 Keir Starmer's attempt to bring back the Electoral College for leadership election puts a number of Labour MPs in an awkward position. That's because in 2014 most Labour MPs backed the abolition of the Electoral College which gives MPs, trade unionists and party members a third each of votes in any leadership election. And most MPs supported the move to replace it with one member, one vote. Now in order to defend Keir Starmer's decision to bring back that Electoral College these MPs are being forced into dramatic U-turns. And the person for whom this is most embarrassing is surely Ed Miliband. Ed was in charge of the party in 2014 when the Electoral College was abolished and back then this is how he justified the move. By voting for these reforms though you're not just voting to open our doors and reach new people you're voting for the biggest transfer of power to our members and supporters in the history of the Labour Party. Because still today after all of those changes the vote of a member of parliament is worth a thousand times more than the vote of a Labour Party member. It's time to make ourselves the party of equality. Ed Miliband there was very eloquently implying that the old Electoral College system meant the Labour Party was not truly a party of equality it was only with reform that they could consider themselves you know such a worthy title. Surely that would mean he'd have to oppose any move to bring back an Electoral College. Not so. Ed Miliband is now in Keir Starmer's shadow cabinet and this is how he fielded a question on Starmer's rule changes earlier today. In 2014 you said you wanted to change these rules to make sure that the Labour Party was more in touch with ordinary voters. Would you agree that actually a change in the rules back to how they were before does not keep the Labour Party in touch with ordinary workers? Well no Keir Starmer's intention as he said very clearly in his proposals is to get the Labour Party in touch with voters and I think that's the key thing is that he wants the Labour Party focusing on the country. I know that in his conference speech and in the proposals we're going to make at our conference we're going to be focusing on all of these issues including the ones we've been discussing today that so many people are facing up and down the country the cost of living prices how we recover from the pandemic how we tackle the climate emergency which is another part of what I'm focused on. So look it's absolutely Keir's right his prerogative and I support him in doing it to come forward with proposals and as I say we're a democratic party and the party will take its view on it. Poor Ed Miliband. I mean he's always seemed like a nice guy he's got some interesting ideas when it comes to politics and policy. His downfall was always that he couldn't stand up to the Labour right that was his big problem when he was leader of the party and it seems to still be the case. You know you can't say Keir Starmer is implementing these because he wants to be in touch with ordinary workers and the electorate of this country. Well why then did you support something and not even support you pushed through something completely different in 2014. Do you think that when you pushed through those rules in 2014 you were taking Labour further away from ordinary voters? If you do you should probably admit that you should say oh I made a terrible mistake but you can't not say that and then now say oh Keir Starmer is doing this for XYZ rule because he just wants the Labour party to face outwards. We all know you know Ed Miliband knows that the reason these rules are being changed is because they don't want a left-winger to get elected again. They didn't think that it was this system was going to elect a left-winger in 2015. Their idea actually was that by introducing one member one vote you should drown out all the radical leftists with ordinary people. You could not possibly have 400,000 people vote for a candidate of the hard left so they thought the more people we get voting for this the more moderate they're going to be. They were dramatically wrong. It turns out that actually it's very difficult to get you know even 100,000 people to vote for a generic moderate is why Keir Starmer had to pretend to actually be quite left-wing and now they want to change the rules back. It's got nothing to do whatsoever with speaking to ordinary voters, with speaking to ordinary workers. Ed Miliband knows it and he should admit it. Dahlia Wilhey, do you think Ed Miliband will admit it? I'm not holding my breath. Yeah I mean I think that ultimately Ed Miliband is scared. He has seen the way that the Labour Party at the moment is absolutely ruthless. He's seen the treatment of Rebecca Long Bailey. He's seen the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn. He's thinking I don't want to go there and that's what's so powerful about this culture that Keir Starmer has created is that he actually doesn't even need to discipline people anymore. People discipline themselves because the party has become so I mean the word the only word I can think of is authoritarian and controlling that there is literally that fear that you know you will be chucked out of the position that you're in which I think is what Ed Miliband is probably nervous about and I think that his use of the climate crisis there to sort of as is you know to gesture to you know this is so that we can get on with with doing things like fighting the climate crisis. It's this very culture of extreme control and dismissiveness of the membership that led to Labour for a Green New Deal's motion being denied even being debated in conference and that's after you have you know that motion being passed by 25 local parties being backed by unions like the Fire Brigades unions also backed by MPs and you know for no good reason it was now it has been you know after they were appealed it's now going to be debated on conference floor but does that give is that the impression of a party that is so invested in elevating party democracy so they can do things like fight climate breakdown doesn't look like that to me.