David Miliband, the more right-wing candidate preferred for Labour leader in 2010 by most Shadow Cabinet members and Labour MPs, has weighed in on the obscure machinations at the top of the Labour Party with a piece in the New Statesman of 2 February, puffed on the front page of the Daily Telegraph.
The Telegraph’s summary catches the gist: “Labour risks moving too far to the Left... is in danger of alienating business... [danger of] a return to old Labour”.
Press speculation is that diehard-Blairites are working in cahoots with Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper:
• first, to undercut Ed Miliband by pushing him into a diehard-Blairite stance of opposing Tory cuts only in detail (Ed Miliband seems not to need much pushing; but is his recent call for a campaign to save the NHS an attempt to “re-balance”?);
• second, to replace Ed Miliband by Yvette Cooper as leader;
• third, after the next general election, which the diehard-Blairites assume Labour will lose, to replace Cooper by David Miliband.
