Revenge of the Blairites: What if David Miliband had challenged Gordon Brown?

What if David Miliband had launched a leadership challenge against Gordon Brown anytime between 2008, when Miliband wrote an article for The Guardian describing his vision for the future of the Labour Party, which left out Gordon Brown, up until the time just before the start of the campaign for the 2010 general election? How would this have played out? Which MP's would have supported him? Could he have won and become Prime Minister? Or would it have ended in disaster and his sacking from the Labour front bench?

Also, could David have counted on support from his younger brother Ed in such a scenario? In which case, the challenge would be seen not as a continuation of the Blair-Brown rivalry but rather as a coup by the younger generation of Labour against the old, especially if he had the support of much of the younger "Primrose Hill" MP's.

If David Miliband had successfully ousted Brown, especially if this happens just before the election, would this mean a Labour victory and a continuation of the New Labour era? Or would the Tories still have won, making DM the opposition leader? (It would just be too much chaos for the Party if Ed tries to oust David in this scenario.)
 
Interesting. With David as leader, their would be less contrast between the party leaders, since Miliband, Cameron and Clegg are all around the same age, with Brown looking like a dinosaur compared to them. I'm not to familiar with D.Miliband, but perhaps he could preform better for Labour in the debates because of this?

Other than that, I'm not sure if Labour would win the 2010 election. Labout would have still bee in power for over a becade, so it's possible country would still want some kind of change, though I think Miliband would preform better in the election than Brown did.
 
Without crunching any numbers, my gut says Britain would currently have a centrist coalition government under Miliband and Clegg, with Danny Alexander and Alistair Darling working out how to perform slightly less harsh cuts than those the OTL government is performing.
 
Without crunching any numbers, my gut says Britain would currently have a centrist coalition government under Miliband and Clegg, with Danny Alexander and Alistair Darling working out how to perform slightly less harsh cuts than those the OTL government is performing.

In this scenario, how would defeat in the elections affect David Cameron's position as leader of the Conservatives?
 
If Lab gets a majority, he's out. Since the 1980s no Tory leader has survived a loss- Hague and Howard for example. You could see Davis or another Thatcherite presumably.
 
If Lab gets a majority, he's out. Since the 1980s no Tory leader has survived a loss- Hague and Howard for example. You could see Davis or another Thatcherite presumably.
As an American I must ask: Are you making a distinction between a Lib-Lab majority or Labour outright topping the conservatives?
 
I reckon if there's no overall majority Cameron would stay as leader, playing the ever-reasonable change candidate trying to be ready to jump in whenever the Coalition collapses - basically what Ed Miliband intends to do in Parliament.

Labour majority though (which is unlikely but not impossible, if David Miliband has a very good two years as PM and shifts the blame for the recession - which again isn't hard, as Brown lacked the positioning to come out and say, entirely truthfully, that Labour really were not to blame for the start of the whole thing, just the unprepared nature of Britain) and Cameron would be out. By 2010... Davis would run again, but remember he'd embarrassed himself with that civil liberties by election stunt and I don't think he'd manage it. My money would be on the return of William Hague.
 
You can't 'launch' a leadership bid. This isn't Australia. The leader of the Labour Party is essentially locked in. The only way that Brown was going to be toppled was if the Blairites and the 'centre' weight of the cabinet (Straw, etc) delegate Brown. The best time for this to happen was after the 2009 local and European elections when Purnell resigned. There were rumours at the time that it had been 'suggested' to Purnell by some unnamed figures that if he resigned, they would follow. But they didn't, and he was shafted. That was in retrospect the point at which Brown going looked pretty imminent.
 
If Lab gets a majority, he's out. Since the 1980s no Tory leader has survived a loss- Hague and Howard for example. You could see Davis or another Thatcherite presumably.

To be fair, neither Hague nor Howard were actually toppled following their defeats, both of them resigned. Indeed, there was a significant feeling within the party that Howard should have stayed on as leader, which is why he remained as Leader of the Opposition until December 2005. In this scenario, I would imagine that at the very worst the Tories would win 50+ seats, so Cameron should probably be able to stay in place, even if he has to fight off a contest from someone, perhaps Fox.
 
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