"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith.
Ed Miliband's first PMQ was important because he was not elected by the majority of his own parliamentary party, so it was important that yesterday didn't end with a feeling of buyers remorse.
And, whilst I could pick holes all day at his stilted delivery, there can be no question that he won the battle on points.
Searching for Mr Cameron's weak point, the Labour leader decided to go hard on the decision to withdraw child benefit from higher rate taxpayers. He described last week's announcement as a "shambles" and, reflecting the political zeitgeist, not "fair".
Mr Miliband wanted to know how many stay-at-home mothers would lose out. When Mr Cameron didn't offer an answer, the Labour leader played a prepared card: "I may be new to this game, but I thought I asked the questions and you answered them."
Awarding the Prime Minister "nought out of two on straight answers", he said: "We should try to change the tone of these exchanges, but he must provide straight answers to straight questions." Later he deployed the best joke of the session, saying the child benefit announcement at the Conservative Party conference had been such a mess that Mr Cameron must have wished that the aborted BBC strike had gone ahead.
The Prime Minister's pre-cooked lines were less effective. Welcoming Mr Miliband to his new perch, he hoped that he would stay there for "many years to come". But it wasn't a new gag. George Osborne, the Chancellor, had used it against Mr Johnson the previous day.
Jubilant Labour MPs toasted their new leader in the Commons bars last night. But old heads knew not to get too carried away. "One session down, only four and a half years until the election," one quipped. They also knew that Mr Cameron would not underestimate his new opponent again.
My favourite moment was when he quoted Cameron stating that he "liked" child benefit and wouldn't change it at an event billed as "Cameron Direct".
It's early days, but he made a good start. He punctured the notion that Cameron is a straight talker. Cameron plays on this a lot, and it's simply not true.
We've all read how delighted the Tories are to be facing Ed Miliband rather than his brother David.
Now John Rentoul - Blair's biographer of all people - is warning Cameron that, if Miliband is a gift, then he is a Trojan bloody horse.
We know two things about how the general public will view the early clashes between Cameron and Miliband. One is that they know next to nothing about the new Labour leader; the other is that they tend to give a new face the benefit of the doubt. Cameron finds himself in a similar position to that of Tony Blair when, as Prime Minister, he faced his fifth and last Conservative leader.
Cameron's own arrival at the despatch box to which Ed Miliband will step up next Wednesday prompted furious discussion in Blair's office and between Blair and Brown. Blair took a "wait and see" approach, feeling his way to Cameron's weaknesses, sizing up his new opponent. Many Blair advisers, having read books about American politics, knew that it was a priority to "define your opponent before he can define himself", and urged him to paint Cameron as a Thatcherite, Norman Lamont's adviser and a public relations man.
Brown agreed with them. The most vivid image from the House of Commons in those days was of Brown almost pulling at Blair's arm, his body language shouting: "Let me at him!" But Blair understood the danger of seeming too nasty about his untested foil. When Brown got the chance, he called Cameron a "salesman", which came across as elitist, and then tried the "playing fields of Eton", which backfired because people thought Cameron was polite.
It is being reported elsewhere that Cameron is planning to use the term "Red Ed" as a rallying call for the Conservatives. I find this idiotic. It might be a nice piece of alliteration, but it is nowhere near the truth, and the public won't be so stupid as to accept it as such.
Indeed, Cameron's worry should be that, as the cuts become painful and real, Ed Miliband might be speaking out for an awful lot of people when he states that Cameron's coalition is going in too hard and too quick.
Mr Cameron attacked Mr Miliband's move to the left of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown after backing tax rises while delaying action to reduce the deficit. The stance left "a massive gaping hole of credibility in his entire approach", the Prime Minister told the The Sunday Telegraph.
It follows a claim by the Chancellor, George Osborne, that Labour had made a "historic mistake" in electing Mr Miliband: "They have chosen to move off the historic centre ground of British politics. He is a man without a mandate or an answer to the deficit, and that makes him weak."
This appears to be the new Tory strategy; to portray Miliband as having "no answer to the deficit", rather than simply having a different answer than the one they are committed to.
This is okay as long as cuts to reduce the deficit are merely something which we are all talking about; but this will change once the severity of the Tory cuts becomes clear.
At that point Miliband's calls for less severity will start to resonate with an awful lot of people.
Who is to say that a Labour leader with a basically leftish tilt, against a coalition finally making deep cuts, is going to be unpopular? Who is to say that he doesn't face a strategic opportunity at the next election, when that coalition includes the Liberal Democrats, who have an "itch to switch" to working with Labour? Not just because they feel an ideological closeness but because they want to stay independent by avoiding being glued to one party for too long.
One of the most intriguing things about Cameron's speech this week is how he will deal with Ed Miliband, a box marked Handle With Care.
The Conservative approach to Miliband so far has been an extremely childish one. Cameron can please his base with name calling this week, but the public won't like it, any more than they appreciated Gordon pointing out Cameron's public school past.
Miliband represents a serious threat to the Tories. His position in a new poll confirms this.
A YouGov/Sunday Times poll last night put Labour ahead on 41 per cent with the Tories at 39 and the Lib Dems on 11.
That's no gift to the Tories. And it's idiocy to think that you can sell it as such.
In and of itself, it's almost meaningless, but I note it nevertheless.
Ed Miliband ends his first week as Labour leader with his party ahead of the Tories in a Guardian/ICM poll for the first time since Gordon Brown ducked the chance of holding an election in 2007.
It's important only because it undermines Blair's claim that the party could not move a millimetre to the left of New Labour without courting disaster.
Ed Miliband is clearly somewhere to the left of his brother - the clear New Labour candidate - and yet is being given a cautious welcome by the public.
