Is Ed Miliband the right choice for Labour leader?

The Unions have spoken. All hail the Unions, forward with the revolution comrades.

a swing to the left chosen by a few hundred union barons - hardly democracy in action?

Hahaha, oh dear Labour.

maybe!

The words rabbit and headlights come to mind

Bad choice for the Labour Party, good choice for the UK. No chance of Labour getting elected for a long time now! They just dont get it do they?

He is an academic theorist. Just the right person to understand and empathise with the practical lives of the working men and women of this country.

It doesn't really matter who they elected. After the mess they made in power and left for The Coalition to clear up, only a complete halfwit would vote Labour anyway. My only worry is that there seem to be quite a few of these around.

David Miliband will be off to Europe or the US is my guess.

He was the only Labour candidate that was a credible future Prime Minister, and there is no way he'll stay for long in the UK working under his little brother.

David Cameron must be laughing his head off at a lightweight like Ed Miliband now being his chief competition. The next GE is as good as won.

Absolutely the right person....he'll put NuLabour exactly where they belong.....long......long term opposition!

Who cares? I live in Lala land, it doesn't affect me.

Jokes apart, Labour show they have some sense. Had they elected David, they would have annihilated any chance of ever getting elected again.

We now know who will be the union puppet.The man who was one of those by their own admission who whilst in the cabinet.Knew that a lot of BLAIR and BROWNS policies were no good for GB.To keep their jobs said nothing.We are now expected to beleive they have seen the light.What we have seen is the usual hypocracy from LABOUR.

I'm delighted with this result. It means the Labour party will not regain power.

Doesn't matter who leads Labour. All four of the male contenders were interchangeable. No knowledge of the world outside the "Westminster bubble". It really has come to a pretty pass when the leadership of all three major parties in England and Wales have little knowledge or understanding of how this country works and lives outside the "Westminster bubble".

I suppose we get the politicians we deserve when we vote for appearance over understanding.

Oh dear.

Let's think....what happened the last time MPs in parliament prefered someone else as leader - but someone else was voted in?

Looks like labour won't be in power for a long, long time.

Could have been better. Could have been Diane Abbott or Ed Balls.

That would have consigned Labour to the dustbin for a generation. EdM will only keep them out of power till his brother takes over and we all die form Milli-boredom.

Well, it's an internal matter for the Labour Party, isn't it.

My opinion will be expressed at the ballot box, based on policy and performance... so the poor lad needs some time to make up the first and provide evidence for the latter.

Ha ha! This is brilliant :) The Labour party's screwed now for the next election. It'll be SO funny to watch what happens when the unions demand support from Ed Milliband on strikes and he can't give it to them.

This is the biggest leadership disaster since the Lib Dems elected charles Kennedy and then said "just be yourself".

Has he ever met anyone from the working class?

Excellent news, for we Conservatives (who REALLY believe in Britain).

Have the Labour Party just elected as leader a man who has only been an MP since 2005, who is living with someone their child, but who isn't married, and is the son of a Jewish Marxist Communist theorist?

I ask only because surely this ticks every box in the PC wish list .... how will this play in the Muslim community?

Something I didn't thing possible has happened - a labour politician even more smarmy, patronising and arrogant than Mandelson. Still no matter the Labour Party whoever leads it these days only represents single interst groups unlike the silent law-abiding majority who have long since abandoned it and changing its leader only alters its veneer and appearance.

Ed Miliband is unelectable. Labour hit the self-destruct button as the unions pick their man and make a shameless grab for the power they lost since Kinnock, Smith, Blair and Brown reformed and reshaped the party. Cameron must be delighted they have turned their back on David Miliband.

Can you imagine Ed Miliband as Prime Minister???? Hahahaha......

Dear oh dear.

So FEWER Labour MPs voted for Ed than voted for David. Forget the Unions, thy don't sit in Parliament. Clearly the party is going to have serious fractions now and a majority of the actual Labour MPs do not have their man elected as Leader.

The Tories should be partying in the street at this! The weaker and less experienced Miliband has been elected Leader, and more than half of Labour MPs didn't want him!!! *chuckle chuckle*

He was my first choice when I voted so I'm very happy with the result.

It's hilarious listening to Neil Kinnock trying to pretend this was good for Labour.

What a comedian!

I am really chuffed! Good for him - it's time for a real change, and although I am not a Labour supporter, perhaps I will become one. On the whole, I think politics is looking up. Whatever happens, it's nice to feel optimistic again.

