It seems to me that there are three possible positions on the Iraq war for a politician:

i) I was always against it and I still am;
ii) I was for it at the time based on what I thought was good evidence, but given what I know now I realise it was wrong;
iii) I was for it at the time and regardless of what I've learnt since I still think it was right.

The first two are both completely honourable and understandable. I suspect that the majority of Labour supporters are in the first camp, most Labour MPs in the second.

Astonishingly, David Miliband seems intent on sticking to the third of these positions. It's a lonely place to be, with only Blair and Bush for company, and shows why, for all his talents, the Labour Party is better off without him as a leader.

@Martin

Quite right - Mehdi's story is nothing but triple hearsay. That this shonky anecdote appears to be the sum of evidence for Ed's peace credentials is a bit thin.

I think that, even if he did disagree, he would not have voted against, for reasons of careerism and pusillanimy.

The thing that really ruined Ed Milliband's speech was Ed Milliband. "it's wrong, conference" ooo you go, girlfriend. and so on. It did nothing to shake my belief that Ed's political brain froze at the age of 17 1/2 and has not yet thawed.

Also, he must stop doiong that tired old Clinton presidential thumb thing - so irritating.

He also says he "honoured" British troops. You'd don't honour anything just by saying you honour it.

Tellingly, Tessa Jowell said on Newsnight that dealing with Iraq as a party was "psychological, rather than military". And there was me thinking that a fit and proper party would see the Iraq war as a military issue, rather than as a self-inflicted existentialist wound to be healed by saying the right thing.

This kind of solipsistic masochism indicates a party now unfit to govern, which a very steep climb to 2015. DM could see that coming, hence his outburst.

As a Labour supporter, and a bitter opponent of Tory economic policy, I really wish it were different.

@ Martin

If your account of DM's position is right, then I'm not sure why he had such a problem with EM's speech on this:

'Iraq was an issue that divided our party and our country. Many sincerely believed that the world faced a real threat. I criticise nobody faced with making the toughest of decisions and I honour our troops who fought and died there.

But I do believe that we were wrong. Wrong to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that.

Wrong because that war was not a last resort, because we did not build sufficient alliances and because we undermined the United Nations'

Surely, DM can be mature enough to answer 'well at the time I did think it was the last resort, and that the presence of WMDs and the need to prevent Saddam using them was more important than the other considerations you mention'. It is only the fact that there were no WMDs, and the fact that the intelligence which suggested that there was was mis-represented which undermines that position.

EM is clearly not blaming DM, or anybody else faced with the decision at the time for getting it wrong in very difficult circumstances. He is speaking with hindsight, as the first paragraph I quote makes clear.

In my view this is a careful and nuanced comment on the Iraq decision, in common with much of the rest of the speech. We should not allow the media to attempt to obscure those nuances.

It is also crucial for Labour not to get too hung up on Iraq. The fact is that right or wrong the decision is well in the past now and nothing can be done to change it. There is no point wasting too much time now having a policy debate on whether or not Iraq should have been invaded in 2003. There are more pressing concerns for the British people in 2010. The advantage of EM is that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision in 2003, no-one can sensibly blame him for it.

In all areas of policy it's plainly necessary to mark a change of approach now and that has got to involve some degree of mea culpa in relation to the past. I thought EM achieved that well in a thoughtful and careful speech that also acknowledged at length a lot of the good things Labour achieved (again there is a media tendency to ignore those parts of what he said).

A balance needs to be struck between change and continuity at a time like this, and it is precisely because DM embodies too much of the latter and not enough of the former that EM was a better choice. The way DM conducts himself now will determine not only his own future career but the immediate future of the Labour Party as well.

Rather reluctantly I've come to the conclusion that David Miliband should distance himself from Ed.

Otherwise, the press are going to spend the next five years or more interpreting every trivial event as reinforcing their theme of 'fratricide'.

If you have to cover your mouth every time you make an aside, for fear of lip-readers then a public life becomes untenable.

"Blithely cast aside culpability"

That rather assumes that the decision to go to Iraq was a bad one, doesn't it? How many has Saddam killed since he met his just fate? How much greater now is the hope for Iraq than it would have been if he was still there?

@RK

This may break your heart but there are still a lot of people who supported getting rid of Saddam. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean you have to call them fools, because, frankly, it makes you look like a tool.

I'm pleased to see the back of this obnoxious apologist for war

and looking forward to welcoming some disaffected unilateralists from the lib dems

and some socialists to

they'll hopefully feel more at home now

"thanks to my colleague Mehdi Hasan, for instance, we now know that he lobbied Gordon Brown to oppose the war"

We *know* nothing of the sort.

Has Brown confirmed this?

I marched against the war. According to one unnamed friend and former colleague of Ed Miliband he said that the weapons inspectors should have been given more time.

It's pathetically weak. Would he have voted against the war if he'd been in parliament at the time? Who knows?

One unnamed source says: "Yes, he told me at the time that he was against it.". And that's it. Those are his anti-war credentials.

Don't Tories have anything better to do then troll on websites, with the same, daft, immature comments they usually make.

David Miliband should have been more guarded, over the past week, his handling of loosing the leadership, probably show we made the right choice at the end.