And, as I expected, the results are in many ways fuelled by public reaction to the coalition's planned cuts.
The poll also shows that the public mood is swinging against the scale and speed of spending cuts, with 43% now saying the cuts have gone too far compared with the 37% who think the balance is right. By contrast, in July 39% thought the balance right, and 38% said too far.
And all of this is happening before a single cut has been implemented.
Once Osborne actually starts to make cuts of between 25% and 40% I fully expect their to be outrage across the political spectrum. As I have always said, these are percentages which he has plucked from his ass. It's simply impossible to impose a cut of 25% on any public service without reducing it to a shadow of it's former self. And that's looking at his proposed cuts at the lower end of his scale.
Imagine the impact of a 25% cut on something as simple as your local bus service. One in four buses gone, the packed insides as more and more passengers are forced to cram in together. Now apply that to all other public services. Imagine the police force deprived of a quarter of their effectiveness. Imagine the strikes which are sure to break out when Osborne tries to impose these savage cuts across the board. We are already seeing house prices plummet in reaction to what Osborne has proposed, so it does not surprise me at all that Ed Miliband has seen a rise in the polls before most people even know what he stands for. People know that he does not favour cuts on the scale which Osborne proposes and that appears to be good enough for now to ensure that people consider giving him a chance.
All of this is taking place before a single cut has been implemented. Once they are implemented, I fully expect chaos to take place.
And, as expected, Labour's gains are made largely at the expense of the Liberal Democrats.
There has been a shift of opinion in Labour's favour since May, with support up almost eight points at the expense of the Lib Dems. Almost one in four people who voted Lib Dem are now thinking of voting Labour instead.
Once the reality of what Clegg has signed up to becomes apparent, and people re-read his comments stating that benefits should not be there 'to compensate the poor for their predicament', I fully expect there to be a progressive exodus from the Liberal Democrat party.
The right wing newspapers have nicknamed him "Red Ed", but I think Miliband has positioned himself perfectly to counter the economic savagery which the Con-Dem coalition have in store for us all.
So, it comes as no surprise that he has decided that he is not going to serve in his brothers cabinet.
In a departure marked by magnanimity and self-restraint, David Miliband said that in some ways the easy decision would have been to remain in the shadow cabinet, but that his instinct as soon as he lost the leadership race on Saturday was that he would have to go.
He will remain as a backbencher, and write, as well as taking time to recharge his intellectual batteries and spend more time with his two young children. Heartbroken supporters continued to grit their teeth in the interests of party unity, but one said: "David is giving Ed some space to carry on torching the house we built."
The papers seem determined to see this as an act of "magnanimity and self-restraint", but I find the whole thing petulant and self indulgent.
The words of his supporters, that he is "giving Ed some space to carry on torching the house we built", is much nearer to what, I suspect, is actually going on here. Indeed, it is through the words of his supporters that one gets some sense of the anger and frustration which is behind his decision to stand down.
Jon Cruddas, a David Miliband supporter, said he was alarmed by triumphalists claiming that they had got their party back. "There is a danger that we are going to be dominated by a metropolitan liberal faction that is rather removed from the real world," he said.
Lord Prescott praised David Miliband and said: "He helped create a record that we can be proud of, and I respect the fact that during the leadership campaign he chose to defend it."
David represents New Labour and, like most of New Labour, he can't bring himself to say sorry for the Iraq war.
After all, Blair and the rest of them "sincerely believed" that Saddam had WMD, so who can fault them for their "sincere beliefs"?
Ed has broken with that mindset by stating that the Iraq war was wrong, and that statement brought from David the most public display of anger he has shown in his entire career.
The victory of Ed represents the death of New Labour and, as his brother was the next nominal head of that group, it probably is for the best that he heads for the backbenches.
I worry that New Labour will continue to haunt the party, refusing to accept that their moment in the spotlight is over. They delivered three election victories, but they alienated the party from it's base.
The bitterness they are now expressing is based on the fact that they can't understand how the party could be so ungrateful as to reject them.
Tony Blair had warned that the party would face certain defeat should it "move a millimetre from New Labour", which they probably believe, despite the fact that polls suggest a break from New Labour would make 47% of people more likely to consider voting Labour.
One would have hoped that New Labour could be magnanimous enough to hide their bitterness for the sake of rallying around the new leader, but David's departure for the backbenches shows that they are not taking their defeat well.
God knows what they have got in store for us in the months to come.
In terms of style, there is clearly room for improvement, which I am sure he will achieve with time. But, as far as substance went, I thought he - at several points - got it bang on.
He started with where Labour got it right:
We changed Clause 4. We were right to do so.
Think of how we emphasised being tough on crime was as important as being tough on the causes of crime. We were right to do so.
Think of how we challenged the impression that we taxed for its own sake and that we were hostile to business. We were right to change.
And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.
The old way of thinking said that economic efficiency would always come at the price of social justice.
With the minimum wage, tax credits, the New Deal, they showed that was wrong.
I am proud that our government lifted hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, hundreds of thousands of pensioners out of poverty, proud that we created the highest levels of employment in Britain's history.
And he was also brave enough to say where we got it wrong.
"Iraq was an issue that divided our party and our country. Many sincerely believed that the world faced a real threat.
"I criticise nobody faced with making the toughest of decisions and I honour our troops who fought and died there. But I do believe that we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that.
"Wrong because that war was not a last resort, because we did not build sufficient alliances and because we undermined the United Nations.
"America has drawn a line under Iraq and so must we."
It was extraordinary to watch his brother David and many of other Labour cabinet members sitting there as the conference hall exploded into applause. The Labour party has been held back by Blair's insistence that, although there were no WMD, he couldn't apologise for getting rid of Saddam. Many of the Labour cabinet who took part in that decision have stuck to roughly the same formula when it comes to that subject.
