Message to Miliband: stop crying or get off the pot

If David Miliband isn't ruing the day he turned down the chance to become the EU's foreign minister - remember? - back in November, then some of his Labour colleagues certainly are.

Miliband's position in Gordon Brown's Cabinet is becoming increasingly awkward after this week's aborted coup when Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon ran their putsch up the flagpole and the Labour party failed to salute.

No one is saying Miliband was behind the coup - that honour appears to fall to the grumpy old Blairite Home Secretary Charles Clarke - but there now seems no doubt that the plotters were expecting Miliband to put his hand up and challenge Brown to the leadership.

There are two reasons why he didn't.

First, Miliband lives by the adage that he who wields the knife will never wear the crown. In other words, he cannot be seen to stab the PM in the back. It was up to the plotters to open the door and then - this is the key - for a good number of Labour backbenchers to demand a change and put the word out that they would back Miliband if he made a move.

The problem was, the plot was so cack-handedly organised that the second stage never happened - which meant Miliband, having waited vainly during Wednesday afternoon for the call to arms, had to give up and issue his famously grudging statement: "I am working closely with the Prime Minister on foreign policy issues and support the reelection campaign for a Labour Government that he is leading" - words that now look like being engraved on his political tomb.

Second, Miliband, it would seem, is a serial bottler. He has had the chance before to stand against Brown and possibly squeeze a Labour victory out of the upcoming election, and on at least two previous occasions he has run away from it at the 11th hour.

The first was in July 2008 when, following Labour's disastrous defeat in the Glasgow East by-election, and amid rumours that half the Cabinet had lost faith in Brown, Miliband wrote a long article for the Guardian in which he declared that "the times demand a radical new phase".
 
It suggested Miliband had the balls to go up against Brown, who was on holiday in Suffolk at the time and whose name Miliband didn't mention once in the piece.

But within days the threat melted away just like this week's coup attempt, with Miliband sheepishly denying that his article was any kind of threat to Gordon. Indeed, he acted like he wasn't really sure why he'd written it - just something to do on a summer's afternoon.

Almost a year later, on June 4, 2009, within minutes of the polls closing in the local and European elections - another disaster for Labour - pensions secretary James Purnell announced his resignation from the Cabinet and called on Gordon Brown to resign as Prime Minister.

Purnell famously wrote to the PM: "We both love the Labour Party... I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely."

It was clear to everyone in Westminster what was meant to happen next: Miliband was supposed to say 'I agree' and force a leadership challenge. But it took only a sharp phone call from Peter Mandelson to persuade Miliband not to do it and the threat was gone.

The trouble now is that Miliband has been so busy trying not to be seen as the assassin that he's lost sight of two things: one, that everyone knows his ambition, so what's the point in hiding it, and, two, that the lukewarm reaction from Labour backbenchers on Wednesday to the Hewitt-Hoon putsch suggests that, of course, the party needs a new leader, but Miliband isn't it.

If Miliband is to rescue his political career, he needs to radically improve his skills in political connivance and cunning. Perhaps he should ask his good friend Hillary Clinton for some advice before it's too late.

In the meantime, once thing's for sure: if Gordon Brown does pull off a remarkable election victory this spring, he's going to be choosing himself a new foreign secretary. And guess who has harboured ambitions for that role all his political life? Peter Mandelson.

As I reported in November, it was Mandy's desire to get the job his grandfather Herbert Morrison once held in the 1940s that was rumoured to be the reason why he was so keen for Miliband to become the EU's first foreign secretary.

Now, did the thought just cross your mind that that was why Mandelson let the coup go ahead on Wednesday, knowing it would not succeed, knowing it would make Miliband look foolish again, and knowing it would give him a better chance to take the job of his dreams? Hmmmmph. ·