Having left British politics a few years ago, David Miliband is making a comeback of sorts, less than a week after Labour’s conference in September (and less than a month after Labour’s new leader has been elected) as he will be the keynote speaker at the Institute of Directors’ annual convention.

I get the feeling, after declining to remove both Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband before they led their party to defeat, the next Labour Leader might not be so fortunate as the party will ditch any poorly performing leader before the general election, so anyone with leadership ambitions not fulfilled this year might not have to wait until 2020 at the earliest for the next Labour leadership election, perhaps that is how David Miliband sees it as well.

The next Labour leader might fail their first electoral tests, which are scheduled for next May, whilst no one would blame the new Labour leader for the expected shellacking in the Scottish elections next year, winning back the London Mayoralty is priced in because of Labour doing well in London recently and Boris not being the Tory candidate.

Where the new Labour leader might struggle is the English council elections scheduled for next May, they were last held in 2012, when the Tories were at their nadir in the last parliament, and were struggling with the aftermath of the omnishambles budget, and a significant chunk of their support defecting to UKIP. Back in 2012 David Cameron had to apologise to the councillors who lost their seats, as the Tories lost 324 councillors and control of 10 councils, whilst Labour gained 534 councillors and 22 councils.

Labour were polling up to the mid 40s and had regular double digit leads in the run up the elections in 2012, it is possible next year the Tories will do better and Labour worse in these elections than they did 2012,  headlines like “You did worse than Ed Miliband” will not be good for the new Labour leader.

William Hill are offering 7/1 on David Miliband becoming an MP before the next general election.

TSE