Voting begins as brothers vie for Labour leadership

VOTING for a new leader of the Labour party is set to begin today, with brothers David and Ed Miliband seen as front runners in an election overshadowed by the party’s controversial previous leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The three-month long battle for the leadership was triggered when Brown quit after May’s general election at which Labour lost power for the first time in 13 years, making way for the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition headed by David Cameron.

Ballot papers are being sent out today to around 160,000 Labour party members, who have a third of the votes, plus Labour members of the British and European parliaments who have another third, and trade unionists who get the final chunk.

The result will be announced on September 25, the day before Labour’s annual conference begins in Manchester.

The favourite is former foreign secretary David Miliband. The 45-year-old is nicknamed “Brains” for the skills which saw him serve as a top policy advisor to Blair, to whom he remains close. But David Miliband is facing a strong challenge from his younger brother Ed.

Aged 40 and seen as more charismatic than David, he was one of Brown’s key advisors in the Treasury — when Brown was Blair’s finance minister — and later became Brown’s energy secretary.

The other candidates are pugnacious ex-education secretary Ed Balls, veteran left-winger Diane Abbott and youthful former health secretary Andy Burnham.

According to a projection last week for leading Labour blog Left Foot Forward, David Miliband has 36% of first preference votes, Ed Miliband has 31%, while Balls, Abbott and Burnham have 11%.

Politics runs deep in the Miliband family. David and Ed’s late father was a famous Marxist thinker, Ralph Miliband, while their mother Marion was an activist and academic.

Much of the debate in the election so far has focused on whether Labour should fight back by wooing the kind of middle class voters who supported Blair — as advocated by David Miliband — or focusing on disillusioned core supporters, as Ed Miliband suggests.

Neither Blair nor Brown has made their views public — though Blair publishes his autobiography today, perhaps giving him an opportunity to do so.