"Pandering" and admitting a course of action is/was wrong are two very different things.

New Labour spent almost its entire existence 'pandering' to business, for example.

Admitting the Iraq intervention was wrong is a sine qua non for many rank and file Labour supporters in terms of deciding who to vote for (not necessarily me though, as I'm quite hopeful such an intervention won't happen again on the same terms, and I'm getting rather tired of Iraq defining a significant part of this race.)

As for 'trimming', in this context it would just be D Miliband playing for votes, and those with half a brain would see right through it. Indeed, it's little better than 'pandering'.

No.

Completely agree with David Wearing's comments. I'm increasingly worried about DM's vision of the party and by extension for the country; I'm also deeply depressed by it. I'm reminded of Nye Bevan's response to critics who pressed him to cease stating socialist solutions to problems in order to safeguard party unity and to play to perceptions of what the electorate wanted: "When you a join a team in the expectation that you are going to play rugger, you can't be expected to be enthusiastic if you are asked to play tiddlywinks". We're in a changed world that demands a completely different set of solutions to that provided by Blairism in the mid-90s. Labour must grasp the opportunity that has come out of the financial crisis for developing a new socialist vision for the twentyfirst century. I'm not convinced that we can do that if we have someone as leader who seems to be peddling the same Blairite ideas and solutions that we need to go way beyond.

I don't see what is served by labelling D. Milliband as "Blairite" except mudslinging - it obscures real debate.

What elements of his programme and campaign can really be dismissed in this way?

Of course things have changed, but the seats that Labour need to win have not - and it will be that much more difficult in the wake of Cameron's gerrymandering.

That doesn't mean we need the same solutions as "New Labour" but surely it does mean that Labour has to be open to new ideas and winning new voters - no?

Blairite/Brownite - what does it matter, they're 'two cheeks of the same backside' to quote gorgeous George.

What ever Blairite or Brownite means, they are both New Labour and that is at the heart of the problem.

People, I think, attach the Blairite/Brownite terms to the New Labour centre right lot whose ideology, they feel, is very much dead in the water and detracts from the real essence of Labour.

Milliband was highly instrumental and influential in the 97 manifesto and as policy adviser and head of policy to Blair and there are a number of us who think that if it looks like a Blair, talks like a Blair, tubthumps with staccato studded sentences like a Blair - it is a Blair and in my book, that's regressive politics.

@Freeman

They would indeed, and their case would have de facto been less spurious. More should have been made of previous successes in Kosovo and Sierra Leone.

I'm used now to people opposed to the war reducing it to Bush and Blair. By "what next?" I mean, and I think reponsible opiners should primarily consider "what next for Iraq?".

"What next" would have been the collapse of the then extant regime, which the head of MI5 recently confirmed would have included reprisals on minorities, with the worst of Iraq's neighbours piling into a sectarian civil war with either a salafist or Iranian-back shia dictatorship assuming power, and, yes, oil. I think you and Ed M mistakenly assume that doing nothing means nothing happens.

@Tom O'Gara - the juvenile, personal digs at Ed Miliband, and the novel idea that taking a leading role in one of the most significant international conferences in the last ten years is irrelevant in terms of foreign policy experience, are best ignored. But it is worth responding to your points on Iraq, not because they have merit, but because they are familiar.

Balls, Burnham and David Miliband have adopted the "if I knew then what I know now" defence, which you essentially repeat. This ignores what was perfectly well known at the time.

A crippled Iraq posed no threat to the West or its allies (least of all the US, the greatest military power of all time), irrespective of whether it had a few vials of something nasty hidden in bunker somewhere. The idea that we should all quake in fear before this smashed country was laughable to any serious person.

It was also well known that the US administration was staffed with people who had personally backed Saddam (Rumsfeld) and other mass murderers such as Suharto (Wolfowitz), and that Washington continued to support some of the most vicious, tyrannical, human rights abusers in the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States). Anyone therefore looking to Washington for a liberatory invasion of Iraq that attended to the needs of the Iraqi people was living in a parallel universe.

Note also that much of the bloodshed in Iraq was not down to this act of violent colonialism being insufficiently well planned, but was due to actions intrinsic to the nature of US power.

