I have just read the Guardian report that the Blairite faction around Milburn are still pressing Miliband to stand in the leadership election and intend to nominate him to force his hand. Their fall back stalking horse is Charles Clarke. At the same time David Miliband continues to play the role of the blushing innocent whilst in recent weeks has taken every opportunity to tour round tv studios and lunch with an exhausting list of newspaper editors and politics correspondents.
This puerile plotting within the different New Labour factions is making the Labour Party look ridiculous. The whole leadership election is deteriorating into farce and is beginning to look more like a student union election than a serious democratic process for determining the future leader of our party and our country.
I am calling on all these New Labour playground plotters to start behaving with some dignity and to think about the effect they are having on Labour's election campaigns in Scotland, Wales and local government.
The electorate don't mind a party having a proper political debate, in fact as we saw with the Conservative and Lib Dem leadership elections, they quite enjoy it if it takes place in an open and friendly atmosphere. What people don't like is the behind the scenes backbiting and plotting that New Labour factions around Brown, Milburn and Miliband are subjecting us to at the moment.
Let's demonstrate the political maturity of having an open, friendly and dignified election with a range of candidates representing the breadth of views within the broad church of our party.
