Vote Panda

I have an article in The Independent on Sunday today that Kevin Maguire regards as “savage”, in which I point out that the Labour Party and Labour MPs resisted the temptation to vote for The Panda:

He is soft, cuddly and panders to every oppositional instinct in the party.

They saw Ed Miliband’s pandering for what it was and voted for David. The leadership was delivered instead by an operation by trade union bosses.

Of course, I know that the voting among trade union members was one person, one vote, as Tom Harris graciously observes, even if they are hard to reach without the help of the union machines. There is no point in complaining about the rules after the contest – although it emerged only rather late in the day that the rules on union endorsement mailshots had been changed without any public announcement.

It was, ultimately, David Miliband’s failure to run an effective campaign to persuade more than a pitiful 8 per cent or so of eligible trade unionists to vote that lost him the election.

But I think that Ed Miliband’s failure to win among MPs and party members presents him with a problem that he is ill-equipped to overcome.

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