In a few sentences, Ed Miliband blew away that tired logic and claimed the Labour party as his own. Blair and his refusal to apologise have been consigned to the dustbin of history.
And he also attacked the notion that the United Kingdom should behave as almost a satellite state circulating a far greater world power.
"Our alliance with America is incredibly important to us but we must always remember that our values must shape the alliances that we form and any military action that we take."
His brother was too tied to Blair's legacy to ever strike such a distance between his regime and Blair's, which is why Ed is looking ever more like the most sensible choice for a party which feels the need to move on from policies - and acts of sheer stubbornness - which cost us five million voters in as many years.
However his comments about Iraq appear to have annoyed his brother, who was filmed asking Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman: "You voted for it, why are you clapping?"
The Blairites have been voted out of power and - as David's comments show - they are, even now, unwilling to admit that the sheer scale of the disaster which was the Iraq invasion contributed to Labour's loss and to their own in this leadership contest.
Ed Miliband represents a chance to move on from all that.
And he also refused to allow Nick Clegg to claim the mantle as the person most concerned with privacy and civil liberties when he stated that he would not allow the Tories or Lib Dems to "take ownership of the British tradition of liberty".
These are Labour and Liberal Democrat values, which Blair sold out, imagining that we would sacrifice our privacy for his empty promises - as 7-7 showed - of guaranteed security.
Clegg is to be applauded for his stance on civil liberties, but it is his willingness to swallow right wing economic dogma which will kill him with progressives.
Miliband has put a clear shaft of light between the Con-Dem coalition and Labour. And, I suspect, Clegg's lurch to the right - and the consequent loss of progressives votes for the Liberal Democrats - might make this a very good place for him to pitch his tent.
And, after Blair decided that New Labour would be pro-Israel, without bothering to inform the rest of us that we were now officially on the side of the occupiers, it was heartening to hear this man - whose parents fled the Holocaust - say this:
And let me say this, as Israel ends the moratorium on settlement building, I will always defend the right of Israel to exist in peace and security. But Israel must accept and recognise in its actions the Palestinian right to statehood.
That is why the attack on the Gaza Flotilla was so wrong.
And that is why the Gaza blockade must be lifted and we must strain every sinew to work to make that happen.
They were words that would never have come out of Blair's lips. And conference responded enthusiastically.
As I say, it could have been a more polished performance, but he gets ten out of ten for the substance of what he said.
Today, Miliband buried Blair. And everyone watching knew it. That's a pretty audacious start for a new leader.
There were no great game-changing announcements such as when Tony Blair signalled the abolition of the party's Clause Four. There were no breathtaking oratorical flourishes. But in an hour- long address Labour's new leader guided his party away from the traumas and contorted positioning of the recent past and pointed it in a new direction.
As such it was the most daring speech from a Labour leader delivered for a long time.
You have just become the 10th postwar leader of the Labour party. It is a sobering thought that only five of them (Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown) became prime minister; only three (Attlee, Wilson and Blair) won elections; and just one (Blair) managed to secure more than a single term with a decent parliamentary majority. After being removed from office, Labour tends to spend a long time out of power: after 1951, 13 long years; after 1979, 18 even longer years; after 2010… Well, that is now in your hands.
This ignores the fact that Labour, prior to their latest election defeat, had just won three elections in a row, and had replaced the Conservatives as the natural government of the UK. Indeed, the Conservatives were so mistrusted that the public couldn't bring themselves to give them an outright victory even in the midst of an economic meltdown.
And one seriously has to wonder, once the scale of Osborne's cuts become clear, whether they will survive the orgy of financial savagery in which they are indulging. It is undoubtedly true that everyone agrees that cuts have to be made, but no-one is convinced that the deficit has to be cleared in one term, as the Con-Dem coalition are insisting upon.
So I think Rawnsley's view of things is, as always, slightly skewered towards the Tories. Jonathan Freedland, on the other hand, thinks that Ed won because he was neither Brown nor Blair.
Almost uniquely in the war between the Blair and Brown camps, Ed Miliband somehow emerged unscathed – Tony Blair's team in Number 10 used to refer to the younger Miliband as "the emissary from Planet Fuck", one of the few aides to Gordon Brown with whom they could have a conversation free of expletive-filled abuse. That fact, more perhaps than any other, explains why he has just become, albeit by the narrowest of margins, the 18th leader of the Labour party.
Despite rave reviews, which became more glowing the longer the contest went on, Ed Balls's campaign was hobbled from the start by his association with Brown. By Balls's own admission, he just couldn't get past the tag of Brown's closest confidant.
David Miliband suffered similarly, compromised by his status as the candidate of Blairite continuity. Tony Blair's not-so-coded backing for him, along with Peter Mandelson's warning that his younger brother would lead Labour into an "electoral cul-de-sac", may well have been a kiss of death.
I think Freedland is right. The party grew sick of Tony Blair which is why he was driven from office. We embraced him for as long as he delivered election victories until, eventually, even that was not a good enough reason to have him around. Gordon was an honourable man, but he lost.
David Miliband and Ed Balls were both seen as being firmly in the Blair and Brown camps respectively.
Ed managed, somehow, to avoid that trap.
But, this morning, one inevitably feels for David, the vanquished of the two brothers. I didn't want to see him elected, as I thought he was far too much of a Blairite, but it is, nevertheless, impossible not to feel for him in his present situation. For so long the crown had appeared as if it was his for the taking. Indeed, during the premiership of Brown there was often talk of when Miliband - always meaning David - would make his move.
