Ed Miliband struggles to put rift stories behind him

"Nonsense, nonsense, that's nonsense. It's nonsense."

This morning’s Independent on Sunday has two Father’s Day gifts for dad of two, Ed Miliband: one welcome, the other not.

The first is a bullish interview with the Labour leader — “No regrets. No crisis. Ed Miliband hits back“. The second is a ComRes poll which has Labour neck-and-neck* with the Tories and, more worryingly, gives Miliband a net approval rating of -27 when respondents are asked if he is “turning out to be a good leader for the Labour Party”. The latter figure is down ten points on a month ago.

The interview offers Miliband a chance to respond to some of the claims made in a new biography “ED: The Milibands and the making of a Labour leader” by James Macintyre and Mehdi Hasan, my former and present colleagues respectively.

One of the more explosive passages of the book suggests that while Ed Miliband recalls being open and honest about his intention to stand for leadership 13 months ago, David Miliband remembers things somewhat differently. Asked about these inconsistencies, Ed Miliband tells the IoS:

I’m not going to get into the detail of this. What we both agree on is that we talked before both our candidacies were declared and talked to him about the position too and we’re both on the same page on that.

Yet it is in the detail where you will find the root of the unease between the two. As Mehdi writes in this week’s New Statesman, drawing on his book:

Ed says he went to David’s home in Primrose Hill, north London, on the evening of 12 May … to inform him of his own decision to stand. In a story that Ed has since repeated to friends and in interviews, he says David was polite and understanding. “I’d rather you didn’t run,” David is said to have remarked. “I’d rather have a campaign where my brother is supporting me, if I’m really honest.” But he then added: “I don’t want me to be the reason you don’t stand, so I think you should do it.

Or did he? Today, neither David nor Ed can agree on when or even if this crucial meeting occurred. David is emphatic there was no such meeting: his younger brother did not set foot in his house that week.

Another assertion — that the brothers’ wives Justine and Louise fell out over the leadership contest — is dismissed as:

Nonsense, nonsense, that’s nonsense. It’s nonsense. David and Louise were at our wedding a few weeks ago, and we had a great day. It was great that they were there and enjoyed themselves.

(As the IoS’s Jane Merrick points out, however, David and Louise didn’t attend the North London party that followed the ceremony.)

Elsewhere this morning there is no shortage of advice for the younger Miliband. Martin Ivens, writing in the Sunday Times (£), argues that Labour need to fight the coalition from the centre where they would represent a far more threatening foe than from the left. He writes:

The perverse effect of [the unions’] left-wing militancy has been to unite Cameron’s and Clegg’s warring troops against a common enemy. The Liberal Democrats owe the unions nothing — they have never donated to the party’s coffers — and despise them as political dinosaurs. The Conservatives, wobbling like jellies over health, have every reason to show some backbone in a popular cause.

Meanwhile in the Sunday Telegraph, Matthew d’Ancona poses the following questions:

Was its engagement with New Labour, to borrow Blair’s own language, “passionate” or merely “tactical”? Is Ed Miliband right to believe that you can shift the centre ground of politics when you are in Opposition? And is his renunciation of New Labour a step into the past or a handshake with the future?

*A YouGov/Sunday Times poll has better news for Labour (on 42 per cent), a five point lead of the Conservatives (37 per cent). The Liberal Democrats are back on 10 per cent.