Miliband launches quest to return Labour to power

MANCHESTER – Newly-elected Labour leader Ed Miliband went straight into the British opposition’s annual conference yesterday facing a huge task to rebuild a party demoralised by losing power.

Miliband defeated his better-known older brother David, the former foreign secretary, in a knife-edge result on Saturday, winning the leadership battle by 50.65 per cent to 49.35 per cent.’My aim is to show that our party is on the side of the squeezed middle in our country and everyone who has worked hard and wants to get on,’ Miliband said.’My aim is to return our party to power. This is a tough challenge. It is a long journey. But our party has made the first step in electing a leader from a new generation,’ he wrote in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.Labour suffered a heavy defeat in a May general election, prompting former prime minister Gordon Brown to resign as party head and triggering the four-month contest for a new leader.David, 45, won the majority of votes of lawmakers and party members in the three-way ballot, but 40-year-old Ed got over the finish line with big support from the trade unions, who provide most of Labour’s funding.Ex-climate change secretary Miliband promised to unite the party after the bitter rivalry between former premiers Tony Blair and Brown that characterised Labour’s 13 years in power from 1997.He pledged to take the fight to Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and its plans for slashing public spending quickly in a bid to tackle the record deficit run up under Labour.Cameron congratulated Miliband, but Conservative party chair Sayeeda Warsi said Labour appeared to be abandoning the centre ground, with their new leader ‘put into power by union votes’.And having reached out to Labour’s traditional working-class supporters in his leadership campaign, several conservative newspapers dubbed Miliband ‘Red Ed’, saying he would sweep Labour to the left.In his acceptance speech, Miliband said he did ‘get it’ that the party had lost public trust and needed to revive itself.A long-term Brown aide, Miliband became a member of parliament in 2005 and was appointed Brown’s energy and climate change secretary. – Nampa-AFP