The Miliband brothers were brought up in a tight-knit family. Their fondness for one another was evident last night – at the very moment one brother reached the summit but, in so doing, left the other's life's ambition in ruins.
Ed's coronation was an extraordinarily poignant moment that David Miliband had feared, in the latter stages of the contest, he might have to confront. When it came he did so nobly. Afterwards he said the moment was Ed's. He was as thrilled for him as he was disappointed for himself. He made it clear that he loved his brother and that now, with the contest over, he wanted nothing other than for him to succeed as Labour leader.
But if managing the choreography of defeat was difficult, the process of deciding on his own future will be nothing short of agonising. His aides admitted, even before the result, that if David lost he would be "totally shattered". He would need time to think about the future. Decisions would not be rushed. It was not correct, they said, that he had decided already that he would promptly announce his intention to serve in his brother's shadow cabinet. "David will take his time," said one of his team. "In that sort of moment you can't rush. He will spend time with Louise [his wife] and their boys and think hard about what is best." Last night he merely congratulated his brother and called on the party to unite behind him. The reality is that David Miliband now has to think entirely anew about the rest of his professional life.
I hope David continues in the shadow cabinet. I would like to see him and his brother serve in a future Labour government.
His greatest mistake was that, like Blair, he never made any attempt to placate the left wing of the party. His brother did, which is why - by the narrowest of margins - he is the one left holding the crown.
That, and the fact that he seemed to transcend the Blair-Brown wars. Now, Ed has the job, and it would be great to watch his brother stick around and support him in the gargantuan task of getting Labour back into power. I hope David feels that he can do so.
It would be perfectly understandable were he to now fix his gaze towards Europe, but I would prefer it were he to remain very much in Labour's inner circle.
Ed Miliband is the new Labour leader, it has been announced at a special conference in Manchester.
He beat brother David by the wafer thin margin of 50.65% to 49.35% after second, third and fourth preference votes came into play.
Ed Balls was third, Andy Burnham fourth and Diane Abbott last in the ballot of MPs, members and trade unionists.
Mr Miliband, 40, replaces acting leader Harriet Harman in the contest triggered by the resignation of Gordon Brown.
I think that's great news. I had hoped for Ed but thought the party would embrace David because he was much more the New Labour candidate than Ed was.
At last there is a sliver of difference between the Tories and the Labour party and, come the next election, with what I fully expect to be the complete collapse of any left wing support going towards the Liberal Democrats, Ed has a chance of becoming the next Prime Minister.
And, until then, Labour will at least have a left wing voice to offer as an alternative to Cameron and Clegg's. He campaigned on "turning the page on New Labour"and beginning to work at taking back the Labour heartland, lost during the Blair years, especially in places like Glasgow East.
The newspapers will, predictably, define him as "red Ed", but I think the public are intelligent enough to see past this name calling.
Blair made it very clear that he wanted to see David elected as Labour leader and this rejection appears to mean that Blair's hold on the party is well and truly over. And not a moment too soon.
In his victory speech, he vowed to unify the party, telling delegates: "The Labour Party in the future must be a vehicle that doesn't just attract thousands of young people but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people who see us as their voice in British politics today."
He paid tribute to his predecessors Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, but added: "We lost the election and we lost it badly. My message to the country is this: I know we lost trust, I know we lost touch, I know we need to change.
"Today a new generation has taken charge of Labour, a new generation that understands the call to change."
I am surprised, I really thought David would squeak past Ed. But I couldn't be happier with the result.
Why the Hell should anyone care about who Tony Blair thinks should lead the Labour Party?
The contenders for the Labour leadership are bracing themselves for an intervention this week by Tony Blair, whose memoirs will be published as ballot papers drop on doormats across Britain.
The former prime minister was reported today to have remarked that Ed Miliband, who is making a pitch for traditional Labour voters, would be a "disaster".
Blair has been careful to ration his interventions in British politics since he stood down as prime minister in 2007, seeking to avoid Margaret Thatcher's mistake of acting as a "backseat driver" to John Major.
But the former prime minister, who is recording an interview with Andrew Marr to be aired on BBC2 on Wednesday night to coincide with publication of his memoirs, knows he will face questions about the Miliband brothers, who are the frontrunners for the Labour leadership.
This is the man who dragged the Labour party so far to the right that rock solid Labour seats like Glasgow East started to peel off towards the SNP. This is the man who lied repeatedly to us about what we apparently KNEW about Saddam's WMD and led us into the worst US foreign policy debacle since Suez. This is the man who appeared in front of the Chilcot Inquiry and found it impossible to even express regret for the loss of British troops.
So, why is the Labour party poised to listen to what he has to say now?
Blair believes the older Miliband has grown into a highly skilled politician and communicator who understands the central tenet of New Labour: that electoral oblivion will follow if the party resorts to its "comfort zone". Jibes this week by Ed Miliband about the dangers of remaining in the "New Labour comfort zone" have confirmed Blair's view that the younger brother would consign Labour to an even longer spell in opposition.
The Mail on Sunday reported today that Blair believes a victory for Ed Miliband would be a "disaster". This is an authoritative reflection of the views of the former prime minister, whose supporters have made clear his unease about Ed Miliband at social occasions in recent weeks.
Blair ran the Labour party as a Tory-lite organisation, often using the excuse - on subjects such as education funding - that he had to do what he was doing as the Tories would only do it more brutally than he was doing it.
He was never, in his heart, a Labour politician. Which is why he often mocked left wing critics of what he was doing as "Guardian readers". He saw many of us as hopeless Utopians, as unrealistic dreamers. According to Tony's logic, the swing to the right was the only way to keep the Daily Mail reader on board. And that had limited success. Often, Tory friends of mine would tell me how wonderful they thought Tony was and lament the fact that he wasn't a Tory as they would have loved to vote for him. I would suggest to them that perhaps he was a Tory which is why they all loved him so much.