One was the economic shock therapy imposed by viceroy L Paul Bremer III, no more than a particularly virulent example of what countless US clients have imposed on their populations in recent history, and which destroyed the economy, sending unemployment rocketing and providing much of the personnel and discontentment upon which the insurgency fed. No one with a basic understanding of how the US approaches economics where its subordinate states are concerned was surprised by this.

Another element was the thuggishly vicious way in which the US army conducted itself, massacring civilians at random from the ground, from the air, imposing collective punishment, crushing entire cities such as Fallujah and Najaf, which was not only devastating in itself but which also fed the growing insurgency and civil war. The fact that the US army behaves in this way was no surprise to anyone with the smallest understanding of history.

In short, the self-serving mea-semi-culpas of the "if I knew then what I know now" brigade simply will not wash. The fact is that millions all over the world, including large majorities in many countries, including many international governments, including the head of the Arab League who warned that the invasion would "open the gates of hell", knew perfectly well that this was at best a monumental blunder and at worst a monstrous crime. Yet New Labour went ahead, demonstrating a catastrophic lack of judgement, knowledge, morality, or a combination of all three.

Given the vast suffering endured both by the people of Iraq and by the men and women sent to fight there, the palpable impatience, even boredom, displayed by some when the subject is raised, is something is not going unnoted. One of the most disgusting examples of this was David Miliband's assertion, before the election, that the public had "punished us enough over Iraq". No one who has made a statement like that has even begun to think seriously about what has happened to that country, and what the appropriate penalty might be for those responsible. It certainly renders them absolutely unfit to be Prime Minister.

@John

I agree that those three issues are vitally important. Both are also entrenched problems of identity and policy that the new leader will have a hard time communication to the electorate. I think Andy Burnham is strong on these. You might think of him as Ed M in a pair of long trousers, minus the newspeak and dodgy hand gestures, and plus proper Labour and ministerial credentials.

@David

Check you out, rising above it all! A little more fun and frank appraisal of the characters in the mix and a little less worthy sanctimony would have been welcome in the hustings in general and from you in particular.

A challenge: inform me of one positive and concrete policy or material outcome from Copenhagen, either now or in reasonably likely future prospect. Statements and pledges do not cut it.

To say Copenhagen was “one of the most significant international conferences in the last ten years “ is a high jump over a very low fence. You need not go far, or in any direction in particular, to find coverage of Copenhagen describing it a gross disappointment and a useless, pusillanimous talking shop. Does anyone else of note (Brown and ED M aside) share your view that it was a meaningful event? For the UK it served as no more than an expensive stimulus package for Brown’s world-saving delusions.

The Chilcot inquiry will let us know whether there was any of the deceitfulness you allude to. If in the meantime you want to try and arrest Blair, as that’s your line of remedy, be my guest. It is disingenuous to say that Iraq did not pose any threat was “perfectly well known”. The government’s imperfect knowledge is quite evident. I agree that Iraq posed no material direct threat to the UK’s national security. But to say that the government lied is to commit the apparent sin of the accused, namely to have act with certitude and indiligence when all the facts are not in. If you want to presume guilty, fine, but don’t bore me and claim the moral high ground at the same time.

As an aside, I find your idea of anything being “laughable to any serious person” a delightful oxymoron.

You hold the truth of you assertion that the case for and prosecution of the war are indistinguishable in re US power to be self-evident. I do not so I will not “note” it. Given that the egregious events you cite were perpetrated by US forces, I also don’t see what it has to do with a decision taken in our parliament in the context of the election of one of our political parties.

Let’s remind ourselves that this is a thread on electability. Enough blood and ink has been spilt over Iraq. I expect the Iraqis, who will now police and protect themselves, have tired of US imperialism-talk longer before than you ever will. Domestically, we have a wide-ranging inquiry, and established campaigns to bring Blair to book. Self-flagellation by the Labour party at large to service the left contingent’s craving for public moral exculpation will not win a single vote.

If the 2M marchers against the Iraq invasion knew that they were just 'weapons of mass distraction', then it is difficult to buy the 'if we knew then what we knew now' line.