Oh dear - I see the Labour Party has started naval gazing already. Electing a leader that suits the labour party and not the country at large is a big mistake. There's no way they will win the next election. The Tories will now destroy this country.

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No Ed Miliband is not the right choice but nor were any of the other candidates. What they should have been discussing today at conference was why New Labour lost the contest, not which New Labour candidate was going to lead them in opposition!

The whole nature of this contest was a farce from the minute Brown announced his resignation and deliberately drawn out to play on apathy! From the minute Brown announced his resignation and with the full backing of the mainstream media the two Milibands, Balls and Burnham hastily put their names forward to minimise a proper debate wthin Labour about why they lost but more importantly to eschew a proper contest between New Labour and the left of the party with a candidate like John McDonnel.

So yet again, Labour has a another leader whose been determined by the capitalist bureaucracy, where, similar to Blair and Brown he's more indifferent in real Labour values as Karl Marx would have been to the politics of Winston Churchill.

Moreover, although leaders never really determine the fortunes of a party, what this result confirms is that Britain is officially a three party consensus capitalist state where there's no opposition whatsoever in Parliament!

So he didn't win amongst the MPs, he didn't win amongst the members and only got in because the unions wanted him.

So we know to whose tune he will dance.

That's the end of Labour. If I were a Labour member, I'd be resigning now and joining the Greens or Lib Dems.

The Unions have spoken - the manner in which he won will be brought up at every opportunity - a new age of division in the Labour party has begun.

The Labour leadership election is an irrelevance. The General election is 4.5 years away, and the leader is going to be chief thumb-twiddler and mud slinger until then.

The winner today is a member of a political family, and hence a middle class "insider," like Mandelson, the Benns, and so on. All the candidates except Diane Abbott bear the stains of the Blair/Brown debacle, and should never hold office again. Diane Abbott shouldn't hold office either, in my opinion, but for other reasons.

Sadly, the British people keep being presented with no real choice. Most of our political parties select politico-geeks straight out of university. They have no experience of real life, but make up for that with mountains of egotism and prejudice. I'd like real people to stand for parliament, but sadly anyone with common sense, ability and experience probably lacks the blind self-belief that you need to wreck the economy and send young men to die, both without a twinge of conscience.

Brilliant! Just what we need; the pin-up boy of the unions and a Labour leader who is completely unelectable! David Cameron and Nick Clegg must be thrilled to bits….Christmas has come early for them.

The New Labour experiment has officially ended; Gormless Gordon has gone….step forward Mr Ed!

Incidentally, anyone would think Labour was still in power from the way the BBC has been going on today. The entire corporation seems to have worked itself into a collective frenzy about something that is completely irrelevant to the way this country is currently governed.

Unlike most here who will no doubt take the usual hyper negative line, I actually think he's the best man for the job. His brother was just too much of a Blairite, and too tarred and unrepentant for the crimes and terrible misdeeds of that most corrupt and vile of administrations.

Ed on the other hand came into government much later, meaning less experience but also cleaner hands. He's good on the environment, and the illegal Iraq debacle, but weak on voting reform. He's also too cosy with the unions, but will surely be aware of the importance of distancing himself from them if he's to be electable to the broader public.

As for beating Cameron, frankly with the state the country will be in by the time the next election comes around, even a loony far left nut like Andy Burnham would win. I pity the Lib Dems though. Their brief taste of power will burn them even worse than the nasty old tories.

We will see.

We continue to be a nation led by politicians with a personality bypass. We desperately need some politiancs with guts, vision and leadership skills.
Milliband is a prim, proper and rather gray individual that isn't going to go excite anybody. This is not good for any of us, whatever your politicis, as all this will deliver is a flock of sheep led by sheep. Never mind, perhaps it's possible to get on with life and simply ignore that lot in Westminster.

I think this is a good result for the Labour Party and ultimately for the UK. The Labour party needs a younger leader now who is not too closely associated with the past and who is intelligent enough to lead a re-invention of the party and redefinition of its message to the electorate. The fact that he seems to have support from the unions is a good thing as, contrary to some of the opinions already expressed here, the unions are actually made up of normal working people and not of dyed in the wool communists who want to take the country back to the 1930s.
As well as distancing itself from the past, the party should make sure its policies are distinct from these of the parties of government.
ps I am a floating voter and not particularly a Labour supporter.

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Is Ed Miliband the right choice for Labour leader?

No, he is the LEFT choice.

