David Miliband urges Labour rethink

Labour needs "restless rethinking" of its purpose and its policies if it is to return to power, former leadership candidate David Miliband has said.

In his most high-profile foray into the political frontline since being defeated by his brother Ed in the 2010 poll, the former foreign secretary set out a seven-point plan for the party.

He said Labour must admit "loud and clear" where it got things wrong in power, but - in what may be seen as a defence of New Labour against his brother's criticisms - he insisted the party must assert that the gains made between 1997 and 2010 "far outstripped the mistakes".

Mr Miliband was careful to praise his younger brother's leadership, but his decision to set out his own thoughts on Labour's future direction will inevitably spark speculation that he has not ruled out a return to the party's top ranks.

David Miliband (right) says his brother
 Ed deserves credit for his record as Labour leader

His intervention, in an essay in the New Statesman, came as Labour's former Chancellor Alistair Darling told the same magazine that the party needs to present its policies "in a sharper way".

David Miliband said his brother should be given credit for preventing disunity in the Labour ranks since its disastrous 2010 general election defeat. And he said his brother had shown he understands the need for a policy rethink and had spoken "powerfully and correctly" about welfare.

But he warned that there were elements within Labour who wanted to respond to defeat by retreating to "big state" social democracy.

And he said the party had "a lot to be concerned about" in terms of its prospects of electoral victory in 2015, when Conservatives will be boosted by their financial advantages and boundary changes which will favour them.

David Miliband wrote: "We will win again only when two conditions are met. First, that we fully understand in a deep way why the electorate voted against us in 2010. Second, that we clarify the kind of future we seek for Britain, and the means to achieve it, in a way that speaks to the demands of the time."

Labour must show they are "reformers of the state and not just its defenders", he said. "The weaknesses of the 'big society' should not blind us to the policy and political dead end of the 'Big State'. The public won't vote for the prescription that central government is the cure for all ills for the good reason that it isn't."

Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

Miliband struggling, says Mandelson

Ed Miliband is "struggling" in key areas of his role as Labour leader, Lord Mandelson has said.

The former business secretary, an architect of New Labour, said the leader faced the "unenviable" task of trying to redefine the party at the same time as fighting the coalition on the economy.

Asked about criticism of Mr Miliband's leadership, Lord Mandelson said he found it "tedious and boring".

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "What I think Ed Miliband is doing, he's struggling with two things and they are not easy. One is that he is trying to oppose the Government on the economy where, legitimately or not, people will take different views.

"They think the Government's in the wrong place but in making an argument against what the Government is doing fighting the recession he is also sort of struggling with his own inherited legacy from the previous Labour government and they are not doing that easily or finely but nor is it simple to do.

"At exactly the same time he is struggling to invent a new left of centre political paradigm that isn't New Labour that, in a sense, takes lessons and experience from the last 15 years, not least from the experience of globalisation, revisit the issues to do with markets and inequalities and responsible capitalism, to sort of invent a new left of centre politics for the 21st century."

Lord Mandelson said he found criticism of
Ed Miliband's leadership of the Labour party 'tedious and boring'

He added: "It's a rather unenviable job which I think he is doing well in the circumstances but it is not easy."

Lord Mandelson had easy praise, however, for his successors at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). He said: "If you see what (Business Secretary) Vince Cable is doing and what David Willetts in particular, the higher education and science minister, is doing - I read a speech of his the other day, I could have written every word of it myself - it's in a sense taking to a higher and more sophisticated level the sort of industrial policy thinking and actions that I was introducing when I came back to government.

"The only problem is this - it is done on such a ludicrously small scale."

Lord Mandelson said internationally the right wing had been "better at handling the rhetoric of austerity" and had tended to win the argument on "profligate" big government. The centre-left needs to fight back but "not by reverting to old arguments about state control and intervention".