Labour party

After last week’s performance and this weekend’s headlines, Ed Miliband needed a win at PMQs — and he got one. Knowing that David Cameron would attack him over the fact Labour will vote against the welfare reform bill this week, Miliband had a string of questions for the Prime Minister on the detail of the bill and whether people recovering from cancer would lose the contributory element of their benefits. The issue was both wonky and emotive. The fact the questions were about cancer meant that Cameron couldn’t deliver his usual string of put downs to Miliband. Indeed, when one Tory backbencher heckled him, the Labour leader shot back that ‘it’s a disgrace that Conservative members are shouting as we talk about cancer.

David Miliband is considering a return to frontline British politics. At least that is what Andrew Grice has heard. He reports: ‘David Miliband is considering a surprise comeback to frontline politics in an attempt to end speculation about a continuing rift with his brother Ed. Friends of the former Foreign Secretary said yesterday that his joining the Shadow Cabinet was a "live issue" in his circle of political allies. "There is a debate going on. Some people are arguing that it would be better to be a team player than look as though he is sulking on the sidelines," said one source.’ Better for whom, I wonder?

Thematically speaking, there wasn't too much in Ed Miliband's speech that we haven't heard before. The middle is still squeezed, the Tories are still undermining the "Promise of Britain", the bankers are still taking us for fools, and communities still need to be rebuilt. Even his remarks about benefit dependency bear comparion to those he made in February. But there was a difference here, and that was his punchiness. The Labour leader may not be the most freewheelin' orator in town, but the text he delivered was less wonky than usual, more coherent and spikier. It was even — in parts — memorable. You do wonder whether Miliband has learnt from the Cameroons. Much will be made of how his speech relied on the Blue Labour stylings of Maurice Glasman.

David Miliband’s statement today declares that he ‘wants no part’ of the ‘soap opera’ of leadership drama. But as long as David Miliband remains outside the shadow Cabinet and, therefore by definition, not doing everything he can to support his brother it will be easy for people to say that he is just waiting for Ed to fail. If David Miliband does not wish to be a focus for discontent with his brother but cannot bring himself to join the shadow Cabinet, then he should resign his seat. Only by leaving the Commons will he persuade some of his supporters that he is not the man who can — and will — take over if his brother is deposed. Personally, I do not think David would be doing any better than his brother.

No paper has been more critical of Ed Miliband than The Times. So it is in some ways not a surprise that the paper’s leader column today declares that he has until Labour conference to save his leadership. But this ultimatum stokes the sense of drama created by the combination of the Balls’ leaks and the publication of the speech that David Miliband would have given if he had won the leadership. Expect to hear David Cameron quoting from both these sets of documents at PMQs regularly over the next few weeks. The challenge now for Ed Miliband is to make lemonade out of these lemons.

Tonight’s Guardian scoop revealing that the speech that David Miliband would have given if he had been elected leader makes this one of the most difficult—and leaky—weeks for Labour since its election defeat. The line in the speech that will cause the most trouble for Ed Miliband is that David Miliband intended to create a commission on the deficit chaired by Alistair Darling and charged with creating a new set of fiscal rules, an admission that Labour got it wrong on the deficit which Ed Miliband has refused to give.