Miliband 'considered resigning'

Mr Miliband said Labour had a "very cold electoral shower"

The foreign secretary has admitted that he considered resigning from the government at the same time as his former cabinet colleague James Purnell.

David Miliband told the Guardian that, although he reached a different conclusion, he respected the decision Mr Purnell had taken.

"James made his decision in good faith; I made my decision in good faith," Mr Miliband told the paper.

He said he had discussed his decision with Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.

The foreign secretary told the Guardian in an interview that he had made up his mind to stay on the day of the local and European elections.

He said: "I'd made my decision on Thursday...sometimes you can make your decisions with great planning and calculation and sometimes you have to make them rather more quickly."

Speaking of his telephone discussion with Lord Mandelson, the foreign secretary said: "I'm not going to go into (our conversation), but we didn't sort of talk about the weather."

He added: "The government is much stronger for Peter at the heart of it."

He had praise too for the former work and pensions secretary, Mr Purnell.

He said: "Look, James is a good friend; he has good talent. He was a very very good minister. It is important to say that. He had the respect of his staff, he had good ideas for the future, he was good on detail and was a very good colleague.

"He contributed to cabinet. He is a loss. But he's not dead. He can contribute. Whether you are inside the government or outside the government, we've got to make a go of this party of ours."

In the interview, Mr Miliband admitted that the question of the party's leadership arouses passionate feelings.

"This divides people who are close and people feel passionately one way and people feel passionately the other way."

But the foreign secretary said it was important now that the Labour party sets out what it, and Gordon Brown, stands for.

He admitted the task in front of the party is huge following the local and European election results.

He said: "It could not be more urgent that there is a maximum of 11 months until the next general election, that we got 15% of the vote nationally [last week], that we came second in Wales and that one in 20 people voted for us.

"If that does not electric-shock us out of our ministerial chairs to think: 'By God, we have got the fight of our life on our hands because whatever the Tories are they certainly don't deserve a landslide' - then nothing will."

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