After the cuts to public spending have floored the millions of working class people who have deluded themselves into thinking they are middle class its up to the new leader the bring the working class vote back to where they belong.

Another smooth, well groomed, plausible, measured political leader with the gift of the gab. They must be cloning them somewhere. They all seem the same to me. I imagine usual story, leads us to a bright new prosperous, fair and forward looking Britain that never quite happens The, like all before he gets so full of himself he thinks invincible gets out of touch in an ivory tower and beyond the masses. Then down it will all come crashing again before another promise and wish maker emerges. Lost interest in it all really.

I hope Ed has a warm jacket.

It will not help them in any way at all! Miliband or whoever, what does it matter to anyone or anything? But marginally more bearable than his brother. I read their Marxist Grandfathers books......a mystic and a sycophant...

He wasn't my choice, and it's disappointing that the views of the members and MPs have been overriden by the union vote, but time will tell how he does as leader.

My main complaint is with the awful coverage on the BBC News channel, with Nick Robinson wittering away about his (rubbish) prediction that David Miliband would win, completely drowning out Ann Black reading out the results. If you read this Nick, there are times when we are happy to hear what you have to say and times when you should keep your mouth shut, sadly you got it very wrong today.

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It doesn't really matter: the public won't trust Labour again for a very long time. Milliband will only lead Labour through a few wilderness years, like Hague and Ian Duncan Smith did for the Tories. After another lost election or two, he'll be replaced.

Labour has just elected the left-wing trades union candidate Ed Milliband as its new leader making Labour unelectable to the general public and those of us in the middle-ground. Labour has now guaranteed that they will lose the next election and have condemned the country to more unfair and divisive Conservative policies and spiteful government.

Welcome back to the days of Michael Foot, Arthur Scargill and a totally unelectable Labour Party.

Labour won three elections as a 'centre-left' party, then Gordon Brown lurched them back towards the left and they promptly lost. So obviously what's needed now is, umm, to swing even further to the left...

Britain has a moderate electorate, but Labour seemingly lack the intellectual capacity to work that out.

One good thing though, it's one in the eye for all the pundits that said Dave was going to stroll it.

Intellectually light years ahead of David (Cameron, that is).

8. At 5:06pm on 25 Sep 2010, Tony Fisher wrote:

It doesn't really matter who they elected. After the mess they made in power and left for The Coalition to clear up, only a complete halfwit would vote Labour anyway. My only worry is that there seem to be quite a few of these around.
==========================
ha ha quite true

Welcome to Michael Foot II. Just goes too show who elects Labour - the unions. God help the country if he ever becomes PM - he will spend, spend and spend just as all Labour governments do leaving an even bigger economic mess than we are in now.

A good choice for the Labour party and for the country - just the man to pick up the pieces after Cameron, Clegg and the bankers have hadtheir chance to ruin the economy. So what if the unions have a bit more power, do we really want to be run by those wonderful bonus grabbing businessmen?

The last Labour government's most serious mistake was to respond to Osbourne's scare campaign in typical new Labour fashion, by saying that they would cut too. They should have exposed Osbourne's statements as the rubbish that they really were. It is just plain impossible for the UK to have the same problem as Greece, because the Bank of England can print money and lend it to the government so that public spending can be kept high, and should do so, as long as private bank lending is restricted. Someone has to borrow and spend.

During the next year or two, the grotesque folly of the coalition's economic policy will become more and more apparent. Ed Balls would have the been best Labour leader to capitalise on this, but at least Ed Milliband does not have quite as much new Labour baggage as his brother.

Absolutely the right choice by the Labour party - The Conservatives have got back in power due to the voters mistaking the cause of Britain's economic woes as Labour's fault as opposed to the result of the Global banking swindlers' cons. In four years, when the situation is worse, and the people want Labour back in, Ed Miliband will be living in No 10... no doubt about it whatsoever.

It seems Labour have indulged their self-destructive tendencies, just like they did with Michael Foot a couple of decades ago. The political mid-left is unelectable, and thus Ed Milliband's brand of champagne socialism will render Labour unelectable. Not a bad thing, in my opinion.

Oh no! Now Labour will never be re elected and the conservatives will continue to mess up the country, taxing the poor and rewarding the rich, because of a few trade unionists. The party get one shot at a new start and they go back to the stone ages.

A sad day indeed for all non-conservatives everywhere.

I do like a good laugh so quite enjoyed the Leadership coverage.

