Blog: Today, Tuesday, September 28, an earnest 40-year-old man will speak to the nation as the new leader of HM Opposition. It will be billed as the most important speech of his life, but if he tells us again how much he loves his older brother, an agonised scream will reverberate around the land.

Amazingly, the Labour Party has managed to elect the younger Miliband, Ed, rather than David as their new leader.

It’s true to the party’s recent form in such matters: Gordon Brown, loser; Ken Livingstone (as London Mayoral candidate) loser; Ed Miliband, who knows? But David Cameron will have let out a sigh of relief on Saturday afternoon, probably followed by a self-satisfied chuckle.

The Prime Minister swiftly issued a statement congratulating the winner and he will no doubt do the same when he faces Mr Miliband across the Commons dispatch box when Parliament gets back to business.

“I was leader of the Opposition for four years and know what a demanding but important job it is. I wish him and his family well,” said Mr Cameron, probably thinking of David Miliband in those last seven words.

How different it was back in 1994 when an earnest 41-year-old was elected leader of the Labour Party. I doubt that John Major smiled at the thought of Tony Blair challenging him for his job.

With Gordon Brown famously standing aside following their “deal” in an Islington restaurant, who remembers now whom Mr Blair beat in the contest to succeed the late John Smith? For the record, it was John Prescott and Margaret Beckett.

In 16 years’ time, both Ed and David Miliband will have been pushed to the far recesses of our memories if Labour loses the next general election. But in the meantime, what a story the brothers have produced for us.

A friend said to me on Saturday evening that if a novelist had submitted a manuscript telling such a tale of filial political warfare, publishers would have sent it back.

Ruthlessly

That Ed should have challenged his elder and far more experienced brother was incredible enough in the first place. For him to have set up his campaign so ruthlessly to come through and win by a nose was even more unbelievable.

Ed knew from the start that he could not possibly win if he simply looked like a younger version of David, so he unashamedly targeted Labour’s core vote, successfully winning the backing of the unions who helped (along with Ed Balls’s second preferences) push him over the winning line.

It was illuminating that the first three e-mails I received congratulating Ed M on his victory came from Unison, Usdaw and Unite.

This strategy meant that the tag “Red Ed” was attached to the shadow energy secretary rather than the shadow education secretary, who stuck religiously to the distinctive Ed Balls agenda.

In the campaign, Ed M. didn’t worry too much about the label but now that he’s won, he realises it’s time to discard it and fast.

“All these accusations about Red Ed are both tiresome and rubbish quite frankly,” he told Andrew Marr yesterday.

He denied that he wanted to take his party to the left, repeatedly insisting that he was “the change Labour needs”, without actually spelling out what that change would mean.