David Miliband has been handed the high-profile environment brief as a political move to counter the Conservatives' recent hijacking of the mainstream green agenda. He may not have the charisma or the means of David Cameron, but he is in his early 40s and from a generation that learned about environmental change at school, rather than a civil servant brief digested on the way to a meeting.
This marks a massive change for the party which, at its highest levels, has never grasped the personal appeal or political potential of a green agenda. Labour's old guard has always linked the environment to old-style containment politics, such as agriculture or planning, rather than the new international agenda or youth and human rights.
He skips a political generation and, Labour hopes, could give the party the personal engagement that was missing under Jack Cunningham and John Prescott and has been, though to a lesser extent, also absent under Margaret Beckett.
He is also a thinker who has boned up on urban philosophy, climate change and decentralisation. Now he will need to be a bruiser to persuade Mr Blair that the environment is not a bolt-on optional extra and that cutting climate change emissions is more than just making the odd speech or two.
His new department has been practically at war with the Treasury over funding, and is constantly skirmishing with the department for transport over aviation and roads, and the department of trade and industry over everything.
- (Guardian service)