Harriet Harman listing Labour's, so called, 'achievements'; then saying that the financial meltdown had nothing to do with Labour. I think Labour really need to learn the lesson of humility before they can be taken seriously. At least Mervin King has had the honesty and decency to admit that the financial institutions and politcians got it wrong.

The next was Ed Balls face.....I do recall the 'grace and humility' of his comments on General Election night....so nice to see that what goes around comes around!

And last but not least I give you.......Ed Milliband!

Having read up to post #29 all I can say is that the Conservative Party headquarters have got their people out posting extremely quickly. I expect after conference closes and some have returned from the football matches the Labour trolls will catch up in numbers saying he's a brilliant choice.

A curse on all their houses. The lot of them couldn't organise a drinking party in a brewery.

Cameron and Clegg must be delighted. Ed Miliband seems to embody Old Labour and Trade Union power, and the public will surely never vote to have that back again.

We'll see what happens, the Tories who feel this is great news for their party are deluding themselves, he's hardly an extremist.

Yes its back to the future
the block vote lives, bring back the Alas Smith ansd Jones Sketch.

The MP's wanted Dave, the members wanted Dave but Comrade Crowe et al wanted son of Kinnock

Welcome to another term for the coalition....

Oh dear oh dear oh dear! Newliemore's union paymasters have foisted a school kid on them!

I hope that his mummy knows he's out & that he changed his socks before leaving the house!

Seriously, this should consign NewLieMore to the dustbin of history for a long long time!

35. At 5:19pm on 25 Sep 2010, moroboshi wrote:
As for beating Cameron, frankly with the state the country will be in by the time the next election comes around, even a loony far left nut like Andy Burnham would win. I pity the Lib Dems though. Their brief taste of power will burn them even worse than the nasty old tories.
-----------------------------------
don't bet on it
labour will be lucky to get back into power within 30 years
I envisage a better and more prosperous country by the end of this governments term.
labour should just fade away or go back to the gutter it came from

15. At 5:09pm on 25 Sep 2010, steve butler wrote:
Oh dear.

Let's think....what happened the last time MPs in parliament prefered someone else as leader - but someone else was voted in?

For clarity, I presume you are referring to when the Tories elected Ian Duncan Smith as leader.

51% vs 49% between them and no vote from the public. Labour just doesn't learn, do they?

Just watch Labour descend into years of back-stabbing and in-fighting - their hatred of each other is only surpassed (just) by their hatred of the Tories

I see we have all the kids from Tory Central Office logging on with instructions to stir up trouble...

Ed Miliband is the best choice out of the candidates on offer and means that labour have at last started to move away from the dreadful new labour blair - brown right wing take over of recent years.

The Tories are going to destroy this country (along with their liberal puppets) over the next few years and we need a strong centre left labour party to fight them. This makes me slightly more optimistic for the future of the party. I might even join up now!

I think the combination of Ed Milibrown as leader and Hattie Harman as his deputy is superb news for the Party. (The Conservatives, I mean).

The best candidate of those on offer; the idea that he was elected by a few hundred union barons is as ignorant as it is prejudiced.

I congratulate Ed Milliband for his achievement and for his speech. He will lead the labour party. The Tories and Nick Clegg with be sharpening their knives but he is strong and supported by the party and his brother he'll bring the party to electoral success. The media must play fair. The Murdoch empire (The Sun, Times, Sky etc) will do their best but to rubbish him and the party for their own benefit, but I believe the British people don't want to go down the Thatcherite, unfettered Capitalist route - they want a middle road of growth and fairness, not the brutality of Osborne, Cameron and Clegg et al, who think that the end deserves the means. Only labour can save us from this now. The Lib Dems have joined the enemy.

Accepting that this topic is dominated by union-bashing Daily Mail readers - I wish Ed Miliband well. He seems a man of principle and ideas. In five years who knows? The 'Coalition' will probably have imploded and the Liberal party punished for propping up the Tories. If Cameron can be elected as Prime Minister, Miliband certainly could be.

38. At 5:23pm on 25 Sep 2010, cecilia_p wrote:

I think this is a good result for the Labour Party and ultimately for the UK. The Labour party needs a younger leader now who is not too closely associated with the past and who is intelligent enough to lead a re-invention of the party and redefinition of its message to the electorate. The fact that he seems to have support from the unions is a good thing as, contrary to some of the opinions already expressed here, the unions are actually made up of normal working people and not of dyed in the wool communists who want to take the country back to the 1930s.
As well as distancing itself from the past, the party should make sure its policies are distinct from these of the parties of government.
ps I am a floating voter and not particularly a Labour supporter.

