Miliband: I toned down conference speech to avoid 'Heseltine moment'

by Dave Keating | September 23, 2008 at 01:38 am

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More drama from the Labour Party conference in the UK, as Gordon Brown tries to save his job and David Milliband tries to convince the media that he is not gunning for it. Embarassingly, Milliband was overheard telling an aid last night that he had "toned down" his speech to the conference to avoid embarassing Brown and make sure he didn't outshine him.

David Miliband was embroiled in controversy last night after he was overheard telling an aide that he had toned down his Labour conference speech to avoid embarrassing Gordon Brown.

The Foreign Secretary said that he had refrained from going further because he would have been accused of disloyalty. According to the BBC, Mr Miliband was overheard telling an aide: “I couldn’t have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment.”

This is believed to have been a reference to the defeat of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 because MPs assumed that Michael Heseltine was waiting in the wings to take over. Mr Heseltine failed to succeed the prime minister and John Major became party leader.

Mr Miliband is the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed Mr Brown, who will today make the most important speech of his life as he tried to head off attempts to unseat him as Labour leader.