Calls for Ed Miliband to resign as recriminations begin in Labour camp / GUARDIAN

Calls for Ed Miliband to resign as recriminations begin in Labour camp

With shock exit poll suggesting Labour will lose seats, including almost total wipeout in Scotland, party sources are already talking of Harriet Harman as caretaker leader

Rowena Mason Political correspondent            

Friday 8 May 2015 03.04 BST / http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/ed-milibands-political-future-hanging-in-the-balance-top-labour-figures-say?CMP=fb_gu

Ed Miliband’s camp believed he had run a strong, tight campaign with few gaffes that apparently kept his Labour party neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the opinion polls.

But in the early hours of Friday, recriminations have begun now it seems clear that Labour has not obtained the result it wanted, with particular focus on what went wrong in Scotland and why the collapse of the party’s support there was not noticed and stemmed sooner.

There was a possibility that Miliband could try to hang on as Labour leader in the event of Cameron becoming prime minister of a minority government or what looked like an insecure coalition.

In this scenario, he could have hoped to have a go at forming a centre-left bloc if the Conservatives tried to create a stable government but struggled to pass legislation and ended up collapsing within weeks.

However, with the exit poll suggesting Miliband’s party was on course to lose seats, including an almost total wipeout in Scotland, it would be more credible for him to resign and allow a caretaker leader such as his deputy, Harriet Harman, take over.

A Labour HQ source has already told the New Statesman: “Ed has to resign tomorrow. Everyone here accepts that.”

Labour sources said one of the factors affecting whether Miliband would resign was the possibility of a second election. Senior party figures agonise over whether there would be time to get a new leader in place if there was another contest soon.

But the temptation would be to replace him if a second election were to take place in more than a year’s time. Possible candidates include the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, the shadow justice minister, Dan Jarvis, the shadow health minister, Liz Kendall, and the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna.

The big choice facing the Labour party in the event of a leadership contest would be whether to continue with Miliband’s positioning on the left with a candidate like Burnham or swing back towards a more Blairite centre-ground with someone like the pro-business Umunna.

In the first few hours after the polls closed, most senior Labour figures were loyally sticking to the script that Miliband could still be prime minister if Cameron fell even slightly short of a majority.

Ed Balls, Alastair Campbell, Cooper and others all attempted to shore up Miliband’s position as they took to the airwaves to caution against declaring a victory for Cameron before it was certain that he could command a majority in the House of Commons.

One of those going out to bat for the Labour leader was Dame Tessa Jowell, who said it was “not the moment” to replace him. “You cannot lay all of this on Ed Miliband,” she added.

But some Labour figures began to cast doubt on Miliband’s future as the picture of Conservative advances became clearer. Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor, acknowledged on LBC radio that the Tories holding the marginal seat of Nuneaton suggested the end of his leadership.

Asked about the likelihood of Cameron returning to Downing Street, he said: “I think it is worse than that. I think we are seriously looking at the exit poll being on the money and potentially having the end of Ed Miliband.” He also suggested Kendall would be one of the first to break ranks and call for Miliband to go, putting herself forward as a possible contender.

The first MP to criticise the Labour leadership openly was John Mann, who said of the result that Miliband’s team had been “warned repeatedly – those who even bothered to meet, that is”. He tweeted: “In 1983 immediately after election I wrote ‘the left that listens is the left that wins’. It remains true today.”

Neither was there a resounding endorsement from Labour former home secretary Jack Straw, who told Sky News it was “up to Mr Miliband to decide his own future”, after describing the results as a “pretty depressing situation”.

Peter Mandelson was less blunt about the party’s prospects earlier in the evening, but said it was “very difficult indeed” to see Miliband in No 10 if the BBC exit poll numbers were right, which showed the party on 239 seats – well behind the Tories on 316.

The Labour peer and former Downing Street adviser said Miliband had done a “magnificent job” during the campaign and he would not want to see him resign. However, he sidestepped questions about whether he would like to see another election if Cameron returned as prime minister of a minority government.

The former home secretary David Blunkett told the same programme that people should not rush to judgment about Miliband’s future, but did not give him any clear backing. Asked whether he thought the Labour leader should go, he said: “Nobody’s answered that question and I’m not going to either. We need to see the reality on the ground.”

He added: “Somebody was earlier predicting that Ed Miliband will have gone within 24 hours. I hope not. I think we should take our time. I think we should lick our wounds if we have to. I think we should think seriously.”

Blunkett also opened the inquest over Labour’s possible defeat, saying the big mistake will have been the failure to dispel the impression that Gordon Brown’s government had been responsible for the financial crisis.

He said: “If we have lost this election, we lost it from 2010 when in the six months from 2010 we failed to nail the lie that the Labour government had been responsible for the global meltdown and everything that happened in the US, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, was the Labour government’s fault.”

The Labour party has traditionally not been very successful at getting rid of leaders who lose elections, allowing former leader Neil Kinnock to fail at two attempts to take on the Conservatives. Alternatively, Miliband could fall on his own sword and concede his assumption that Britain moved to the left after the financial crisis has not proved correct.