September 28, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Ed Miliband aiming get Labour Party restarted

By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, September 28, Graphic News:  Labour's new leader Ed Miliband will have to stamp his authority on the party during his first major speech as leader if his surprise election is to signify a new era in which a united Labour finally challenges the new coalition government.

Miliband, 40, who narrowly beat his older brother David, 45, in the contest for the top job, is expected to expand on his theme that he is his "own man", as well as distance himself from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his government's boast that Labour could end economic boom and bust. But his efforts could be overshadowed by uncertainty about whether his talented brother will remain in the shadow cabinet and a lingering sense in some quarters that the party has picked the wrong sibling.

The younger Miliband must allay concerns that he'll be a "soft" target for the right-wing press and Conservative Lib-Dem government: his union backing will be raked up by those who want to portray him as "Red Ed", a throwback to the era pre-New Labour. Miliband will seek to ensure that -- in the public imagination -- his willingness to criticise the Brown-Blair years propels him into the future, not the political past. Today he is expected to acknowledge voters' anger with Labour and strike a note of humility rather than deliver pronouncements on policy. 

While Ed Miliband emerged from David's shadow to pip him at the post for the leadership, the brothers' careers have been so enmeshed that comparisons and speculation about the pair are unlikely to go away. Born in 1969, they grew up in London in a home steeped in left-wing ideology, with their father Marxist intellectual Ralph Miliband and mother, the left-wing academic Marion Kozak. After graduating from Oxford and the LSE, Ed spent a brief spell as a television journalist before following David into politics. Before Labour's defeat in the 2010 general election, Ed was secretary of state at the department of energy and climate change. While David was closely associated with Tony Blair, Ed is known as a "Brownite", a label he now refutes.

One thing he does admit to learning from Brown during his years as his adviser, he says, is "toughness". If Ed's apparent "niceness" seemed a potential drawback when the leadership contest got underway, few now doubt his ability to pull a punch when it is necessary. Certainly not his older brother David, whose decision on whether or not to remain in the shadow cabinet will have an impact on Ed's standing in the party. Ed could certainly use David's talents, but serving under a younger brother would surely test even the apparently strong fraternal bonds of the Milibands.

Ed Miliband's partner is environment lawyer Justine Thornton, and the couple are expecting their second child.
/ENDS