The unions are indeed made up of normal working people but it's the leaders of them who are the problem e.g. Bob Crow who has openly called for civil disobedience.

"Can he lead the party to a victory at the next general election?"

Not a snowball's chance....thank goodness!

Oh, come on. Many of the people here will obviously never vote labour if the alternative was a donkey with a blue rosette on it. Its plainly obvious none of you have ever heard Ed M speak, don't underestimate him: it will be your downfall.

It seems ironic that on the one hand we have the "raving right" banging on about new Labour (or, as Labour's grassroots sometimes call it, "tory-lite"), on the other hand we have them banging on about how Ed M will move Labour to the left away from new Labour and make them unelectable. Make up your mind!

As a Conservative I've just cracked open a bottle of Peroni in celebration of Ed's victory. It's taken me a while to get it open as I was laughing so much. Labour will be in the wilderness for years. His brother was Labour's only (slim) chance of gaining credibility - and they fluffed it big style. I was worried for a bit when I saw him grinning like a Cheshire Cat and Ed looking so glum.

Brings to mind the happy days of the 1980's when those of us on the right were chuckling over the likes of Tony Benn and the other lunatics on the left muttering darkly that they lost the election because their manifesto (referred to as the 'longest suicide note in history' because of it's extremism) wasn't left wing enough.

So,- I'll raise my glass and wish Ed Miliband a long reign as leader of the Labour Party. Hip, Hip .........

The tories will be absolutely delighted with this result.. There is not a hope that Red-Ed will get elected as PM in the next election... I'm sure the unions will be delighted at this result.. beginning of the end of labour!

"
9. At 5:06pm on 25 Sep 2010, Loftgroov wrote:

David Miliband will be off to Europe or the US is my guess.
"

Indeed. I bet really regrets turning down that very lucrative EU job now!

If Ed Miliband sticks to his far-left ideology, he might well represent change and a return to the roots of Labour tradition, but to the rest of the country he is now in the pocket of the trades unions (a pitiful minority). He also represents a position on the political spectrum which fell out of favour in 1977 and which won't be returning any time soon.
Consequently, Labour can kiss goodbye to Downing Street until at least 2025 and possibly well beyond.
Well done, Labour.
A brilliant choice.
For the rest of us.

God help this country if they ever get re-elected. A strong possibility because they will have the benefit scrounger vote and the dictatorship union vote.
All I can say is thank the Lord my visa came through, and I'm off to Australia next week. This country has become the cess pit of the world and there is no sign of it ever recovering.

Not a great result for Labour - Im very disappointed. David would have been much more effective against Cameron given his experience and his ability to get his message across. Ed I'm afraid will just be another Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock. Neither man could beat Maggie Thacther and she made many unpopular decisions and didnt run the country well at times - it will be the same for Cameron - he will get by because parties when they go into opposition always pick the wrong leader who wont win inside of the one who can. I doubt Ed will be able to unite the party - so Cameron will face a weak opposition and win re-election. Thanks Labour!

I think that though Ed Miliband may be the right person for Labours membership, he is NOT the right person for UK Prime Minister.

He seems to be a type of Micheal Foot/ Neil Kinnock type character. Might be clever and intelectually good at saying a few things, but I seriously doubt that the publics perception of him and his aloofish image will stand him in good stead, nor his leanings to the left.

Image, is unfortunately a central/key factor in endemic modern Britain human bias, hence if John Sergeant had the combined inteligence and reasoning and spirit of Darwin/Telford/Brunel/Faraday/Margaret Thatcher/Tony Blair/John Smith/Paddy Ashdown/Tony Ben & St. Teresa of Avila, he still wouldnt stand a chance of being elected Prime Minister.

Ed Miliband was the only viable candidate in my opinion. He combines genuine 'Old Labour' credentials with a genuine chance of being elected, soemthing which no other candidates could boast. David was too similar in his doctrines to the ideology of 'New Labour', and I think the Labour party must take a new direction if they are to win back credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate.

"
49. At 5:29pm on 25 Sep 2010, Alfettaman wrote:

Britain has a moderate electorate, but Labour seemingly lack the intellectual capacity to work that out.
"

As are many Labour party members. The problem is, and always has been, that the Labour party is controlled by the all powerful unions. It will be very interesting when the unions call for a national strike to see what Mr Ed says, my bet he will just sit on the fence.

