Who is Labour's Mr Sun?

Writing for the Times, Tim Montgomerie neatly overlays Aesop onto the Labour leadership contest:

“The next Labour leader is unlikely to be an Abbott, Balls or Burnham. Gordon Brown’s successor will be a Miliband. But I’m more interested in whether he will be Mr Sun or Mr Wind. Aesop captured the dilemma in a fable. If you want a man to take off his cloak, do you huff and puff and force him to give it up or do you cover him with warmth until he discards it freely? In Aesop, the sun scores a predictable victory. Politics isn’t so easy. Harriet Harman’s blasts at Nick Clegg’s alleged betrayal of left-wing voters has undoubtedly blown many Liberal Democrat voters towards Labour. In the long term, however, Mr Miliband (for surely it will be Ed or David) is more likely to prosper by offering flowers to Liberal Democrats than by throwing the vase at them.”

But the question remains: who is Labour’s Mr Sun and who is their Mr Wind? Well, both of the Milibands are going in for a bit of Lib Dem bashing at the moment – but it’s striking that David Miliband seems to have toned down the rhetoric he was deploying before the election, whereas his younger brother has only notched it up. Indeed, Miliband E. has even gone so far as to say that:

“[The Lib Dems are a] disgrace to the traditions of liberalism. They are trying to pretend that their Budget was fair when they know it wasn’t. I can see the death of the Liberal party to be honest.”

This might serve Ed Miliband well for the time being. The Labour faithful are probably in the mood for a spot of bare-knuckle opposition. But as he looks to promote his non-partisan credentials – even going out of his way to praise government policies – this sniping at the Lib Dems could start to look a shade inconsistent.