Ed Balls: Labour leadership battle between Miliband brothers 'could be uncomfortable'

Ed Balls, one of the Labour leadership contenders, has suggested it may be "uncomfortable" for audiences to watch brothers David and Ed Miliband battling to succeed Gordon Brown as the party's leader. Balls said he and his wife, Yvette Cooper, a former work and pensions secretary, had decided they would not both stand for the leadership because it would be "weird". Balls made his comments as each of the five leadership contenders gave interviews to the New Statesman. David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, and his brother, Ed, the former energy and climate change secretary, are the first brothers in history to run against each other for the leadership of a major British political party. Asked whether he was surprised Ed Miliband had decided to run against his older brother – widely seen as the frontrunner in the race – Balls said: "Yes it was a surprise. I think: up to him, up to them. It doesn't make me feel uncomfortable, but that's probably because I don't have to sit in the audience." Balls said: "Yvette and I had our conversation and decided it would have been weird [to run against each other]. In fact, I don't think we really needed to talk about it." Cooper's decision not to stand prompted critics to say she had sacrificed her own ambitions as one of the party's most formidable female politicians for her husband – a charge she later strongly rebutted in a Guardian comment piece . Balls said the leadership contest, which has seen himself, the Milibands, the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, and the backbencher Diane Abbott take part in dozens of hustings has also been "pretty weird". "We've been doing it for so long now, I continually have to resist the temptation to give Ed Miliband's speech rather than my own – I've heard it so many times," he added. David Miliband has been widely judged to be the frontrunner since the leadership race began last month. He is leading both in the scale of donations from major backers – more than six times as much as his nearest rival, Balls – and the level of support among MPs and constituency parties. But his younger brother is starting to give him a run for his money, having secured the support of four trade unions to his two, including, over the past week, the backing of the leadership of two of the largest affiliated trade unions – the GMB and Unison. Ed Miliband has the second most backing from MPs and constituency branches. In a separate interview with the New Statesman, Ed Miliband said his older brother had "done the right thing" by saying he would not stand in his way. "I told him face to face at his house that I was standing and he said: 'Look, I won't stand in your way.' I very much respect that," he said. "This isn't some Shakespearean psychodrama, and, compared to Blair and Brown, we have handled it pretty well over the first months of this campaign. "We are not making a big issue of it. I would serve under him if he won. Definitely. I have the toughness of someone who knows what they believe. That's the most important thing you can have in politics." David Miliband said in his interview that he "wasn't really surprised" when his brother broke his news that day. Pressed on rumours he would retire from frontbench politics if he failed in his leadership bid, Miliband senior said he was "very happy to serve under anyone". "I'm not walking away from the people of South Shields," he said. "I'm not walking away from the Labour party." But David Miliband, who supported the invasion of Iraq while a minister in Tony Blair's government, issued a veiled criticism to his brother and Balls when he said he was "not willing ... to rewrite history". In recent weeks, both Balls and Ed Miliband have spoken out over the decision to invade Iraq, though neither hold a voting record on the issue because they were not elected to parliament until 2005. Miliband said his refusal to disown his decision at the time, and to subsequently defend the policy while a serving minister, could be seen as proving his character. "I think that people will have to make up their mind if they can trust someone who sticks to their position as clearly as I have," he said, but added: "I'm not saying that I was right about the WMDs. Evidently, I wasn't right about the WMDs."