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7th June 2011

Labour Conference, Liverpool


David Miliband sighed as he took his seat, it had been a month and two days since the party got it's second feel of calamity this year, things had been getting worse, ever since February everyone felt a range of different emotions. Sadness, misery, relief, woe and the worst one.

Anger.

David was starting to hear things about how the public was being 'immature' and how Brown should have tried to keep at the job even when it was obvious that the Tories got a landslide that looked similar to 1983. Trade union leaders encouraging action to overthrow 'the government of cuts' and some like Polly Toynbee wanted Labour to go back to 'No compromise with the electorate' days.

Of course that was the view of many different camps, and it didn't have to matter but who won the leadership contest did and the three main choices were the paths that Labour could take and what they would mean.

There was another choice, Diane Abbot but she was just so that Labour could say that it wasn't just young white men running for the leadership so he wouldn't pay much mind to it. He looked around and saw the three men who were gunning for the role of leader of the Labour party.

David didn't run since he planned on becoming Prime Minister at some point and he knew that 2015 was only going to go one way, even if Balls was somehow going to be right. Yvette ran, to try and prove that she wasn't just Ed Balls' wife and to help out the Brownite wing of the party ever since Ed decided that Brown was poison, she wasn't going to win but she was trying to show that Brown would have still had support if David followed through with his threat.

Allister Darling was the most popular with the public in this election. He always favoured cutting the budget far deeper then what the Rainbow of Death or what Brown allowed and that meant he was seen as the only sane man in government along with the better man to be in Labour's top seat due to his support for deep cuts. Not vague deep cuts but he created a whole plan about what to cut deeply and it wasn't much different then the Tory plan only in different places. Of course that meant he was despised by some sectors of Labour and the unions wanted him to be nowhere near a cabinet place but he was one of the best choices.

Which made things awkward seeing as his brother was Darling's main opponent. Ed was making noises of solving the deficit but David had the feeling that Ed was just saying no to whatever the Tories said after they killed electoral reform and his majority was cut down by nearly 75%. Of course he thought Ed was a more unifying force for the party and was going to vote for him but the party could gain more seats next time with Darling.

But now wasn't the time to be thinking of that when the leadership results were about to be announced.

He breathed in and out, before waiting to hear the results of the leadership election. He wondered if they were being mocked by how the news coming in about Nick Clegg being elected leader of the Liberal Democrats after their own implosion.

Then again sometime there was no gold at the end of the rainbow, only disappointment and tiredness.


18th November 2010 UK General Election.

Conservative: 451 seats (+152 seats)
Labour: 150 seats (-118 seats)
Liberal Democrat: 25 seats (-28 seats)
SNP: 5 seats (-2 seats)
Plaid Crymu: 2 seats (-2 seats)
Other: 17 seats (-1 seat)

Conservative majority of 252 seats


CAMPBELL DENIES PLANS TO RESIGN.

Article from the Guardian. Dated 16/10/07
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