But it honestly baffles me as to why we should listen to him now. I know he brought us electoral success, but at what a bloody price? He achieved this by occupying the middle ground and forcing the Tories further and further to the right. The problem with this plan was that Cameron caught wind of it and told his party to vote for Labour policies when they were, in reality, Tory policies in disguise. At that point Tony's great plan collapsed as the Labour backbenchers were outraged that they were being so right wing that even the Tories were backing what they were doing.
And it was during the reign of Tony that the Labour party went so far to the right that the Liberal Democrats became the voice of left wing politics in Britain.
So, the blessing by Blair will be as much of a curse to David Miliband as it is anything else.
David Miliband makes it clear that Labour has to reassemble the coalition that handed Blair his victories. In an interview with G2, which took place during a tour of community groups in Milton Keynes and Stevenage, he says: "Unless we start winning back the Milton Keynes, we'll never win power. We've got just 10 seats out of 212 in the south, excluding London."
He makes clear he has no patience with his brother's criticism of the governments of Blair and Gordon Brown. "I'm not going to run away from the best of what we've done over the last 13 years and I'm not going to reduce our crime policy to ID cards, or reduce our foreign policy to Iraq. We did lots of other things as well. We shouldn't get into a situation where just because we find one thing people disagree with, we trash the whole of it."
So, Blair is right to identify young David as his successor, but for many of us that is not, in itself, a good thing. Like Blair, David can find no fault at all with the New Labour experiment. But I certainly can.
With each election New Labour fought, the turnout at every general election fell lower that the last. Many argued that people had lost all interest in politics. Then a million people took to the streets in protest against the Iraq war and it became clear that people still cared passionately about politics, they simply didn't care for the choices which were on offer to them.
The country deserves better than two parties offering essentially the same right wing bollocks. Which is why we should pay no attention to anything which Blair has to say.
The election of the next Labour leader has come down to the two brothers, David (on the right of this picture) and Ed Miliband (left). In my heart, fast sinking, I feel sure that David will win. But, if the Labour party is to have any chance of reinventing itself along non-Blairite lines, then Ed is it's only hope.
David Miliband, long Tony Blair's heir apparent, entered the campaign the undisputed favourite but has seen his lead whittled away. It's not hard to see why. The former foreign secretary is an assured politician, with more recognisably social democratic instincts than his mentor. But even after 13 years of New Labour in office, a catastrophic war against Iraq – for which he voted – widening inequality, a clampdown on civil liberties and the loss of five million Labour votes, he has not seen fit to repudiate a single significant decision of the governments of Blair and Gordon Brown. Beyond the broadest-brush self-criticisms and a reheated Blairite communitarianism, the elder Miliband appears, as Alan Johnson puts it, unable to think of a "single issue on which Labour got the balance wrong".
Which is hardly a recipe for winning back Labour's lost voters – or ditching the Blairite passion for deregulated markets, low taxes on the wealthy and neocon adventures that paved the way for the party's defeat. This is a man who as foreign secretary out-hawked George Bush over the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, and now faces difficult questions over complicity with torture on his watch both as part of the government's own inquiry and expected legal actions.
I spoke at the time about Miliband's ridiculous threats to Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He fell so quickly into the Bush/McCain camp on this one that it made me despair.
If Labour are to learn anything from it's recent defeat, it is surely that Blair's attempt to woo middle Britain, whilst successful up to a point, moved the party too far to the right to the point that Labour found itself losing seats like Glasgow East; the 25th strongest Labour seat in the country.
I spoke at the time of why I thought that defeat had occurred:
This problem started under Tony Blair who used to speak of "Guardian readers" as a form of insult. An extraordinary way for a political leader to speak of his supporters, but Blair consoled himself that, come election day, we had no-one else to vote for other than Labour, so he didn't have to concern himself with what we thought. He could concentrate on appealing to the floating voter somewhere in the middle.
The election of Brown was supposed to change all that, but it hasn't. He still concerns himself with pushing through 42 day detention bills and, most recently, reforming the benefits system in order to make people clean graffiti and perform other menial tasks before they can collect any form of benefits.Glasgow East has let him know what it thinks of these regressive policies.
For too long the Labour Party have taken it's core voters for granted, pushing Tory policies upon us whilst fully aware that we did not want them.
And yes, rising oil prices and the cost of food will have played their part in this disaster, but this is no longer a case of the middle class losing their faith in New Labour, this is the Labour heartland finding that the SNP represent their values much more than the Labour Party do.
David Miliband was very much a part of the mindset which led to Glasgow East deciding that the SNP were more in tune with their political heart than New Labour were. It would be disastrous should the party decide to elect him as their next leader.
He is, of course, backed to the hilt by the New Labour establishment and the rich city financiers who also backed Blair, but this should be seen as a warning rather than endorsement.
His brother is an altogether different proposition.
By contrast, his brother has at least begun to absorb the lessons of New Labour's failure and rejected its triangulation, social authoritarianism, embrace of flexible labour markets and support for tuition fees. He has also taken the essential step of denouncing the Iraq war, which he opposed at the time. Most important, the former energy secretary has recognised that most of the votes Labour lost were working class – and of the middle-class defectors, the majority went to the Liberal Democrats.
It is only by addressing that failure of representation and rebuilding an electoral coalition of working class and middle class voters that Labour will return to power. But in response to even these cautious common sense shifts, Ed Miliband has absurdly been accused of "Bennism" and retreating to Labour's "comfort zone" by Tory pundits and Blairite opponents. But as the younger Miliband argues, "remaining in the New Labour comfort zone would consign us to opposition".
