since then he has been fending off criticism that he owes his leadership to the unions because his brother David got a higher percentage of votes from MPs and party members.
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This country faces some tough choices and so do we. And we need to change”
Ed Miliband
Nick Robinson: Not happy families
Ed Miliband’s speech: Key moments in text and video
He got a standing ovation when, referring to the label some newspapers have given him, he said “Red Ed? Come off it” and urged a “grown up debate” on politics.
And he warned that while he said trade unions were important, he had “no truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes” and Labour had to be careful not to alienate the public.
He said the party had to face facts about its general election defeat and go on “our own journey”, show humility and learn some “painful truths” about where they had gone wrong.
“This country faces some tough choices and so do we. And we need to change,” he said.
“This week we embark on the journey back to power.”
‘Boom and bust’
Ed Miliband praised Labour’s achievements in office, saying Britain was “fairer and stronger than it was 13 years ago” but said that the party had to ask how it lost five million votes between 1997 and 2010 and “shed old thinking”.
He said he understood voters’ anger that Labour had not stood up to City demands for deregulation and, in what will be seen as distancing himself from his old boss Gordon Brown, “at a Labour government that claimed it could end boom and bust”.