LABOUR MPS’ second preference votes are expected to decide the party’s leadership race, following an opinion poll which indicated that Ed Miliband has greater support than his brother David among trades union and party members.
More than three million people – including the party’s 270 MPs and MEPs, 160,000 party members and more than two million people affiliated to Labour through membership of trade unions – are entitled to vote in the race, which will be decided at the end of the month.
The YouGov survey for yesterday's Sunday Timesof 1,000 members of the public and another 718 members of unions affiliated to Labour shows David Miliband as four percentage points ahead of his younger brother after the first count. Former health secretary Andy Burnham comes third at 12 per cent. Former schools secretary Ed Balls stands at 11 per cent and London MP Diane Abbott is last with 9 per cent.
Once the last three are eliminated and their voters’ second preferences transferred between the Miliband brothers, the younger Miliband is put ahead at 51 per cent, compared to his older brother’s 49 per cent.
The result, if replicated in the voting which is under way, could threaten major divisions in the years ahead within Labour because it would mean that neither of the leading candidates would have majority support across the party.
The poll shows Ed Miliband could win even though he would not have majority support of the parliamentary party where most back his brother. David, meanwhile, would not have a majority among the rank-and-file members and trade unions.
Tactical voting by MPs could, therefore, decide the race, judging by the efforts being made by David Miliband to attract second preference votes from MPs supporting, in particular, Mr Balls, and the other two candidates.
Reacting to the opinion poll, David Miliband told BBC's Politics Show: "It's good that there is a wake-up call for this election. Because too many people have thought that they can get a leader who can unite the party from Dennis Skinner to Alistair Darling, get a leader who the Tories fear, get a leader who sets out a forward agenda – but not have to vote for him.
“The truth is, if you want that leader, which I will be, then the people who are watching this programme need to go into their kitchens, pick up their ballot papers and vote,” said the elder Miliband.
Relations between the two siblings have suffered, particularly in the wake of some of newspaper claims yesterday that close allies of David Miliband have started to nickname his brother Forrest Gumpafter the film character played by Tom Hanks.
Saying that the polling figures showed that his campaign was succeeding, his brother told Sky News's Sunday Liveprogramme: "I think fundamentally it's about my message and about what I've been saying in this campaign."
The younger Miliband has driven a more left-wing campaign, appealing to the party’s grassroots. He has been critical of the New Labour years – even though he served all through it as an adviser to Gordon Brown and later as a cabinet minister.
“We need to understand that New Labour was great for its time and we’ve got to keep some parts of it, about appealing to all sections of the electorate and so on, but we’ve also got to move on, change, admit some of the things we got wrong and understand the lessons of the last general election,” he said.