Labour leadership: Ed by a whisker?

September 25, 2010 at 2:56 am (elections, Jim D, labour party, strange situations)

Susan “Grimmer Up North” Press keeps her ear to the ground on Labour Party matters, so I trust her judgement on this:

…I should be at work today but I am dosing myself up with antibiotics and paracetamol in a bid to ward off a disgusting lurgy which came from nowhere to knock me for six.

Bugs or no bugs, I will be in Manchester tomorrow for Labour Party Conference and I plan to be in the conference hall when the announcement is made re next Leader.

Not because I am a gung-ho supporter of either Miliband, but because it is an Occasion and one which should be very interesting. A journalist is never off duty…..

Reading between the lines in today’s papers, it is clear that the David Miliband camp is already briefing for defeat. Mandelson’s poisonous interventions at the weekend probably put the last nail in the coffin.

But even had he stayed quiet there is no mood in the Labour Party for Blairism Mark Two.

The media are already sharpening their claws and risibly suggesting Ed Miliband’s politics are closer to Ralph’s than his brothers. If he does get elected no doubt the Mail will be tagging him as a Marxist. Not so. To put it mildly

Ed Miliband represents a strand of social democracy which is firnly in the centre. Under Blair, we moved so sharply to the right it can be painted as far more radical than it is.

However, I have long said it was a key task to stop David Miliband and see off the Mandelson Campbell cabal . I cannot for the life of me fathom what the likes of Dennis Skinner were doing when they endorsed him.Cruddas, showing his increasing disengagement from the grassroots, also chose the wrong horse.

Could be of course I am utterly wrong and the elder Miliband will storm to victory. But somehow I doubt it…..