Labour leadership favourite, David Miliband sets out four distinctive policies

By Tim Montgomerie

Yesterday it was Ed Miliband's day in the spotlight with his attack on Nick Clegg. Today his brother has an op-ed in The Times (£), in which he sets out his big picture vision.

The article contained at least four policy positions that are worth highlighting:

1. Slower than the Coalition on deficit reduction: "It is right to cut the deficit in half over four years and wrong to take an extra £40 billion out of the economy by 2014-15." [This is actually the position of Alistair Darling and the Labour government before May but, as the Wall Street Journal (£) has noted, the other leadership candidates are now advocating a less hawkish position].
2. Tax the banks to invest in manufacturing: "Rather than abolishing investment allowances for manufacturing, we should double the bank levy (from a tiny 0.07 per cent of balance sheets) to pay for it." Additionally Mr Miliband says he supports "the creation of a British Investment Bank from part of the proceeds from selling our stakes in the nationalised banks." This could be the beginning of a big emphasis on growth by Labour. The Coalition has emphasised deficit reduction but must do much more to 'own' the economic future.
3. State-guaranteed jobs: "We need to extend the guarantee of a job beyond the 18-24 age range, not hack it back."
4. No rush to civil libertarianism: "Dropping ASBOs and dismantling CCTV will only reduce the power for communities to protect themselves against fear and crime." Interestingly he doesn't say anything about prisons. Will he adopt the Jack Straw line? A Miliband leadership could damage the Coalition if it campaigns against the criminals that won't be jailed because of Ken Clarke's erosion of Michael Howard's policies.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary is likely to be the next Leader of the Opposition. His policy positions deserve careful study. They could shape the debate between the parties in the next few years.

Ed Miliband hopes that Clegg-bashing might give him the edge over his brother

By Tim Montgomerie

It appears to be 'Get Clegg Day' in the grid of Ed Miliband's leadership campaign.

With more evidence yesterday that brother David has the edge in the leadership race, the man who wrote the manifesto for Gordon Brown's 2010 campaign has blasted the Liberal Democrat leader in an open letter to LibDem members in The Guardian:

"[The Liberal Democrats] are a party of proud traditions: of Keynes, Lloyd George and Beveridge. But it is increasingly clear that these traditions are being abandoned by Clegg as he goes along with damaging cuts in public spending undermining economic growth, tax rises hitting the poorest hardest, and a clear threat to the universal welfare state. Our society is at risk of being reshaped in ways that will devastate the proud legacy of liberalism. We see a free market philosophy being applied to our schools, wasteful top-down reorganisation of our NHS, and the undermining of our green credentials with cuts to investment. At some point you have to conclude that this is not a mistake here or there, but part of a pattern. The pattern is of a leadership that has sold out and betrayed your traditions, including that of your recent leadership: Steel, Ashdown, Kennedy and Campbell."

Ed Miliband argues that his newly-discovered support for a graduate tax, opposition to ID cards and his previously secret conclusion that the Iraq war was a "profound mistake" make him the ideal person to attract even more LibDem supporters away from the Coalition (YouGov again had Clegg's party at 12% overnight).

In The Telegraph Mary Riddell identifies Ed's Clegg-bashing and David Miliband's reluctance to do the same* as the most interesting faultline in the Labour leadership race:

"The Lib Dem question could be a game-changer. For the first time, Ed's attacking instincts and David's gloves-on restraint offer a simple choice both to friends and to the enemies who have caricatured them as Tweedledum and Tweedledumber."

The danger of this Clegg bashing is that, as in Aesop's fable, the huffing and puffing against Nick Clegg may actually push him closer to Cameron. The building of a sunnier alternative within the Labour fold for Liberal Democrats is probably more likely to destabilise the Coalition.

* I'm not sure it's as simple as that. David Miliband has, as Mary Riddell notes, called Clegg "the dumb waiter" and "dead parrot".

