The Green Box

Yesterday the Labour Party committed to start the long journey back to power. A new generation was entrusted with transforming our party and making sure that, once again, we stand up for the interests of families across Britain. We have a lot of ground to make up if we are to rebuild the broad coalition of support that swept us to power in 1997. My aim is to show that our party is on the side of the squeezed middle in our country and everyone who has worked hard and wants to get on. My aim is to return our party to power. This is a tough challenge. It is a long journey. But our party has made the first step in electing a leader from a new generation.

This is the party that founded the NHS in the 1940s, helped take Britain into the ­modern industrial age in the 1960s and, most ­recently, rebuild our schools and hospitals after 18 years of Tory rule. At its best, Labour is the party of the working people of Britain and I am proud to lead it. I will lead a strong team which draws on all the talents of my fellow candidates in this leadership election and people across our party.

This is catastrophic for the Labour Party. I’ve worked with Ed in government. He could not make a decision to save his life – he does not want to know about the hard stuff. With Ed, it was all civil liberties, electoral reform and climate change, the sort of issues that will not win us crucial votes. If we want to get back to power, we have to retain our economic credibility. We have to show we’re serious about cutting the deficit. It’s no surprise that Neil Kinnock backed Ed. Like Kinnock, Ed wears his heart on his sleeve but you don’t win Elections like that. You need a hard economic approach.

Ed Miliband as leader is something the Tories have been praying for. They reckon that he will drag the party off onto a long march into lefty irrelevance, largely because he is a leading deficit-denier. It helps also that – inspired by Gordon Brown – he will cement Labour’s break with the Blair rule about keeping marginal income tax rates reasonable. But are they right to be so delighted?

At last the Labour party has a leader who is both capable of winning the next general election and actually believes in the principles of social democracy. Ed Miliband's greatest strength – more than either his undoubted intellect or obvious lucidity – is the courage of his conviction.

In the early years after Tony Blair became Prime Minister, large sections of the Conservative Party didn’t want to change. Active Tories and ‘friends’ in the media wanted the party to stick to its guns in the hope that voters would realise the error of their ways. At the 2001 general election the voters rejected the largely unchanged Conservative Party. And in 2005 they rejected it again. Only when David Cameron launched a concerted campaign to change the Conservative brand did the party start winning parliamentary by-elections and, eventually, enough seats to end Labour’s thirteen year grip on Downing Street. It is my view that David Cameron saved the Conservative Party although my recent analysis of the 2010 campaign looked at the range of things that might have delivered a majority government.

I am still stunned by what we have just seen in the conference hall in Manchester today. There is no point in pretending Ed's defeat of David isn't one of the most dramatic stories in modern British political history. This is a tale of ruthless and focused determination, based on what Ed regarded as an importantly different set of politics. The result is that the Labour party has today moved clearly on from Tony Blair. Yet it was so close: David was ahead in the first three rounds and it was only at the last that Ed pipped his elder brother. David was the first on his feet. He embraced his brother warmly. He listened intently. And he kept his smile on throughout. But there is no hiding the fact that what has happened here today is a tragedy for him, one of the brightest and best in the Labour movement.

Dear Ed...Congratulations! It's been quite a contest, mostly good-natured if a little too long. All the candidates acquitted themselves well and emerged with heads held high. But to the victor the spoils. Now the hard work begins.

Ed Miliband is desperately keen his brother accepts the job of Shadow Chancellor. As I reported earlier Ed Miliband plans to offer his brother the job in next few days. "He must accept it," one of Ed Miliband's senior advisers told me tonight. "He HAS to accept it." Otherwise the Ed Miliband team know their choices for Shadow Chancellor are very limited - especially given the nature of today's result. The other option would be Ed Balls. But that would entail a significant shift in economic policy - to the Left. And today's result, effectively decided by the unions, against the wishes of Labour MPs and members, means that Ed Miliband will have shift to the Right, and away from the unions, to answer Conservative tants of 'Red Ed', a poodle of the unions.

Telling almost nobody for fear of a leak to the media, the brothers met at Ed’s home in what surely will be called the “Granola Pact” after the Granita Pact — the meeting between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in a tapas restaurant in north London during the 1994 Labour leadership contest. Then, Mr Brown agreed not to run in return for almost full control of Labour’s domestic policy. This time, neither brother knew which would win. Each, however, agreed to serve under the other. According to supporters of Ed, it was at this precise moment that he finally realised that victory could be within his grasp.