Ed miliband

A Thick of It style interlude from Ann Treneman's interview (£) with Ed Miliband today: "There is also a visit to something called a 'communiversity' where he is confronted with what, for a Miliband, is a scary sight: a bowl of fruit. 'Us Milibands are funny about funny shaped fruit,' he notes, plucking out an apple and avoiding the yellow peril that gave his brother the nickname Milibanana after he was pictured holding one and looking, well, a bit bananas. Later, on a trip to a community farm I feel on the brink of a major news scoop when someone tries to make Ed hold a broccoli. 'Ed does not need to hold the broccoli,' says his press handler as the green blob was extended.

It must be quite satisfying for the David Miliband campaign that they can commission a YouGov poll and get all the results they would have wanted. According to the Guardian, MiliD has a signigicant lead when it comes to which candidate is the "most effective alternative to Cameron". But it's this finding that is the most significant:   "The poll of 2,907 people, conducted between 25-27 August, also found that David Miliband enjoys a strong lead among voters who abandoned Labour – a key battle in the leadership campaign. He has a 25% lead over his brother among these voters on who would be the best alternative to Cameron, and a 27% lead as the candidate most likely to persuade people to vote Labour.

Even the literary critics have to wait until tomorrow for the Blair memoirs – but the book's contents are slowing spilling out onto the Internet this evening. A series of extracts has just been published on the official website, and the Guardian has extensive coverage, including an interview with the man himself. So far, there's nothing too surprising. Blair, for instance, lays into Brown – but adds that it would have been wrong to sack him as Chancellor. And he declines to endorse a candidate for the Labour leadership, beyond offering a handful of veiled criticisms of Ed Miliband. Coffee House will have more tomorrow.

And Westminster's Idle Question of the Day is: will Ed Balls be made shadow chancellor under a Miliband leadership? There are good arguments both for and against the proposition – and most of them are made in this blog post by the Guardian's Nicholas Watt. Even Blairites, he says, are warming to the idea of Balls running Labour's economic policy. But if it's to happen under David Miliband, then the two men would have to reconcile their different views on tackling the deficit. Under Ed Miliband, the reconciliation would have to be more personal than economic. Neither, I suppose, is impossible. But as all this speculation whirls around Balls, I do wonder why Liam Byrne's name hasn't been mentioned more often in connection with the role.

Whatever happened to Peter Mandelson's regard for Ed Miliband? A year-and-a-half ago, the Ennobled One was thought to have marked out MiliE as a future Labour leader. But, today, he pulls out the verbal chainsaw and sets about tearing him down. The younger Miliband, Mandelson implies in an interview with the Times (£), would lead Labour into an "electoral cul-de-sac," because, "to suggest that we should be concentrating on our core current voters … is by way of saying that we want to remain a minority party." And, just in case we didn't get the message, he adds: "we're not looking for a preacher as our leader." Although Mandelson doesn't say as much, it all adds up to an endorsement for the other Miliband brother.

  David Cameron has dismissed the Labour leadership election as a "Star Trek convention" with policy wonks battling out to go where no spad has gone before. That caricature has some currency (see picture, left). But as he'll know, a deeper choice faces Labour. David Miliband may be the geekier one - playing Spock to Ed's Kirk. You can argue that Ed speaks better human, that he's more plain-speaking. But when he does speak, it's worth listening to what he has to say. And his piece in the Observer makes clear why so many Tories want him to win. He says he will "make capitalism work for the people" - who has it been working for so far? The government? He proposes to ration corporation tax cuts for companies if they up the minimum wage to £7.

Strange but true: the Cameroons are wary of a Labour Party led by David Miliband. The Guardian's Nick Watt has been eavesdropping and he's gathered a few choice quotes. Kool-aid drinking Tories say: "David Cameron said the candidate he hoped for was Ed Miliband, and the candidate he most feared was David Miliband."  "On the whole we would prefer if Ed Miliband won. His analysis that Labour has to go for a traditional Labour vote, rather than the middle classes, is absolutely wrong. The Ed Miliband analysis will lead them into big trouble." In spite of his best efforts, David Miliband is likely to win.

I know, I know – there's only so much information about the Labour leadership contest that a sane person can take. But as an addendum to Ed Balls' pugnacious speech earlier, it's worth noting that Ed Miliband has since deployed exactly the same argument about deficits and the Attlee era: "We do need to reduce the deficit but politics must be bigger than that. Remember our history. After 1945, with the biggest deficit in our history, that Labour government set out the vision of a good society - for a new welfare state and a new economy." To be fair to MiliE, he's made the same point before now. But its reappearance is a reminder that he has more in common with Ed Balls on the economy than his brother does.

Judging by today’s papers, the idea that David and Ed Miliband’s mother is voting for Diane Abbott has entered into the political consciousness. But it isn’t true. When Ed Miliband said that his mum wasn’t voting for him or David and was instead backing Abbott, he was joking. As he explained to me the other day: “For the record, my mother isn’t voting for Diane Abbott, that's another joke, an ill judged joke that I made.  I actually went on holiday, shut off my phone and a couple of days later I discovered that I’d spawned a whole series of stories saying the definitive view is that she is voting for Diane Abbott.  It was a light hearted remark.

The New Statesman has backed Ed Miliband in the battle of the brothers. Press endorsements don’t count for what they used to, but the country’s leading left-wing magazine remains significant in this context. Below is tomorrow’s New Statesman lead article; it rejects the charge that Ed Miliband is ‘comfort zone Labour’ and portrays him as a thoughtful dissenter from New Labour’s orthodoxy. (On the counter, there are rumours that Jon Cruddas is to back David Miliband. Support from such an independent and left-minded source would be worth its weight in gold for David Miliband.) ‘The Labour leadership contest began in earnest with the New Statesman debate at Church House in Westminster on 9 June.

Crack out the nibbles, David: looks like you’re going to win the Labour leadership. An extensive You Gov poll of Labour members and trade unionists puts David Miliband 8 points clear of his brother in the final run-off. This is the first statistical analysis that supports the general feeling in Westminster that Ed Miliband’s charge has calmed. Courtesy of John Rentoul, the results are diluted in this table. UPDATE: Mike Smithson points out that the fieldwork for this poll was carried out between 27-29 July. So I stand corrected: Ed Miliband's charge has been on the wane for a month.

What to make of the Charlie Kennedy to defect to Labour rumour? Well, judging from the people I have spoken to this evening, the rumour seems premature. There’s no sense that a defection is imminent and a Lib Dem spokesman was emphatic in his denial of the story earlier. But it does seem that Kennedy has spoken with Labour figures about how unhappy he is with the coalition. These conversations, though, appear to have been more of the crying on the shoulder variety than any kind of formal defection talks. A former leader leaving the party would obviously be a significant blow to the Liberal Democrats.