Ed Miliband wins labour party leadership election

Ed Miliband has just been announced as the new leader of the Labour Party at the party conference. David Miliband was the front runner from the start but his brother Ed Milliband fought a good campaign and closed the gap on his older brother to the point where the Bookmakers gave him as the marginal favourite right at the wire. The election went to a fourth round and preference votes were distributed among the candidates. The final result saw Ed Miliband win with 51% of the vote.

The Conservative Party seem likely to see victory by Ed Miliband as the lesser challenge because of the perception that he is the less electable than his brother.

Ed Miliband must now lead the party that suffered a serious defeat at the last election after a major financial crisis overwhelmed the economy. He was heavily backed by the unions.

Of the two Miliband brothers David Miliband was the more experienced, more of a Blairite and the more experienced. In the eyes of some within the party though he was more tainted by association with what some inside the party see as major failures such as the Iraq Invasion. Ed Miliband ran a campaign that was more in tune with the older tradition of the party and as time went on seemed to be appealing to the parties traditional vote. He was many argued though, likely to prove less electable as a future Prime Minister precisely because of this.