Of course it's essential to capture the centre ground to win elections. But when the Cameron government is straining to present itself as "progressive", and the Brown government's most popular policy was raising the top rate of tax to 50%, New Labour's veterans have evidently lost track of where the centre ground now actually is.
Blair's New Labour was unashamedly centre right, which is why the collapse in support for it came from the working class. They knew Tory policies when they saw them.
Should Labour elect David Miliband over his brother Ed, then they will be showing us that they have learnt nothing from that collapse in their support. It collapsed because New Labour stopped representing the people who believed in it's central message. Even the "Guardian readers" started to look elsewhere, possibly towards the Liberal Democrats, a mistake I feel sure that they will never repeat given Clegg's betrayal of Labour and Liberal values. A betrayal by which he managed - amazingly - to outdo Blair's.
Seumas Milne brilliantly describes the choice on offer here:
The election of Ed would offer Labour the chance to begin to carve out a genuinely progressive alternative to what is already a savagely regressive administration. The risk of a David win is the entrenchment of a New Labour politics whose time has gone – and a retreat to a better yesterday.
New Labour was the lefts answer to 18 years of electoral defeat. But, the public now fears the Conservatives as much as it feared Labour during the eighties, which is why it denied them an outright victory.
Labour does not need an eighties answer to a 21st century challenge. We need to be brave. We need to reject the mistakes of the Blair years, and electing David will mean that we have learned nothing.
It says everything about the tabloid culture of British politics that we are hearing that David Miliband has visited Gillian Duffy - the woman branded "a bigot" by Gordon Brown during the last election - and that we are being breathlessly told that he has secured her support.
It appears that the shadow foreign secretary has managed to sway Duffy back after meeting her for a coffee and chat over the weekend.
She told the Daily Mirror she found him "very intelligent but also down to earth" when he visited her home in Rochdale for "a cup of tea and a chat".
Are we now going the way of the US in searching for our own Joe the Plumber? That one citizen who will come to represent the disenfranchised millions?
I find that profoundly depressing. I've nothing against the woman herself, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but what is Miliband playing at travelling to Rochdale to secure her backing?
As David Miliband goes to extraordinary lengths to prevent the truth of what happened to Binyam Mohamed from ever becoming public, a US judge has found that there is "credible" evidence that Mohamed was tortured at the behest of Washington.
The declassified legal opinion states:
"Binyam Mohamed's trauma lasted two long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in plots to imperil Americans. The government does not dispute this evidence."
Miliband continues to make the ludicrous argument that the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the story of Mohamed ever becomes public, but it has now been acknowledged by a US judge so I am unsure what validity Miliband's argument continues to have.
Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the human rights group, Reprieve, described the US ruling as "another nail in the coffin of the British government's attempts to cover up" its role in Mohamed's treatment.
"Given that a US judge has found all this credible, and the US has refused to challenge or deny any of it, why does the UK continue to fight the release of the infamous 'seven paragraphs' in the Binyam Mohamed judgment?" Stafford Smith said. "Presumably it is because those seven paragraphs expose the UK to great embarrassment."
The only conclusion I can come to - and I admit that I am guessing here - is that there must be something in those seven paragraphs which imply British complicity in Mohamed's treatment.
I can think of no other reason for Miliband's behaviour. After all, even US courts and the US government itself does not dispute what Mohamed is claiming, so why is Miliband going to such lengths to prevent us hearing what those paragraphs contain?
Israel yesterday reacted furiously to the news that a warrant had been issued in Britain for the arrest of its former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, warning that the move by a London court threatened bilateral relations, and issuing a threat to end official visits to Britain unless there was a change in the law.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the move "an absurdity". An embarrassed Foreign Office, meanwhile, distanced itself from the legal action, saying that "Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British Government" for the good of the two country's relations.
But the British ambassador in Jerusalem, Tom Phillips, nonetheless received a dressing-down from senior Israeli officials. Naor Gilon, deputy director of the European division, told Mr Phillips that "if this persists the situation would force us to consider whether officials should go to Britain or not." According to a statement, Uzi Arad, an aide to Mr Netanyahu, demanded the British Government take parliamentary action to "act against this immoral phenomenon".
So, according to the Israelis, the British government obeying international law is an "immoral phenomenon."
The concept of "universal jurisdiction" is central to international law as it is obvious that anyone who commits war crimes - and retains power in their own country - is highly unlikely to face charges at home, therefore, it is essential that they can be prosecuted in any country that can arrest them.
This was the principle which led to the arrest of Pinochet in London. Indeed, the Israelis took it further than any other nation when they sent Mossad agents to Argentina to seize Adolf Eichmann, so the Israelis cannot be against the principle, as much as they are expressing horror that such a principle could ever be applied to them.
Despite the fact that the UN have voted to approve the Goldstone report, which states that Israel committed war crimes, we still have people like Netanyahu expressing outrage and demanding that Britain change it's laws to prevent Israeli politicians facing the possibility of arrest.
"By a very small change of legislation, the issue could be at least controlled if not totally wiped off the map," the Israeli information minister, Yuli Edelstein, told AP. An Israeli foreign ministry statement warned that Britain could not "fulfil an active role in the peace process" if Israeli leaders are unable to visit Britain.
Last night the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, reassured Israel that it was "a strategic partner and a close friend of the UK" whose leaders "must be able to visit and have a proper dialogue with the British Government". He added that London was "looking urgently" at ways in which the "UK system might be changed in order to avoid this sort of situation arising again".
Quite why Miliband is bending over backwards like this is utterly beyond me. Israeli leaders already enjoy diplomatic immunity whilst travelling in Britain, the problem here was that, as she is no longer in government, Livni no longer enjoys such immunity.
