Britain’s opposition Labour Party chose former Energy Secretary Ed Miliband as its new leader on Saturday after a cliffhanger vote.
Miliband (40) defeated his older brother David, a former foreign secretary, by a wafer-thin margin to take over the helm of the centre-left party.
He succeeds former prime minister Gordon Brown who resigned after the party lost the May election, ending 13 years in power.
David Miliband was favoured by centrists in the party whereas Ed has slightly more left-leaning views and won the backing of major trade unions who help finance the party. Miliband won in the fourth round of the vote count, by a margin of a little over one percent, to steal the prize that had seemed within the grasp of his older brother for much of the leadership campaign.
‘The new generation
“David, I love you so much as a brother and I have such extraordinary respect for the campaign that you ran — the strength and eloquence that you showed,” Miliband said in a heartfelt message to his brother.
“I have to unify this party and I will,” the winner, who was propelled to victory by strong union backing, told party activists gathered for their annual conference in the north-western city of Manchester.
“Today the work of the new generation begins,” he said.
The new leader’s focus will be on fighting deep public spending cuts planned by the ruling coalition which Labour says threaten public services and will hit the poor hardest.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition formed after the May election blames Labour incompetence for Britain’s record peacetime budget deficit and says it must take urgent action to eradicate it or risk a loss of investor confidence in Britain. – Reuters