Ed Miliband 'won't return to frontline politics'

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband is to announce "within days" that he does not plan to return to frontline politics, according to The Times. The paper says the news will be a blow to those who hoped he might become shadow foreign secretary.

The Times said last night that Miliband intends to stay on the back benches, campaigning on the issues that matter most to him: the environment and social inequality. It claims some had hoped he would join the shadow cabinet of potential Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

But this morning both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror quote a source close to Miliband, who remains MP for Doncaster North after losing this year's general election, as saying the reports were "all speculation".

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The Guardian newspaper, which endorsed Labour at the last election, has remained silent on the matter.

Even if The Times is right, Miliband may still return to the shadow cabinet in the future: the newspaper says that he wants "a break" from the frontline, rather than insisting that any withdrawal is forever.

The Times says that many Labour supporters had hoped that Miliband might serve as foreign secretary under Corbyn, if the left-wing front-running candidate for the Labour leadership were to win the ballot next Saturday.

Meanwhile, Miliband's older brother David, who still works in New York as president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee after losing the 2010 leadership race to Ed, has offered David Cameron some advice.

The elder Miliband said yesterday that the UK could take around 25,000 refugees in the migrant crisis. He said Britain should not offer sanctuary to "limitless" numbers, but tens of thousands could be helped.

He told ITV: "This has now become not just a political crisis and a policy crisis, but a moral crisis. I think it's very clear that the scale of the crisis demands that countries like Britain do take tens of thousands."