'They should have chosen David': How Miliband brothers' split defined Labour's loss

They were two very talented brothers with so much potential. The older one was poised to become the leader of Britain's Labour Party, with a chance to become prime minister, while the younger was expected to rise with his brother to the highest ranks of the country's political arena. But things didn't go that way for David and Ed Miliband. Ed didn't want to take a back seat to his more polished and articulate older brother and shocked Britain's establishment in 2010 by challenging David for the Labour leadership role and triumphing. Five years later, that victory has turned bitter. The Downing Street dreams of 45-year-old Ed have been dashed by his party's dismal failure in Thursday's election, which saw Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives score a convincing victory over Labour. The party's National Executive Council was yesterday due to meet in London to set a timetable for the election of a new leader. Recriminations have centred on the abandonment of the centrist "New Labour" principles championed by former prime minister Tony Blair, who wrote in an Observer article on Sunday that: "The route to the summit lies through the centre ground." The Miliband family has suffered as well: A gulf as wide as the Atlantic Ocean has opened between the once-close brothers, with David, 49, abandoning politics and moving to self-imposed exile in New York. That has left the brothers' 80-year-old mother, a Holocaust survivor, trying to bridge the gap. John Rentoul, author of a biography about Blair and a columnist at the Independent on Sunday, believes the leadership contest has split the brothers, perhaps forever. "They have to maintain a good face in public," he said. "But I don't think their relationship is easy. I do not see how David could ever forgive his brother for what he did." Yet the last few days have seen rumblings that David might return to Britain to jumpstart his political career and try once more to become Labour Party leader after Ed resigned the post on Friday. The prospect was fuelled by the Twitter musings of one of Labour's best-known and most wealthy donors, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, who admitted she was obsessing about David. The obsession goes like this: Ed, for all his earnestness, proved a dismal campaigner, and many believe David would have been far more formidable. Some Labour supporters suffer from "what might have been" syndrome, a regretful sense that the party, heavily influenced by unions during the 2010 leadership contest, picked the wrong brother. Rentoul says he believes David would probably have had the political skills to win Thursday's election, in part by following Blair's "New Labour" strategy of positioning the party at the country's political centre. "They should have chosen David Miliband last time," he said. "Now they have to learn their lesson and choose someone who would follow the 'New Labour' path even if they don't call it that. Ed was imposed on the party by the union bosses who mobilised the activist base to swing it for Ed and move it to the hard left. That was a disastrous intervention." David has left the door slightly open to a possible return some day, but he has given no indication he will jump into the upcoming leadership race, which is already drawing a number of youthful Labour Party hopefuls. Despite Thursday's setback, the larger Miliband family saga is one of triumph over extreme adversity. Their parents were Jewish refugees who barely escaped the Nazi push through Europe during the second world war. Their late father, Ralph Miliband, after enlisting in the British military to fight the Nazis, became a leading Marxist writer and professor. Marion was also active in leftist politics, and their two sons did extremely well at Oxford University before moving adroitly up the political ranks. David became foreign secretary in Gordon Brown's 2007-2010 Labour government, hobnobbing with world leaders like Hilary Clinton, who as US Secretary of State described David as "vibrant, vital, attractive [and] smart." Ed impressed in lesser Cabinet roles as head of the Energy and Climate Change department. But while David stuck closely to Blair's centrist model, based on a middle-of-the-road policy that kept business backers on board, Ed sought to return Labour to its working class, union roots, backed by Brown. Some who take a Freudian view of things believe Ed was, consciously or not, trying to please his dead father by sticking closer to his ideals. Additional reporting by The Guardian

'They should have chosen David': How Miliband brothers' split defined Labour's loss

Choice between Miliband brothers skewed party to the left and ended in thumping election defeat