Latest YouGov poll suggests David Miliband will still beat his brother for the Labour leadership

By Jonathan Isaby

Today's Sun carries a new YouGov poll on the Labour leadership race, taking account of the constituent parts of the electoral college taking part in the vote.

The top line is that despite recent declarations of support from a number of leading unions for Ed Miliband, his brother David is still poised to win the Labour leadership - with Ed Balls trailing in fifth place:

Of the candidates on offer, David Miliband is deemed by party members as the least Left-wing and the one who would be the most effective Opposition leader and best Prime Minister, whilst his briother Ed scores highest when it comes to likeability and sharing party members' views.  Ed Balls is judged the least likeable and least in touch with the lives of ordinary voters.

Click here to see all the data.

Ed Balls may pull out of Labour leadership contest - and do a deal with Miliband (D)

By Paul Goodman

Lots of speculation this evening that Ed Balls may be about to pull out of Labour's leadership contest.  Patrick Hennessy of the Sunday Telegraph has some of the details.  Unite went for Ed Miliband today - making a hat-trick for him of the big unions: Unison and the GMB are already on board.  But while brother Ed has the large unions, brother David has more MPs.

Danny Finklestein has been twittering away at the news, warning Miliband D not to make Ed Balls his Shadow Chancellor.  I offered the same advice recently to Miliband E.  Hennessy notes that: "Mr Balls's camp was insisting he would fight on in the wake of the Unite result, which was particularly disappointing for him because his close ally, Charlie Whelan, is the union's political director".  However, "a senior Labour source said: 'It's hard to see where Ed Balls's campaign goes from here. He faces some tough choices in the next few days.' "

More tomorrow, doubtless.

David Miliband "well ahead on cash for leadership fight"

By Paul Goodman

The Guardian reports this morning that the former Foreign Secretary is accused of "buying" the leadership election as wealthy Blairite donors push his campaign chest to £200,000 - causing what the paper describes as a 'disparity in financial backing" for the five candidates, which it believes to be "a big issue".

Two wealthy donors have each given him £50,000, sparking accusations within the party that the former foreign secretary is deploying far more staff than his rivals and is in danger of "buying the election" with "Blairite" support.

Sources inside the party apparently claim that recent tallies show David Miliband enjoying a huge cash advantage, raising three times as much as Ed Balls, nearly 14 times as much as his brother, Ed Miliband, and 17 times as much as Andy Burnham.

One of the donors who gave David Miliband £50,000 is Silvergate Investments Ltd, a film company run by the Labour peer Waheed Alli; another is David Claydon, a City economist who worked at Morgan Stanley and subsequently with Miliband at the Foreign Office.

Memo to Ed Miliband: Don't make Balls your Shadow Chancellor

By Paul Goodman

As you may know, I wrote an open letter to you last month.  It assumed that you'll win Labour's leadership contest.  I may be wrong about the outcome, but have seen nothing since then to make that outcome less likely.  In my note, I offered you some advice and, as I reminded you at the end of it, I'm a Tory - so I wouldn't try to mislead you, would I?

Roughly six weeks have passed since, and events have moved on.  Ed Balls has opposed Michael Gove's scaling-back of the Building Schools for the Future programme (BSF, which he himself devised).  Your rival for the leadership also claims on his website to be campaigning to "Stop the VAT bombshell" and "Save Free School meals".

Balls doesn't say, of course, that he drew up his BSF plans without having a clue how they'd be funded.  And his other "campaigns" look a bit of a Potemkin village.  I can't help seeing Balls as a great comic creation, who as Labour's leader would enthuse its core supporters and repeal floating voters.  His Guardian article this morning suggests that he'd contest the next election on a platform of higher interest and mortgage rates.

Labour leadership contenders "turn on Mandelson"

By Jonathan Isaby

Today's Times splashes on the attacks on Lord Mandelson by three of the contenders for the Labour leadership.

