September 8, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Can David Miliband renew New Labour?
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, September 8, Graphic News:  Ever since he was thrust into the spotlight as environment minister in 2005, there has been an air of inevitability about David Miliband's eventual claim on the Labour party's top job. That might explain why he was happy to hold back during the attempted coups against Gordon Brown: he knew he'd be leader one day. Now he is almost there.
 
But while few can match David Miliband for his political adroitness or brilliant intellect -- Alistair Campbell nicknamed him "Brains" after the Thunderbirds character -- the former foreign secretary and frontrunner is not yet home and dry. David, 45, is still attacked for his lack of warmth, or aloofness; he still suffers from his previous close association with Tony Blair. And then there is the direct challenge from his younger brother, Ed.
 
The brothers grew up steeped in left-wing politics at the home of their Jewish immigrant parents, Ralph Miliband, a Marxist intellectual, and their Polish mother Marion Kozak, also an academic and a Holocaust survivor. David went from a London comprehensive to Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He worked with Blair on shaping New Labour policy before being parachuted into the safe seat of South Shields in 2001.
 
After Blair's departure, Brown appointed David his foreign minister (the youngest to hold the post in 30 years) in a bid to end the factional fighting within the party. But David has tried to distance himself from the Blair-Brown era while defending the achievements of their governments. In particular, he has urged the party to draw a line under the Iraq war.
 
In the "Battle of the Milibands", David has been characterised as an arch Blairite whose core strength is policy and who has the best chance of winning back middle class voters. As the contest has gone on, this image has not done him too much harm as Labour faces up to the reality of life in opposition: indeed, Prime Minister David Cameron has said David is the leader whom he would fear most. The elder Miliband has already exposed the limits of Cameron's "Big Society" idea with his more radical "Movement for Change".
 
David Miliband is married to Louise Shackelton, a professional violinist, and they have two adopted sons.
/ENDS