Milibands insist there is ‘no psychodrama’

David Miliband will make no decision until Wednesday on whether to join his younger brother’s team.

In answers to journalists this morning David Miliband suggested that a big factor weighing in his decision-making is how the psychodrama between him and his brother will dominate everything his brother does if he hangs around. That, decoded, is what David Miliband is saying when he talks about deciding what’s “best for the Labour Party.”
Apart from two face to face meetings between the brothers there have been contacts between intermediaries – David Miliband trying to work out, like many others round this conference, exactly where his brother is taking the party.

David Miliband never had a speech on foreign affairs ready for this week. “I came here on Saturday planning a slightly different week, just a slightly different week,” he said this morning.

But he’s thrown something together for this morning’s session, a ten minute speech (on foreign affairs) is expected, as it was thought it would look a bit weak to limit himself to the question and answer session now under way.

Ed Miliband emerged from the conference hotel not long after his brother. Nick Robinson asked him if it would be better the pyschodrama with his brother ended. Ed Miliband then performed the journalist’s favourite mistake of repeating the assumption behind the question. “There is no psychodrama,” he said.