At the moment Livni has no "active role in the peace process" so the threat - that Britain will be excluded from the process should Livni not be allowed to travel freely - strikes me as a particularly dishonest one.
And, make no mistake, Livni was utterly complicit and unapologetic about the actions which the UN have decided were war crimes.
More than two weeks into the war she told Israeli radio: "We have to prove to Hamas that we have changed the equation. Israel is not a country upon which you fire missiles and it does not respond. It is a country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild and this is a good thing."
"Going wild". That wildness resulted in the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.
And, as I say, she has never expressed a single word of remorse.
Ms Livni was unmoved by news of the warrant. "From my viewpoint I would take all the [same] decisions again, one by one," she said in a speech to the Institute for National Security Research.
So I don't think British law should be changed to accommodate the Israelis on this matter. Rather the Israelis should learn that they can't "go wild" whenever they go to war and that there are international standards which they are expected to upkeep.
When you don't abide by those standards then there is always the possibility that one could find oneself labelled a war criminal. And, after the carnage in Gaza, that's a label which Livni may very well have earned.
Netanyahu, and to a lesser extent Livni, appear to be arguing that they can carry out any atrocity as long as they can say that they are "fighting terror".
The world, through the United Nations, has already rejected their argument. That's why Miliband is wrong to propose changing Britain's laws so that this can't happen again.
The notion of "universal jurisdiction" is one which the Israelis themselves have deployed. Their objection in this case is simply that such a principle should now be applied to themselves.
It really is extraordinary to see a democratically elected government go to such lengths to try to stop what it has taken part in from becoming public.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, is appealing against six high court judgments ruling that CIA information on Mohamed's treatment, and what MI5 and MI6 knew about it, must be disclosed.
In a case which lawyers on all sides agree is unprecedented, counsel for the Guardian and other media organisations, Mohamed and two civil rights groups, Liberty and Justice, will argue tomorrow that the public interest in disclosing the role played by British and US agencies in unlawful activities far outweighs any claim about potential threats to national security.
Miliband's lawyers will tell Britain's three most senior appeal court judges, led by the lord chief justice, Igor Judge, that if the CIA material is disclosed the US might cut off the supply of intelligence to the UK, thus harming national security.
Miliband's argument has already been rejected by judges who have seen the seven redacted passages in question, and they have stated that there is nothing in there which anyone could reasonably claim to be intelligence, but much in there which might embarrass both the American and British governments.
"What is contained in those seven redacted paragraphs gives rise to an arguable case of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment".
The judges stated after hearing arguments put by Miliband's lawyers: "It was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters."
They added: "Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials, or officials of another state, where the evidence was relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be".
The two high court judges continued: "The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security is inimical to the rule of law," they ruled.
"A vital public interest requires ... that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain ... Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of democracy," they added.
The judges have already stated that Miliband's claim "lacks credibility on its face", and yet here he is still making the same flawed argument; that the law should protect wrongdoers if the American government threatens to withhold intelligence from the UK should this information be made public.
Miliband's lawyers are bringing up a case from last year which also caused a national disgrace and asking that this example be followed again.
They point to a law lords ruling last year that the Serious Fraud Office could not pursue corruption allegations over arms sales by BAE Systems, Britain's biggest weapons maker, to Saudi Arabia because the Saudi government had threatened to stop intelligence-sharing with Britain. The case, in which Sumption also represented the government, has been described by critics as weakening the UK's reputation for observing the rule of law.
If Miliband's logic is followed to it's natural conclusion then any nation which tortures need only threaten to withhold intelligence and their secrets would be considered safe from disclosure by the British government.
It's a rather pathetic argument as it doesn't rely on any moral reasoning, rather it is simply a threat. Normally one wouldn't expect one's government to cave in in the face of threats from foreign powers, so one can only conclude that it is in this Labour government's interest that this information be kept secret.
I read stuff like this and find myself shaking my head that this is taking place whilst a Labour government is in power:
The government wants allegations that it was complicit in the torture by the US of Britons held as terrorism suspects to be heard in secret.
In documents seen by the Guardian, lawyers for the government argue it must be allowed to present evidence to the high court with the public excluded, otherwise Britain's relations with other countries and its national security could be damaged. The government also wants its evidence kept secret from defence lawyers.
Lawyers for seven men who are now all back in the UK after the US released them without charge will tomorrow go to the high court in London to fight the government's attempt, which they say is designed to cover the embarrassment of ministers and the security services.
Surely we have the right to know whether or not our own government were engaged in any way in the torture of British citizens? On what George Orwell inspired planet is it possible for a British government to put forward the notion that it is not in our interests to know this?
The claims that the US would cease to share intelligence with us - should this information be made public - was recently dismissed by two senior judges and Miliband, our foreign secretary, is now contesting that ruling.
In the high court, lawyers acting for the seven will urge Mr Justice Silber to reject MI5 and MI6 arguments that they should be able to rely on secret "closed evidence" to make their case.
The government filed a witness statement from the Treasury solicitor David Mackie outlining its defence. In it he explains the damage ministers and their lawyers believe could be caused if information held by the security services is publicly released. Mackie says in his witness statement that informants and the agencies methods would be jeopardised: "Disclosure of the information … would be likely to assist those whose purpose is to injure the security of the UK and whose actions in the past have shown that they are willing to kill innocent civilians."
Mackie then details the damage the government believes could be caused if material held by the Foreign Office is disclosed: "The disclosure of some of the information held by the FCO could prejudice the United Kingdom's bilateral relationships. The effective conduct of international relations depends on maintaining trust and confidence between governments."