Baroness Warsi with the Conservative Coalition response to Ed milliband as leader. "He should apologise for the mess the country is in." Yeah sorry that Labour cleared up the mess that the Tories left schools, hospitals and major cities in. Sorry for the minimum wage. Sorry for food tokens, sorry...sorry that we are going to fight to stop the Conservative coalition from dismantling it. And sorry that we want to continue to build on those successes.

"a swing to the left chosen by a few hundred union barons - hardly democracy in action?"

There were no block votes. MP's, Party members and members of affiliated unions all cast their votes as individuals in a secret ballot. The margins were very tight in each group. What this result shows is that Ed Milliband has slightly more support among union members ( and hence perhaps among traditional grassroots labour voters) than his brother, who in turn had slightly more support among MPs and members of the Labour Party. Hard to see anything very undemocratic or sinister in that...

I didn't vote for him as I think David has more "clout" I wish him well
All I really truly hope is that we don't fall back to the days of union leaders trying to force party policy the have had their day .
The public don't want to go back to that.
We will remain in the shadows for years if that becomes the case.

Whether is the Mayoral election of the Labour leadership - all you hear the Tory voters is that they neither Ken or Ed will ever be elected because they are weak opponents. What I don't hear anyone say is how strong their own people are. If this were football, it would be a bit like England being exuberant at playing San Marino. Hardly confident, are we?

Tony Fisher; Ref your 31

so if your'e not a member of the Labour Party what was the point of writing on the issue in the first place? Must have meant something to you or is it apathy?

Tony Fisher wrote:
"...only a complete halfwit would vote Labour anyway."

Surely a halfwit is by definition incomplete?

Well at least without David at the helm we won't be seeing a Triple - Vision of would be Blairites as Leaders of their respective Parties, since 2 is more than enought, as for heaven sake who would be able to keep awake listening to Cameron, Clegg and David Miliband ALL saying the SAME thing ALL of the time.

Well done Ed, Time Marches on.

Ed Milliband is a joke and cannot be taken seriously. He is not fit to be leader of Her majesty's opposition, but then that can be said of all the Labour Party who have only a handful of M.P.'s worth their place in Parliament.

The coalition parties are far better than Labour and it is good that they are working together, with the help of some worthy Labour MP's, to get us out of the mess that Blair, Brown, Balls and the Millibands got us into.

While waiting for my criticism of the BBC's coverage of the results announcement to get by (or not) the mods I've been browsing the detailed results. It turns out that the union vote in reality is down to just two unions, GMB and Unite, which had member turnouts of 7.8% and 10.5% respectively, so if Ed does make a complete mess of it you know who to blame.

"
50. At 5:30pm on 25 Sep 2010, brilliantMeg2009 wrote:

One good thing though, it's one in the eye for all the pundits that said Dave was going to stroll it.
"

That's because the pundits clearly have no idea how the Labour electoral college workds. David Milliband's only hope was if he could win with 3 candidates left, with the other two spitting each others vote. My only surprise was that the final vote was so close, I would have gone 53 - 47.

This is not good - too much ammo for the Tories and Lib Dems especially if there is widespread industrial unrest. Simple question - which of the 5 could win an election - answer he came 2nd.

"Labour won three elections as a 'centre-left' party, then Gordon Brown lurched them back towards the left and they promptly lost. So obviously what's needed now is, umm, to swing even further to the left...

Britain has a moderate electorate, but Labour seemingly lack the intellectual capacity to work that out."

1. Gordon Brown's supposed 'lurch to the left' must be an absolutely fabricated event existing in your mind only - he was the leader of one of the most right-wing Labour governments of all time.
2. There's no point at all in tailoring your party utterly to match the current generally held opinion. That's a step towards seeking power for the sake of power. If Labour did that, why would they be necessarily better than any other party?

As a Labour member I am disgusted that Ed Miliband has won on the forth ballot! this is not real democracy to see it go this far on we haven't adapted the alternative voting system that will be put forward to this country in May, 2011 we do first past the post David won on that three (3) times this shows that it was the unions using there members to back this candidate! I won't be supporting Ed I will have to keep to supporting my local labour group not the national one!

While I'm sure everyone congratulates Ed Miliband on his personal achievement I get the feeling Labour have picked the wrong leader. Cameron must be loving this, there is no way Middle England will ever elect Ed Miliband to be Prime Minister of the UK. Labour have just condemned us to at least a decade of Conservative government. For Scotland there is a very clear exit route, independence within the next few years is a very real possibility.