What if David Miliband won Labour leadership in 2010?

What if David Miliband won the Labour leadership election in 2010 and led the UK Labour Party into the 2015 election? I think Labour would do better and there'd be a hung parliament as Miliband is more centrist and a bit more credible and New Labour(which people forget was extremely successful) but still has image problems and many if Labour's OTL problems. How do you think Labour would do? If he won, what would David Miliband be like as PM? What would be the effects? What if?
 
I think there's a good chance we'd have David standing down after not winning and people saying "ah if only [insert name here] had been leading the party". Post-election surveys found English & Welsh voters didn't still trust Labour on the economy (which David Miliband can't dodge because he was even higher up during the credit crunch than Ed), believed the Tory line about a terrifying Labour-SNP coalition (which the Tories can still argue), and thought Labour talked to much about the unemployed (David Miliband might be able to escape this one if he rarely talks about welfare cuts but yeah). It's a tough brief.
 
In addition to what Charles said, I think the fact that Jeremy Corbyn, the most left-wing party leader since Michael Foot, has only slightly gone backwards on Miliband's career best in the local elections, shows that this simplistic idea of 'all the undecided voters are in the centre and they will vote for the person they most align with on an online personality test' is rather spurious. So David Miliband's centrist credentials are worthless. As to whether D-Mili was more credible... well, your mileage may vary, but is this substantially better than Ed's image?

As to New Labour being successful - well, it was successful for about 8 years, and then the Tories managed to copy what made it so media-friendly and external factors pushed the economy into freefall, and the wheels came off. Remember, Brown was still New Labour, and he performed terribly in the 2010 elections. New Labour was reviled, from Daily Mail readers to Guardianistas. So, sticking with the same old policies and the same old ideology isn't the way to inspire people of whatever ideological stripe to vote for you. Labour needed to show the electorate that they had changed, and learned from their mistakes. Neither Ed nor David Miliband were capable of doing this.

The other major problem was the rise of the SNP. They managed to gain Labour voters by presenting themselves as a lefty alternative to New Labour, so David Miliband as Leader isn't going to do anything to solve this situation, and he would need to gain around 100 English and Welsh constituencies which his brother couldn't gain in order to win with a majority. A Progressive Coalition would only be secure with an extra 30-50 seats. And David Miliband obviously couldn't do this.
 
Labour needed to show the electorate that they had changed, and learned from their mistakes. Neither Ed nor David Miliband were capable of doing this.

Exactly. This would've been an issue with Ed Balls as well, and likely Burnham. Corbyn is a change but his problem is that the Tories are painting it as a change back - to dreaded Bad Old Days - rather than something new. It's possible another one of those candidates could have done better with some furious spin but not that likely.
 
David Miliband probably would have done slightly better than Ed but only slightly - the fundamentals were against Labour (not trusted on the economy, no room for manoeuvre on economic policy, Scotland, Cameron's positive image). He would have presented a much more centrist and competent image than Ed, though I doubt this would have counted for much.

In some respects, David would have had an even tougher time than Ed. The trade unions and the Left were angry with Labour even with a soft left leader - imagine what it would have been like with David with his more centrist policies (in OTL there were threats of unions withdrawing funding, disaffiliation). The Green Party would have probably had a huge boost. On Syria, David would have likely supported the government, possibly causing resignations from the Shadow Cabinet and a coup. And crucially on Scotland, would the pro-Independence forces have done better, even winning Independence, with a Blairite leading the Labour Party? Look at the vitriol that Jim Murphy suffered. Though on the other hand, the image of a more competent Labour Party may have led some Scottish voters to believe that there was a chance of a left-wing government getting back in power in the UK.

The Labour Party would have been divided under David Miliband's leadership and it's possible he wouldn't have been able to make it to the general election - replaced in a coup orchestrated by the soft left and trade unions: Yvette Cooper, Ed Balls or even his brother. It's clear from his leadership campaign that David was very arrogant and detached from the party.

On the other hand I think Ed Miliband's leadership created a terrible atmosphere of complacency and insularity within the Labour Party which has led to the current disaster of Corbyn's leadership. The arguments of the Left were appeased when they should have been confronted, and the party did next to nothing to understand why it lost in 2010 and to appeal to voters in the centre.

