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

Younger Miliband brother has old-style appeal
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, September 8, Graphic News:  Ed Miliband has turned what is usually a dull affair into a Labour leadership contest full of surprises: firstly, few expected the younger Miliband to throw his hat into the ring after his brother David had made his ambitions clear; secondly, that the less experienced politician would see off heavyweights like Ed Balls was hardly a foregone conclusion.
 
As the contest nears its end, it is the younger Miliband who has emerged as the candidate with more appeal to old-style Labour voters, and it is Ed who has won the backing of the biggest trades unions. While he himself refuses the label of "old Labour", he has talked about reconnecting the party with its roots, and it is Ed Miliband who most evokes the passionate idealism of the left-wing ideology with which the brothers grew up.
 
It is not the first time Ed has followed in David's footsteps: he also went to Oxford and, after a brief spell as a television journalist, switched to politics and was appointed one of Gordon Brown's special advisers. After winning the safe seat of Doncaster North in 2005, Ed became a cabinet minister in 2007. He was appointed the secretary of state for the new energy and climate change department in October 2008.
 
While many people still link David to Blair, Ed has not found it difficult to shrug off any association with Brown. Similarly -- with less involvement in its creation -- Ed has been free to point out where New Labour went wrong and to distance himself from contentious issues such as the Iraq war. However, he has found it less easy to persuade some in the party that he does not want to take it backwards, to a golden era before New Labour.
 
The main criticism (if it can be called that) fired at Ed is that he is "too nice" to be leader and, possibly one day, prime minister. Of the brothers, he is more comfortable with people and he is seen as a better communicator. If the civilised form of sibling rivalry we have seen during the contest is anything to go by, both brothers are indeed quite "nice". A Miliband-Miliband era would be nothing like the Blair-Brown years.  
 
Ed, 41, lives with barrister Justine Thornton and they have one son.  
/ENDS