What now for David Miliband?

David Miliband is still keeping everyone guessing about where he sees his future. In the run-up to this contest he told friends privately that he couldn’t see himself wanting to serve under his brother. What would be the fun, the argument ran, in hanging around in opposition shadowing the job you did for real in government knowing that the best that could happen is that you get back the real job in government, not the top job in No. 10.

Now David Miliband must weigh up just what a sulk that will look like. Most think he’ll decide that’s a chapter he doesn’t want written into his biography. The money is on him coming back but keeping an eye out for an high-powered international job.

The danger meanwhile is that the public’s first impression of a relatively unknown new Labour leader is simply of a guy who is having difficulty with his elder brother, who he loves.

How did Ed Miliband’s first day go apart from that? He got out his message that he wasn’t “Red Ed” and he got out the message that “the era of New Labour is over”. But ask a trade union general secretary what he thinks that means and you get a pretty left wing answer. We are still waiting for Ed Miliband’s definition of what that means.

Ed Miliband looked a little nervous as he took to the platform for the first time today to listen to tributes to Michael Foot and hand out merit and long-service awards to party members.

The General Secretary of the GMB, Paul Kenny, spoke to me today of how Ed Miliband is work in progress. “I don’t think anybody suggests that right at this moment he’s the finished product but maybe that’s not a bad thing.” He’s “a tad nervous as you’d expect,” Paul Kenny said, “given his relative immaturity in politics, but someone who’s really really genuine.”