Brothers David and Ed Miliband are both in the running to become leader of the British Labour Party, but they insist they will not fall out over it, writes MARK HENNESSY, London Editor

BATTLES FOR political leadership are fought in blood, but not usually by people of the same blood, though David and Ed Miliband this week have spent as much time declaring their brotherly love for each other as they have promoting their candidacies.

The two – one of whom was close to Tony Blair, the other to Gordon Brown – are the favourites in the race to take over from Brown and rebuild a party wounded after losing this month’s UK general election.

Sitting in a television studio last weekend, Ed bridled when he was asked whether he was a little “more human” than his brother, while David, who has risen higher, has previously voiced his belief that “my brother is better than me at everything”.

Their father, the noted left-wing writer Ralph Miliband (who thought Labour would never do enough for the working classes), is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, near the grave of Karl Marx. His father, Samuel, who had lived in Warsaw’s Jewish quarter until the end of the first World War, later fought with the Red Army in the subsequent brutal war between the Soviets and Poland from 1919 to 1921. Samuel Miliband later left Poland, where anti-Semitism was rife, for Brussels, where his son, Adolphe, was born, before fleeing again, using forged papers, on one of the last ferries from Ostend, in Belgium, to England in 1940.

Once safe in London, Adolphe changed his name to Ralph and became a leading Marxist theorist; his north London home was one of the salons of the left during the childhoods of his own sons. There the two boys, four years apart, learned the value of political argument, encouraged by their father to debate with Tony Benn, Tariq Ali, Joe Slovo of the African National Congress and Ken Livingstone. By the age of nine, David, who is now 44, had already started delivering leaflets for Labour. His younger brother, who is 40, had by 1986 spent a summer holiday working for Benn, and later did research for Livingstone.

TODAY THE BROTHERS joke that their elderly mother, Marion, would have been more likely to have voted for John Cruddas than for them had the left-wing east London MP decided to contest the leadership.

“Obviously, politics was to the fore in our house. My father was a member of the Labour Party in the 1950s. After that he never joined any other party. He was a genuinely independent Marxist-socialist,” said David last year. “But the iconic memory of my dad isn’t one of politics. It’s of one Saturday morning in Guiseley, in west Yorkshire. He used to come to watch me play football. I was a goalkeeper, and he would stand behind the goal. I remember on this wet Saturday morning I let the ball go straight through my legs, and I turned round to see that he had his head in his hands,” said David, a lifelong Arsenal season-ticket holder.

The relationship with his father is equally important to his younger brother. “He was not an academic who said: ‘I don’t have time to come and play; I’m too busy.’ He was a dad you played snooker with; he was a dad you played chess with; he was a dad you did stuff with.”

The football image says much about David. Intellectual, interested and interesting, with a touch of self-deprecation, he had the air of the boffin about him when he went to Oxford, though one capable of making himself liked.

He was educated in Haverstock Comprehensive School, in north London, where the children of middle-class left-wing parents studied alongside those from the nearby local authority housing estates.

“The school did a lot for me, but a lot of kids did not do very well there. I learned from my school that the truth about mixed-ability teaching is that you need exceptional teachers. In my third year at Haverstock our English class was taught by our headmistress. She was an exceptional teacher, and she had a mixed-ability class in the palm of her hand. But you can’t design an educational system around the most exceptional teachers,” said David, who served briefly as minister for schools.

THE OLDER MILIBAND is married to the American violinist Louise Shackelton, who plays with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the couple have adopted two sons from the United States, in 2004 and in 2007.

Both brothers have lived and worked in politics for all, or nearly all, of their adult lives. The elder worked for a think tank before becoming Tony Blair’s head of policy before Labour entered power in 1997. Once in office David became head of Blair’s No 10 policy unit from 1997 to 2001; he was nicknamed Brains by press chief Alastair Campbell, though Miliband chafed at the anti-intellectualism of many in Blair’s court. From there he was parachuted into the safe Labour seat of South Shields, in the northeast of England, then began his meteoric rise, which culminated in his becoming foreign secretary under Brown in June 2007.

His younger brother has trodden a similar path: educated at the same schools, he went to the same Oxford college and studied the same subjects (politics, philosophy and economics); David got a first-class degree while Ed did not. Having worked briefly as a television journalist, Ed began to work for Brown a year after David had started with Blair, and the two were then considered to represent the younger face of both camps.

Unlike his brother, who is seen by many in Labour as distant and standoffish, Ed has an easy, warm manner, dubbed by one as “a natural conciliator who could have been a relationship counsellor”.

During the years of Blair-Brown feuding, Ed Miliband was often the bridge, popular with some because his first name was not David and with others because his surname was not Balls – a reference to Ed Balls, another leadership contender.

Frequently, the younger Miliband acted as Brown’s plenipotentiary to No 10, where he was famously once described as “the ambassador from Planet F***” because he was the only one of the Brown team who refrained from telling the Blairites to f*** off.

Today the brothers insist that their relationship, which is close, will easily survive the vicissitudes of the Labour election, which will not end until the party conference, in September.

So far David, who has often not shown the ruthlessness typical of politicians, has taken pole position, declaring first and with a campaign team already in place – though all have been told not to brief against opponents.

Declaring his candidacy, David said: “We have talked very frankly and openly to each other because we love each other as brothers. The most important thing for both of us is that the family remains strong.” Equally dismissive of the attempts to paint the contest ahead as Cain versus Abel, Ed said: “David is my best friend in the world. I love him dearly and I think it is absolutely possible and necessary for this party to have a civilised contest.”

Miliband the elder is the early favourite in the race, though the younger is closing fast. Both will be too aware, though, that Labour is in no mood for a coronation this time. The road to September will test brotherly love.

CVs David and Ed Miliband

Name:David Miliband

Age:44

Occupation:Labour MP, ex-foreign secretary, who wants to be Labour leader.

Most likely to say:"This is not about Blair or Brown. This is about Labour's future."

Least likely to say:"There is no way, brother, that I am going to serve under you."

Name:Ed Miliband

Age:40

Occupation:Labour MP, ex-climate change secretary of state, who also wants to be Labour leader.

Most likely to say:"Labour must listen."

Least likely to say: “There is no way, brother, that I am going to serve under you.”