Miliband had been nicknamed "brains" by Alan Johnson
“After eight years as an MP, David Miliband, announced on Thursday that he would be leaving politics and starting as a university lecturer. Miliband had already announced that he would be stepping down as party leader, after poor results in the recent European polls. He will leave his seat in September, and then shortly begin teaching political science at Oxford. “I hope that you miss me as much as I will miss you,” Miliband joked with journalists in Parliament on Thursday, smiling. There were tears in the veteran politician’s eyes when his fellow MPs gave him a standing ovation in the Commons. “We say farewell to David Miliband with great sadness,” said Speaker Vince Cable. “He will always be remembered as a great parliamentary figure.” - An emotional farewell for opposition leader David Miliband, BBC News Bulletin (2014)
With David Miliband leaving the field, the Social Democrats were pretty headless, having been decimated left and right. All of Miliband’s expected successors had imploded one way or another, Alan Sugar had split off to form his own party, Yvette Cooper led the Scottish Social Democrats to disaster and Deputy Leader Rosie Boycott ruled herself out - intending to quit politics altogether. Other leading Shadow Cabinet members like Tim Farron, Douglas Alexander or Ed Balls lacked the gravitas or internal infrastructure to mount a credible challenge. There were only two real candidates, Foreign Secretary Polly Toynbee, who had the backing of the party’s liberal wing, and former runner-up Andy Burnham from the populist wing of the party.
Burnham in particular had been an interesting case, since his rambunctious leadership bid in 2012 where he railed against immigration and the European Central bank, he had pivoted to a more conciliatory position, serving loyally as Culture Secretary, moving his interventions towards traditional SDP issues of health and social care. With the People’s Party’s populist wave sweeping through the nation, Burnham’s style of politics could be seen as vindicated, with the likely backing of major unions like Amicus and the AGO Burnham would certainly be the candidate to beat. Most notably in a poll of former SDP voters by YouGov, a plurality of respondents said Burnham would be the most likely candidate to drag them back to the party. With the Social Democrats facing oblivion, maybe it was time to think outside the box.
Toynbee was a rare survivor from the first 2005 Johnson Cabinet
Miliband and those around him were horrified at the idea of a Burnham leadership, throwing their support behind Toynbee. The liberal-dominated Federal Council made moves to lock the party’s old left out of power through reforms to the leadership voting system. Rather than the old conference votes that left power in the hands of union grandees, Miliband moved the SDP to an open primary system, meaning anyone who registered as a paid supporter of the Social Democrats could cast their vote. Miliband’s allies believed an influx of “ordinary voters” into the party would push the SDP closer to the centre. With over 250,000 members of the party, the leadership election would be won on the airwaves, rather than the picket line.
“The SDP’s time in opposition was marked by complex and informal deliberations. As a result, the party ended up developing new democratic innovations, such as party primaries and direct votes. In this respect, the SDP also resembles the Danish Alternativet or the Romanian Demos in their quest for new forms of party democracy. The electoral consequences of such internal debates and organisational changes are unclear, though. The organisational consequences have been far more clear. They contributed to strengthening the power of the party leader to the detriment of the party's middle-level elites. In this respect, the SDP followed the path of many cartel parties trying to react to weakening linkages with its electoral base.” - The SDP’s democratic innovations in turbulent times for the social democracy, Lecture by Emmanuelle Avril, New Sorbonne University Paris (2014)
As leading Social Democrats like Peter Mandelson, Sandi Toskvig and Clare Gerada stood aside for the leadership election, it began to look increasingly like a two horse race, several backbench MPs like Damian McBride, Anas Sarwar and James Bloodworth would all try to start up insurgent campaigns before crashing out spectacularly. The only third candidate to emerge was Sadiq Khan. Khan was known to most people as acting Prime Minister during the 2009 coup, as the most senior elected official not held at gunpoint. Khan had helped organise a provisional government and arguably played the most important role in stopping the coup. This had made Khan a hero to progressives across Britain. It was with this name recognition alone Khan could challenge the big two.
The Social Democrats went from civil resistance to establishment in less than a decade
The mood dominating the party was one of fear, falling into irrelevance was a very genuine threat, nervous MPs looked to the pasokification of other centre-left parties across Europe and began nervously updating their CVs. In speeches up and down the country Toynbee warned the SDP’s electoral base was vanishing fast, pointing to the stronghold city of Sheffield, which voted for the People's Party in the euro elections. Burnham hoped to counter low morale among activists with a campaign message of change, warning “the people consider us part of the system, rather than an instrument to change the system”. Khan meanwhile, by far the youngest of the three candidates, focused his campaign on a message of regeneration, arguing his lack of baggage made him the best candidate to bring the SDP back from the brink.
Lightning seemed to strike twice for Burnham, as polls showed him with a narrow lead over his two opponents. Burnham had adapted remarkably well to the new politics of open primary, appearing at picket lines and protests across the country. Burnham would snap up endorsements from civil society, ranging from LGBT rights groups to environmental organisations. At the start of his campaign Burnham had promised to fight the People’s Party “on their own turf” and his campaign looked remarkably similar to that of Bell Riberio-Addy. Burnham had watched his old employers from the Irish Labour Party go under, he was determined for it not to happen again - even if that meant fighting fire with fire.
As Burnham, Khan and Toynbee fought at rallies, in debates and over the airwaves, Britain’s few thousands committed Social Democrats got to have their say. Toynbee would get an eleventh-hour boost as former Prime Minister Alan Johnson would charge onto the field to endorse her campaign. Turnout was reported to be high, around 70% as hundreds of thousands of ballots were mailed into Callaghan House. The three camps would finally converge in Newcastle, for the Social Democrat's 2014 Federal Council. The party of Alan Johnson had it’s back to the wall, going from a natural party of government to the edge of disaster, now it would elect a miracle worker to dig the centre-left out of it’s international hole.
“After humiliating election defeats, Britain's Social Democrats choose a new leader this weekend. Voters turfed the SDP out of seven years in power in a crushing 2012 election defeat, punishing them for a recession and mushrooming debt. Even now, after two years of Prime Minister William Hague's government the SDP have failed to claw back popular support. Indeed, their position may be even more precarious. In elections for Britain's seats in the European Parliament, the Social Democrats attracted a paltry 25 percent of the vote, losing 11 of their 31 seats. It was the final blow for their secretary general, David Miliband, who announced his departure the next day.” - Britain's battered Social Democrats seek new leader, Associated Press (2014)
Leading the Social Democrats would be a thankless task