Here are some the highlights from behind the paywall:

"David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary, who is well regarded by Lord Mandelson, said that the extracts, serialised this week in The Times, had been “destructive and self-destructive”. He suggested that Lord Mandelson had in effect retired himself by rushing into print and that he would struggle to win election to a reformed Upper House."

"Ed Miliband, the former Climate Change Secretary, described Lord Mandelson as a flawed character. He said that the book was sad and damaging to the peer and the party and that it was right for him to move on. “It’s time for a new generation,” he added.

"Andy Burnham, the former Health Secretary and an outsider for the leadership, said: “Peter loves the spotlight but it’s time to leave the stage.”

The paper reports that Mandelson is trying to assuage his critics inside the party by pledging to donate some of the profits from his book to Labour.

What do the Labour leadership candidates actually stand for?

By Jonathan Isaby

I have been wondering for some weeks what are the discernible differences between the contenders for the Labour leadership (the four ex-Cabinet members at any rate).

In covering past Tory leadership elections, I have always been able to assess the different approaches and political philosophies of each candidate, but have struggled to do this with the Labour hopefuls.

And I'm reassured that I'm not the only one.  The New Statesman's Mehdi Hasan, no less, uses his column in the new edition of the magazine to make this very point:

"This is Labour's first leadership contest in 16 years, but already there is a sense of drift and ennui. There is no great ideological difference between the leading candidates, with even the left-winger Diane Abbott doffing her cap to the achievements of the Blair-Brown years and offering familiar neo-Keynesian remedies to the country's economic problems."

"The leadership candidates are, by and large, ­intelligent, sincere and articulate - but their aims, values and, dare I say it, ideologies remain unclear, even after five weeks of exhausting campaigning. Despite the dozens of hustings, debates and interviews, none of the five candidates has yet been able to offer a convincing answer to that basic but all-important question: what do you stand for?"

Now Ed Balls says that even the cuts proposed by Labour at the election were too ambitious

By Jonathan Isaby

Gordon Brown's reputation for sound economic management was blasted out of the water some time ago.

But it is worth remembering that for many years his loyal henchman at the Treasury was one Ed Balls, as the picture here reminds us.

It is a screengrab from a BBC film - available online here - which features some delicious archive footage of Balls from his younger days and at his wedding to Yvette Cooper, as well as an interview just conducted by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.

And the Labour leadership contender has taken that opportunity to show that he too has no grasp of the seriousness of the debt problem which the last Labour government has bequeathed the country.

He says in reference to Labour's pledge made before the general election:

"Halving the deficit in four years by cutting public spending, I think, was a mistake.

"In government at the time in 2009 I always accepted collective responsibility, but at the time in 2009 I thought the pace of deficit reduction through spending cuts was not deliverable, I didn't think it could have been done."

Watch it all via the BBC website.

David Miliband admits that the Labour Government ignored local government for thirteen years

The Local Government Chronicle has the story:

Labour leadership contender David Miliband has admitted that his party took councillors for granted and ignored local government while in power. Ahead of a leadership hustings debate at the Local Government Association conference this week, Mr Miliband even pledged to invite Labour’s local government leader, at present David Sparks, into the shadow cabinet if he is elected party leader.

In a letter to Labour councillors he said: “In the past you have been taken for granted; that is not my approach.“I started this leadership campaign talking about the need to rebuild our party from top to bottom.”

Mr Miliband, who was local government minister in 2005-06, said the sector “did not have the prominence it should have had during our time in office [as] neither Tony nor Gordon took strengthening local government seriously enough... We devolved to Scotland and Wales but stopped there. Now is the time to look again at devolving to towns and cities across the country.”

Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has responded thus:

"I am glad David Miliband has finally come clean. There was a steady erosion of local democracy under the last Labour government with ministers routinely riding roughshod over the voice of communities. The coalition government is committed to making localism a reality, by putting people back in charge of their lives; putting businesses and councils back in charge of economic growth and putting town halls back in charge of local affairs."

Jonathan Isaby