Miliband to Miliband - Fuck You!

And there we have it - Miliband Major has shafted his brother and new leader. A graceless, yet curiously understandable, act.

Of course, Labour types are going to try to spin this. They're going to say that they don't need Miliband Major, or that he has done something noble by giving his brother a fresh start. Both these perceptions are, of course, horseshit. Miliband Minor beat his brother his brother in an extremely narrow election and is now turning his back on the sort of politics that is synonymous with David Miliband. So Miliband Major is telling his younger brother to go fuck himself; it really is that simple.

And this is a deeply divisive gesture. This is a brother saying to his sibling "we may be related, we may have served in Cabinet together, but I can't work with you or your politics". It is a simultaneously a political and personal gesture, and it is a clear judgement by one brother/politician on another. Ed Miliband has been in the job for about half a week, and already one of the current figureheads of the Labour party is saying that the new leader - and his brother - isn't worth supporting, even in return for a Shadow Cabinet position.

This will go one of two ways. It will either be a one-off event - a bad loser sulking at his sibling's victory - or it will be the first shot in a Labour civil war. Normally, in the days after a leadership election, I would say this would be the former. However, given the precarious way in which Miliband Minor was elected, and the way in which he appears to be lurching away from the Nu Labour formula that was so successful for the best part of a decade, I think this could be an example of the latter. This may just be the start of another era of vicious Labour infighting...