Worried Miliband backs Brown

Tuesday, 2 June 2009 11:54 AM

By Alex Stevenson

Gordon Brown's premiership has not "run out of steam", David Miliband insisted last night.

The foreign secretary was in concerned mood in the run-up to the European elections, warning the expenses crisis has created a "time of political danger [for] the Labour party".

But in the question and answer session which followed at the Young Fabians event in Westminster one speaker, an academic from LSE, claimed that "this premiership has outlived its useful life" and added: "So what are we waiting for?"

Mr Miliband responded: "This is not a premiership or an administration that has run out of stream.

"This is an administration that has got a lot of work to do and a lot of energy in its tank."

His comments about the need for Labour to use its energy to perform well in this Thursday's European elections met with scepticism from one former minister, however.

Ex-Europe minister Denis MacShane told Mr Miliband at the meeting the government had a disappointing record on the continent.

"The plain fact is a good part of our Labour movement in government, in power, has not been convinced about Europe and that lack of conviction has been conveyed," he said.

"Our agenda for Europe has been too defensive, too uncertain."

Another speaker warned: "If we don't wake up and inspire ourselves. people are going to wake up. and we'll have a right-wing Conservative government."

Mr Miliband defended the government's record on constitutional reform, saying New Labour had gone "part of the way" to fulfilling its commitments.

Listing devolution, freedom of information and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, he pressed "we have to say those reforms were right".

But he also hinted the signs were not encouraging in the run-up to what is expected to be another disastrous set of elections for Labour.

Mr Miliband, who had earlier been campaigning in Hackney, east London, said the community there was in danger of forgetting the improvements which had been made in the last 12 years.

"That is a community where there is a danger of amnesia," he said wryly.

Josh Robson, another frustrated Labour activist, told politics.co.uk afterwards he believed an examination of the media's role in Britain's political system was worth examining following the expenses scandal.

"We've become very reliant on the media as an institution," he commented.

"If the media's distracted, the issues that matter don't get out."

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• europe
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• foreign policy
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• labour
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• party politics