So, we are back to the "America won't share info with us if we give their secrets away" argument. The only problem with that argument is that the two senior judges have already told us that the information we are talking about is neither "secret" nor can it be considered "intelligence". This information is simply embarrassing, and it is for that reason that both the US and UK governments are seeking to keep it quiet.
National security is not at risk here. But Tony Blair's image might be severely dented were it to be known that the UK had assisted the US when it came to the torture of some of our own subjects.
Louise Christian, a lawyer who represents Mubanga, said: "We believe the government is not trying to protect national security but trying to protect itself from embarrassment and from being sued for complicity in torture."
Sapna Malik, a solicitor acting for Mohamed said: "That the government is seeking to introduce such unconstitutional and unfair measures by the back door only serves to further raise suspicions about what they are trying to hide."
As always, national security is the blanket cover the government claim to avoid anything becoming public which might make them look bad.
I have every faith that the judges will dismiss this blatant attempt by the government to cover their own tracks.
It really is Orwellian in the extreme that the government can even be making the case which it is making. We are now being told that it is not in our national interest to know if our own government engaged in or assisted in torturing it's own citizens. It simply couldn't get more Big Brother than that.
I attended a screening last night of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, a new film directed by Polly Nash with Andy Worthington, which sets out in chronological order the story of how the camp at Guantánamo came into being and the stories of some of the people who ended up in that dreadful place.
Answering questions afterwards were Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes, two of the people who suffered dreadfully under the Bush administration's foray into complete illegality and war crimes.
The film was intense and powerful, mostly because it did not attempt in any way to emotionalise the story it was laying out before us. Worthington, Clive Stafford Smith and others simply told the story of how the US abandoned Habeas Corpus and found itself in a kind of war with it's own legal system, whilst Begg and Deghayes told the tale of what it was like to be on the receiving end of this historic abberation of justice.
Afterwards, during the question and answer session, Begg and Deghayes spoke of Shaker Aamer, who is still incarcerated in that dreadful place, and of how we need to continue to put pressure on David Miliband to ensure that he is released.
What struck me most during the question and answer session was how funny both men could be, despite the ordeal they had endured. And Begg especially highlighted how, even when one felt that all hope was lost, the occasional word of kindness from an unnamed US guard gave him a belief that one day normality would return and that the nightmare would be over.
Both men are obviously most concerned that the remaining prisoners held in Guantanamo should be tried or released. It's not a novel concept. Indeed, it's the cornerstone of our legal system. We put together evidence against people who we think have committed crimes and we prosecute them.
The way in which the evidence against both these men, and Shaker Aamer, was compiled is shocking to witness. It begins with a presumption of guilt, or at the very least the notion that it is for the accused to prove his innocence rather than for his jailer to make a case against him.
It ends in torture and abuse and with prisoners admitting to meetings with people who were already in US custody at the time when the meeting is alleged to have taken place.
One thing struck me as I watched. This is a film about some of the darkest days in the history of the United States. Days that future generations will look back on with both shame and puzzlement. How, they will ask, was it possible for the Constitution to be set aside in this way? Why did no-one stop them? Where was Congress?
However, even as we speak, this nightmare is still ongoing for more than 200 others.
In one of the most moving sections of the evening, Omar Deghayes spoke of what he felt that he had lost. He didn't lament the loss of his eye, nor did he list the torture he had suffered as the worst thing which happened to him, rather he spoke of missing out on the growth of his young son, of missing those formative years when his son changed from a baby into a young boy.
It's a loss which can never be undone. And it's a price which each person locked up in that dreadful place continues to pay with each day that passes.
Write to someone to put pressure for the release of Shaker Aamer and the closing of this disgraceful chapter in American history. And remember, closing Guantanamo Bay alone will never be enough. Bagram continues to operate. The principle here must be that detention without trial is simply unacceptable. What needs to be restored is the principle of Habeas Corpus. Who could believe that it would be necessary to fight for such a thing at the start of the 21st century?
Write to:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown 10 Downing Street, London SW1A 2AG
and/or
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AA
The British government told the British courts that, if they published reports into torture committed upon Binyam Mohamed whilst in US custody, the US would cease to share intelligence information with the UK and we would, therefore, be at risk from terrorist attack.
In a devastating judgment, two senior judges roundly dismissed the foreign secretary's claims that disclosing the evidence would harm national security and threaten the UK's vital intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US.
In what they described as an "unprecedented" and "exceptional" case, to which the Guardian is a party, they ordered the release of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA told British officials – and maybe ministers – about Ethiopian-born Mohamed before he was secretly interrogated by an MI5 officer in 2002.
"The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security is inimical to the rule of law," Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones ruled. "Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of democracy."
The British government are, of course, appealing against this finding; arguing that we will all die, or some other such nonsense, should our American cousins be embarrassed in any way.
But the British court has got it right. What could possibly be more "inimical to the rule of law" than a British court - the very place where law breaking should be punished - bending over backwards to suppress evidence of wrongdoing on account of the fact that it was a government which had committed the offence in question?
Indeed, they even question Miliband's assertion that what they are being asked to suppress is "secret intelligence" at all.
There was a "compelling public interest" to disclose what Miliband wanted to suppress, they said; there was nothing in the seven-paragraph summary that had anything remotely to do with "secret intelligence".
"In our view, as a court in the United Kingdom, a vital public interest requires, for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom, that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain in the United Kingdom."
I have no idea whether or not we will ever get to see this evidence, but the courts have got it right when they state that this deserves to be in the public domain. Courts are not there to hide tales of government wrongdoing, even when the government insisting on secrecy is that of a foreign ally.
The truth might embarrass the United States, but that would be no bad thing if it revealed evidence which shows that an innocent man had been tortured.
Perhaps that embarrassment would go some way to ensuring that such heinous crimes are less likely to be committed in the future.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
