Steve Richards Myths form quickly in politics. One of them is taking hold in parts of the Labour Party and the media. The myth goes along these lines. Labour chose the wrong brother. David is the partys lost leader. His younger brother is guilty of regicide, even if the act of brutality took place before David had secured the crown. In Labours latest Shakespearean drama, David becomes a martyr and the party heads off to oblivion under the leadership of a ruthlessly vain younger brother. The last few days fuel the myth, and yet on closer examination expose the flawed analysis that shapes it. Observing David being pursued endlessly by camera crews, and having to go through the hell of watching a younger brother deliver the leaders speech, I felt desperately sorry for one of the most decent and thoughtful figures in politics. Yet, the bleak frenzy suggests to me also that he would not have been the right leader for his party at this particular junction. In some ways, the traumatic twists and turns since Saturdays result have been a compressed version of Davids recent career. On Monday, at Labours conference in Manchester, he was doorstepped several times by camera crews and reporters asking him about his future intentions. He could not say what they were. Ask me about sub-Saharan foreign policy, he joked. On the question, the journalists wanted him to answer what he had probably at that point not decided. This was not a one off. The media scrum, the sense of hysteria, and the lack of resolution that followed had a familiar air. The sequence has played out several times since 2007, when David first became a leader-in-waiting. In 2008, he wrote an article that was interpreted widely as a move against Gordon Brown. All hell broke loose. I seem to remember David walking into Broadcasting House for a pre-arranged interview and being pounced on by a thousand cameras. Are you standing against Gordon Brown, Mr Miliband? The answers were ambiguous enough to fuel the stories. Then in January of this year he was doorstepped outside his house in the evening of the final attempted coup against Brown, and gave answers about his intentions that were not definitive. These are a lot of highly charged doorsteps for someone who is - or was - more interested in ideas and policy than the soap opera of frantic ambition. I cannot quite work out why he got himself into so many hysterical episodes of the soap opera, but I suspect it is because he became a leader-in-waiting too early in his career, before his political antennae were fully developed. He became the great hope of some Blairites in the spring of 2007. They pleaded with him to stand against Brown and told him he could win and be PM. He had only been in the Cabinet a short time, as he was modest enough to observe in private. He was not like Michael Heseltine, who had a plan to be PM from when he was at university, not that this helped Heseltine become a leader. But from that moment, in 2007, he was trapped in a deadly role. Leaders-in-waiting rarely become leaders. One of Browns underestimated political achievements was to be a leader-in-waiting for 13 years and then to become a leader. It hardly ever happens. What happened on Tuesday afternoon at the conference was even more highly charged. David should have been aware that a camera would be focused on him for his brothers entire speech. Correspondents were waiting for a look of anger or disapproval. He gave them more than that. His disapproving words to Harriet Harman for applauding Eds disavowal of Iraq were a genuine moment of theatre. The fact that he expressed them when he was graciously determined to ensure this was Eds day suggests a slight lack of awareness about the medias capacity to leap at any given moment. But I am slightly mystified by Davids angry defiance over Iraq, as I am about his tendency to be the centre of highly charged and yet irresolute doorsteppings. In the terrible aftermath of war he indicated privately that he considered Iraq to have been a disaster. I do not think it is fair or right that a figure with such depth and range as David should have become a leading player in a political tragedy which at times also seemed like a dark farce. Such fates should await more superficial characters, those who see politics purely as a game and a form of theatre. I am certain he will take on many epic jobs in the years to come. But the myth that Labour chose the wrong brother is wrong. The Independent