Miliband joins Labour review of poll failure

FORMER LABOUR leader Ed Miliband will be one of those to head up a major inquest into the party’s disastrous election result.

The review, set up by Labour Together, will include interviewing all 59 MPs who lost their seats during the crumbling of Labour’s so-called “red wall” of constituencies in the North, the Midlands and Wales.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn only opted to write a generic letter thanking those who were toppled after facing backlash from the Parliamentary Labour Party at a fiery meeting in Westminster last week.

The commissioners behind the independent review said it was “wrong” to blame only the leadership or the position on Brexit for Labour’s heaviest general election loss since 1935.

As well as Doncaster North MP Mr Miliband, who led the party to its 2015 defeat, former shadow education secretary Lucy Powell and Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood will spearhead the review.

Other confirmed commissioners include Jo Platt, former MP for Leigh – one of the lost seats from Labour’s heartlands in Greater Manchester –- Sienna Rodgers, editor of Labourlist, a website favourable to the party, and James Meadway, former economic adviser to shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

A trade union representative, as well as a local organiser, is also expected to join the panel.

Ms Powell said the inquiry would take a “real and meaningful look” at why the party had “fallen short” at four consecutive elections.

“We have lost the last four elections and we all have to accept that our offers to the country have been insufficient,” said the Manchester Central MP.