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The Brothers Miliband

Big brother David says little brother Ed ran a “backwards” campaign

by
Jonathan Zalman
May 12, 2015
David Miliband (L) at his home on March 27, 2013, London, England.(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
David Miliband (L) at his home on March 27, 2013, London, England.(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Last week Labour Party leader Ed Miliband resigned after Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party secured an outright majority in Parliament in Britain’s general elections. Miliband, the son of Polish Holocaust survivors, had hopes of becoming the first Jewish Labour Party leader elected as Prime Minister.

Yesterday, Ed Miliband’s older brother David, told the BBC that his younger brother, just like Labour Party leader Gordon Brown in 2010, “allowed [himself] to be portrayed as moving backwards from the principles of aspiration and inclusion, the absolute heart of any successful political project.”

“The answer,” he continued, “is not to go back. It’s to build on the achievement and remedy the weaknesses, and never to end up where the electorate think that you’re going backwards rather than addressing the issues of the future.”

In 2010, the Brothers Miliband faced off (with two others) for the leadership of the Labour Party. This, from Tablet contributor Marc Tracy’s report:

Yesterday Ed Miliband beat four other candidates, including his older and heretofore more prominent brother David (the former foreign secretary), to win the leadership of Britain’s Labour Party and thereby assume the shadow prime ministership. Sons of the famous British Marxist Ralph, the Milibands are of Jewish descent, though both identify as non-religious. The Nation—at which Ed interned two decades ago—called on whoever won to reclaim the party’s left-wing legacy, which got smudged when Tony Blair reinvigorated it as “New Labour” in the 1990s.

“[David] Miliband,” writes The Guardian, “said he would not be returning to British politics for now” but hinted he might be more involved in discussions about the future of Labour now that he is finally free of the soap opera surrounding him and his brother.”

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.