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David Miliband puts off India tour as Labour crisis deepens

LONDON: A planned visit to India by U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband next month is off because of the deepening political crisis at home, which has pitched him at the centre of a possible leadership challenge to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Foreign Office sought to play down the development, saying no dates had been fixed for the visit. A spokesperson told The Hindu the government had been simply “exploring options” for an autumn visit, but declined to comment when asked whether a visit sometime next month was still on.

“We can’t get into details of Foreign Secretary’s visit for security reasons but India remains a priority,” the source said.

Sources at India House confirmed there had been “discussions” about a visit but said they had not been officially told anything by the Foreign Office whether it would go ahead. Media reports claimed the visit was planned for the beginning of September (according to The Times, it was scheduled for between September 7 and 10) and had been cancelled to help him concentrate on the political crisis which could see a challenge to Mr. Brown’s leadership at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Manchester starting September 20.

The development came two days after Mr. Miliband wrote an article, which was widely seen as a “job application” and provoked a furious response from Mr. Brown’s supporters, who called for him to be sacked for “disloyalty”.

In his article in The Guardian, Mr. Miliband analysed the crisis which has engulfed the Labour Party under Mr. Brown’s 13-month leadership and set out his own vision for its revival.

Later, he denied he was campaigning against Mr. Brown and said he wrote the article because he was “frustrated by the sense of fatalism” that had gripped the party in the wake of the crisis, sparked among other things by its defeat in a crucial parliamentary bye-election in Mr. Brown’s native Scotland last month.

That has not, however, quelled speculation about his leadership ambitions. Mr. Miliband, who belongs to the Blairite-wing of the party, is reportedly under pressure from a significant section of younger MPs and Ministers to launch a leadership bid as they believe that Labour cannot win the next general election under Mr. Brown’s leadership.

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