Will he ever get over it with the party?

A Labour friend has just dropped me a line to point out that at the Labour leadership election in September 2010 Ed Miliband was the first choice of just 4% of the constituency parties.

This comes on top of the Parliamentary Labour Party going for his brother with his victory down totally to the efforts on his behalf by the country’s three big unions.

As Henry says this goes a long way to explaining the very poor support that Ed gets in leadership ratings from Labour voters. There just is not the level of “buy-in” from the broad movement.

How can he expect to be able to lead when he wasn’t the choice of Labour MPs or Labour party members at large?

We see the almost daily blistering attacks from Dan Hodges and John Rentoul who will never be reconciled to what happened seventeen months ago.

Whenever I meet Labour activists and members they always ask for my view of their leader because they know it isn’t working irrespective of good the man is or relative merits of his policies.

He’s not helped by the the fact that the general election is more than three years away. Normally, as we saw in the 2009/2010 period the imminence of a general election makes rocking the boat a non-option.

I’m part of the Alistair Darling supporters club. He has the gravitas to carry Labour through this difficult period.

Will a change happen? Increasingly I think that it is likely.

Mike Smithson @MikeSmithsonOGH