David Miliband quits Labour frontbench

It was beginning to look inevitable by lunchtime today that David Miliband would bow out of frontline UK politics and refuse to serve in the shadow cabinet under his brother, Ed Miliband.

Ed Balls was the first senior Labour MP to hint - hours before this afternoon's announcement - that David was off. He told ITV News: "I don't think David Miliband is leaving because of reasons of politics or ideology or policy. I don't think this is a political divide, I think this it's a personal decision."

Balls said he understood David's predicament. "It must have been incredibly difficult to have lost to your brother in that way ... If as a brother you've decided that it's too difficult I think people would understand that. I don't think it's fair to find some big political split or divide here. I don't think that it really exists."

As The First Post's resident shrink Coline Covington wrote on
Monday: "In order to fully succeed without encumbrance, Ed will either have to be even more ruthless and plan a future without his brother or one of them will have to leave the political field altogether and succeed in another arena ­ just as Jacob and Esau had to establish their own separate nations." Well said.

We've already witnessed one gaffe that shows how things might have progressed if David didn't move on. It was the moment he was caught on camera at conference yesterday, upbraiding Harriet Harman for applauding a section in his brother's maiden speech where he denounced Labour's decision to go to war in Iraq.

"You voted for it," Miliband told Harman. "Why are you clapping?"

She replied: "I am clapping because, as you know, I am supporting him."

It was not going to be the last such gaffe if David had stayed on. And the last thing Ed needed was to be worrying about his elder brother's reaction to every turn he took.

He'll have enough worries as it is. Not least of which is the nagging
question: would he have got that crucial union support that took him ahead of David in the final stage of the leadership election on Saturday if the unions had known then what they know now about his views on striking against the upcoming Tory cuts?

"I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes," he told conference. "The public won't support them. I won't support them and you shouldn't support them either."

Which is not what Bob Crow and the boys wanted to hear at all.

"Ed Miliband has to decide whose side he is on - the working class on the streets and on the picket lines or the ConDems and their corporate supporters," said Crow afterwards. "All the signs are that he is already caving in to pressure from the right-wing press."

Welcome to the Labour leadership, Ed. ·