A Generation In Waiting; As Britain's Labour Party gathers to consider its future, the biggest challenge is to hold together.

Byline: Stryker McGuire

The papers have long portrayed them as spear carriers in enemy camps. David Miliband serves one master, Prime Minister Tony Blair. Douglas Alexander serves another, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Yet there they were last week, chatting with NEWSWEEK in Miliband's grand ministerial office above a leafy London square. The two M.P.s finished each other's sentences, mirrored each other's gestures and--with just a frisson of competitiveness--yielded to each other's views in an "After you, Alfonse" sort of way. When a photographer arrived, Miliband, 41, rolled up his shirt sleeves; minutes later, so did Alexander, 38. Rivalry? What rivalry? "If we're still talking in 20 years' time about [Blairites versus Brownites]," says Miliband, "we will not have accomplished very much."

The Miliband and Alexander double act is not just for show. They are deeply worried by the warfare that has wracked their Labour Party in recent weeks. Three weeks ago a mutiny by once loyal M.P.s forced Blair to announce that he would give way to Brown by next summer. But the wrangling has continued as factions battle for control of the policy agenda between now and Blair's exit. Last week, during a tense cabinet meeting, ministers warned that power struggles were turning off the public. "This must stop," one reportedly said. As the party gathers in Manchester for this week's annual conference--Blair's last as leader--harmony is the watchword. What Labour needs, says party chair Hazel Blears, is "not just a show of unity but to be united, seriously, from the top to the bottom of the party."

That's a tough ask. Even with Blair and Brown in ceasefire mode, senior politicians who are losing their grip on power have kept the infighting alive. Some, like Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, 60, have been careful to maintain good relations with Brown. Others, like Home Secretary John Reid, 59, and Education Secretary Alan Johnson, 56, are hanging back as possible challengers to the chancellor if he stumbles. Brown is further embattled by what Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society calls the "Blairite Kamikaze Squadron," including former Cabinet ministers Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers, who have no prospects in a Brown government. Compounding the troubles, voters increasingly believe the 39-year-old Conservative leader David Cameron would make a more effective, enthusiastic and likable P.M. than Brown, according to last week's Guardian poll.

Amid the tumult, the challenge of unifying the party falls largely on the shoulders of New Labour's "second generation," a phrase Miliband and Alexander use in an article they co-wrote this week. It refers to politicians in their 30s and early 40s who must look beyond both Blair and Brown to the day when they will rule the party. Never mind that the article itself is a bland mini-manifesto for "new" New Labour--a post-Blair, post-Brown platform. (The buzz phrase, borrowed from former U.S. president Bill Clinton, is "economics plus"--"economics plus communications, plus travel, plus immigration, plus a sense of the new ways in which people around the globe live their lives.") The important point is that the two brightest sparks of the party, representing two warring factions, wrote it together. And didn't stab each other in the back.

The face of this new generation is ...