Just for context, I believed that Ed could win in 2015 and supported him then but the 2015 election was a classic case of when the facts change, change your mind, and it's clear that his entire strategy was a mistake.
 
A lot would depend on the consequences a David Milliband leadership would have on the rise of other parties. The SNP would probably still win a majority, triggering an independence referendum as in OTL, since Scottish politics often bear little relation to what is going on in Westminster, and David Milliband probably wouldnt be all that popular in Scotland anyway. I cant see him playing the referendum any differently, in fact he might be even stronger in joining with the Tories to defend the Union. So there would still be a similar situation in 2015 with regards to a deal with the SNP. That said, maybe he is firmer than his brother from the outset in saying no deal, and it becomes a non issue, it is hard to say.

As for UKIP, they would still probably grow in support, but whether it is to the same extent is another question. On one hand, you could argue that there growth had something to do with the lack of an obvious alternative after the removal of the Lib Dems as the 'protest party'with an uncharismatic and unpopular figure leading the Labour party as well as immigration. In the leadership campaign, he did seek and win the backing of Gillian Duffy, so perhaps he had a better agenda on immigration than Ed. On the other hand, he was hardly the best placed to be on the right end of anti estabilishment politics.

So I would say UKIP would poll a couple of points less than OTL, but that gain would be placated by a growth in support for the Greens. Maybe they would take a couple of seats from them, like Norwich South and Bristol West, but there main effect would be to split the left wing vote in certain places and keep the Tories in some marginals.

By the looks of things he would have done more to address the economic trust issue right from the get go
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jun/10/david-miliband-labour-leadership-speech
So I reckon he would have a better shot at resolving that issue, but whether that would have been enough is another question. Labour OTL 2015 had pledged an extremely disciplined approach to public spending, but voters still thought they werent trustworthy.

So it is difficult to say precisely how he would do versus his brother, as it is dependent on several uncertain variables. That said, my hunch would be that he would do better, though probably only by 40 seats at best. So best case scenario is that Labour are the second largest party but go into an unstable government with the support of the SNP, who would have a tense relationship with him and pull the plug on them at any time.
 
In addition to what Charles said, I think the fact that Jeremy Corbyn, the most left-wing party leader since Michael Foot, has only slightly gone backwards on Miliband's career best in the local elections, shows that this simplistic idea of 'all the undecided voters are in the centre and they will vote for the person they most align with on an online personality test' is rather spurious.

William Hague made some absolutely eye-watering gains in local elections, even IDS made a few hundred (albeit Hague was coming off a decade of increasingly large and unsustainable Labour gains in local government, particularly under early New Labour/late Major) almost all opposition leaders have made local government gains due to the inherent nature of these things, so the fact that Corbyn has gone a little backwards on Milliband during a time of high Tory de-motivation doesn't say much other than he's not doing particularly well. I don't know why you're confusing supposedly Milliband mid-term voters with undecided GE voters; if Corbyn had gone forward on Milliband you could maybe talk about him attracting some kind of new support.

Anyway, on David Milliband. He's obviously proven himself an utterly disastrous personality, ridiculously highly-strung and hysterical, tactically inflexible and politically limited, so in personal terms that should be enough to be a serious limitation on his party management skills. I get the sense that D. Mil would be a Portillo in waiting though; the kind of abrasive, arrogant, swaggering personality who tends to develops a genuine cult anti-following in this country. There's clear roots for that in how the tabloids tried to frame Brown at some points, I think they'd expand the character-exposure operation under him.

In short I think he's ready-made to continue the psychodrama culture of New Labour.

I think in retrospect it's pretty obvious that the left had an existential need post-New Labour for a period of Labour 'moral renewal', and where trying to win elections was observed more in the breach than the observance, and that Ed did a pretty damn fine job of keeping that mood in check while not fully collapsing to it. That won't happen under his brother, obviously, and it's difficult to see anyone being able to win an election with serious personal negatives being accentuated and a fraying electoral coalition; let alone a Tory party kept in the kind of political health that it was in OTL during that parliament.
 
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