With the resignation of Labour leader Ed Miliband, it seems Labour has a lot of soul searching to do to explain exactly what went wrong with their campaign. Certainly ever since Miliband was elected by the unions over the favourite David Miliband (his brother), who apparently is flying back to the UK in the wake of Labour's defeat, was extremely controversial at the time.
Whether being seen as strange or looking like Wallace of 'Wallace and Gromit' (as BBC's cartoons suggested), the media have had a fun time of bringing him down, like when he pulled a face eating a bacon sandwich.
It's probable that this cartoon image of Miliband partly ruined his chances of being PM, plus his lacklustre performance on 'Question Time' hosted by David Dimbleby, featuring Cameron and Clegg, when he fell off the stage. Also the Conservative attack on him and Labour that he would need to depend on Nicola Sturgeon's SNP to get into government did not help.
Unlike Michael Howard when he was defeated but stayed on until David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative party, Miliband resigned forthwith leaving the top job for Harriet Harman to steer the Labour party through the turbulent waters of a Conservative victory, until one candidate is elected as new Labour leader to carry the party through five years of Conservative rule.
Dan Jarvis is a candidate who has ruled himself out of the running for the Labour leadership, and Andy Burnham, Tristram Hunt, Chuka Ummuna and Liz Kendall remain as possible candidates for the leadership election battle; possibly some as yet unknown who are considering their positions carefully whether to run or not.
Many pundits on the media have explored the possibility that another reason for Labour's defeat was the idea that many people thought that Labour under Ed Miliband, dubbed 'Red Ed' by the media, was way too left wing and should have stuck to something akin to the 'New Labour project' – which Ed Miliband wanted to move on from. He has come under strong attack from Tony Blair and Peter Mandleson for the way he governed the party during his tenure at the top of the Labour party.
