Ed Miliband has transformed since 2015 – he should lead Labour again

Milifandom 2.0 has grown even as Corbynism decayed. It’s time for this older, wiser Ed to reshape his party and his own legacy

“Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice – stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.” So read the infamous tweet from David Cameron a few days before he won the 2015 general election. It’s now hard to imagine a time when the tweet didn’t read ironically.

Cameron’s victory, of course, would set in motion the chain of events that led to the Brexit vote, and with it, an extremely volatile political climate that would engulf the nation with no end in sight.

I know I’m not alone in wondering how different the world would have been if Miliband had become prime minister. Surely nothing could be worse than the dumpster fire that is our current reality.

But lose he did, and we are all left to cope with the repercussions – except, perhaps, for Cameron himself, who made a right mess of things and then went on his merry way.

Labour’s loss in 2015 is easily understood. The manifesto’s milquetoast policies failed to inspire anyone, and Ed’s robotic performances didn’t endear him to the wider electorate. At a time when people were hungry for radical change, as Corbyn’s ascension would later demonstrate, the party’s cautious offerings – like a minimum wage of £8 per hour by 2020 – simply weren’t good enough.

Yet throughout Ed’s time as Labour leader, it was hard to shake the nagging feeling that he wasn’t in total control. You’d often hear from his defenders that he was actually very left-wing, but that none of the party’s policies would reflect it.

I fear that within the party, Ed’s whole tenure was defined not by his political orientation, but by the unfair view that he stabbed his brother in the back by defeating him in the 2010 leadership contest. He took the reins of an institution with an old guard heavily embedded at every level, many of whom deeply resented that the “wrong brother” was in charge.

Why didn’t he fight back stronger? I believe the shock of winning the leadership never dissipated, and in a toxic environment rife with strong personalities and petty power struggles, self-doubt and imposter syndrome would kick in for even the most confident of leaders.

Ed’s time away from frontline politics, however, has done him wonders. Not only has he built up a lot of goodwill with the public, he has successfully transformed their perception of him.

His media appearances and Twitter hijinks have shown a side that audiences rarely got to see when he was leader of the opposition – amiable, laid back, self-assured and equipped with a biting sense of humour, His podcast, Reasons to be Cheerful, has shown a wide audience that he has a sound understanding of policy issues that affect us today.

In fact, when I was a local candidate for the Labour party, it was this very podcast I would recommend to voters when discussing things like public ownership, climate change, community regeneration or the NHS.

This transformation is why I believe Ed should seriously consider running for Labour leader again.

With Corbyn stepping down in the near future, the party finds itself at another crossroads. Another epochal battle for the soul of Labour has begun. Centrist candidates are already out there arguing that the party has gone too far left; those on the left, especially the hundreds and thousands of activists that joined because of Corbyn’s progressive vision, are loath to let it slide back to being what they consider “Tory lite”.

Any candidate from the left, including Rebecca Long-Bailey or Angela Rayner, will meanwhile face unfair accusations of being a Corbyn or McDonnell plant.

Ed’s decision to remain a backbencher throughout Corbyn’s tenure insulates him from this. He could be a unity candidate – the rare politician popular with both the left and centre of the party. He would also bring with him a wealth of experience at the helm, something no other candidate can offer.

While I appreciate the urge to move forward instead of backward, Ed isn’t the same politician he was, and this isn’t the same Labour party.

If there’s one thing Corbyn has achieved, it’s freeing the party from the vice-like grip of the old establishment that throttled it during the Miliband years. This year’s Labour manifesto was the most radical in decades. Put into practice, it could have put an end to the rising inequality and untold misery caused by years of austerity.

Labour just didn’t have the credibility with the electorate to have them believe we could deliver what we promised. Older, wiser and with something to prove, a radical Miliband could be that credible and formidable voice our movement needs.

Even on the party’s left, the story of Ed’s leadership increasingly read as one of wasted potential. No less than Owen Jones this year described Miliband as “a man who had the right diagnosis of Britain’s broken social order, but feared offering a genuinely courageous break with it, a man torn between the radicalism of his father and his time as a New Labour apparatchik”.

Not many people get a chance to reshape their own legacy. If Ed stood and won, that would be a reason to be cheerful indeed.