Vulcan Political Fratricide - Ed Milliband Wins Labour Leadership Contest

Ed Milliband has won the Labour leadership contest - finally. When the result was announced at the opening of the Labour Party conference, it was interesting to see the faces of Ed and David Milliband respectively. They had known the result an hour before the public announcement and the ensuing theatrical embrace - Ed Milliband looked stunned grasping the magnitude of what his determined and ruthless campaign had come to and David flashed a smile betrayed by empty eyes. Today’s media has given a spectrum of views, with comment ranging from ‘Red Ed’ Milliband, the captive of the ‘union barons’, ensuring that Labour will remain unelectable to those who argue that the Labour Party has signalled a clear break from its recent Blairite past and that a ‘new generation’ of ‘Next Labour’ is being heralded.

Here are a few hasty links to comment form today’s media:

The Newstatesman, predictably - being a pinko nasty lefty rag, has a number of articles.
James Macintyre, the journalist who was one of the first to predict Ed Milliband standing for and winning the Labour leadership has a an article: Ed Milliband leads ‘new generation’ of Labour. He writes:
“There is no point in pretending Ed’s defeat of David isn’t one of the most dramatic stories in modern British political history. This is a tale of ruthless and focused determination, based on what Ed regarded as an importantly different set of politics. The result is that the Labour party has today moved clearly on from Tony Blair. Yet it was so close: David was ahead in the first three rounds and it was only at the last that Ed pipped his elder brother. David was the first on his feet. He embraced his brother warmly. He listened intently. And he kept his smile on throughout. But there is no hiding the fact that what has happened here today is a tragedy for him, one of the brightest and best in the Labour movement.”

In the Observer, Roy Hattersley in ‘Ed Miliband is a radical leader for a radical new era’ asserts that at last Labour has a leader who is both capable of winning the next election and actually believes in social democracy, says Roy Hattersley.

Also in the Observer, Andrew Rawnsley has an article entitled: Ed Miliband: You thought fighting your brother was tough. That was the easy bit

Other Articles are:
Why the unions and the Tories are delighted Ed Miliband has won (Mail on Sunday)
By choosing Ed Miliband, Labour has handed David Cameron the next election (Sunday Telegraph) Ed Miliband would be a noble head of a charity, writes Matthew D’Ancona, but he is spectacularly ill-fitted to be a prime minister.
A letter to the new Labour leader (Independent on Sunday): If Ed Miliband moves Labour to the left he will condemn the party to permanent opposition, warns Alan Johnson.
Ed Miliband: my vision to rebuild trust (Sunday Telegraph)