MILIBAND THROWS down the gauntlet", cried the headlines following the foreign secretary's article in the Guardian last week on the way forward for Labour. But it was a pretty limp gauntlet. There was little that was obviously disloyal in this epistle, save for the omission of the words "Gordon Brown". David Miliband's failure to mention the prime minister by name was interpreted as an act of such rank disloyalty that Labour MPs have been leaping up to demand his resignation.

For anyone outside the Westminster village this must all seem pretty bizarre. If they take the trouble to read the now notorious article they will discover that it is largely an attack on David Cameron's Tories and a rejection of the Tory thesis of the "broken society". Miliband thinks it isn't and doesn't need fixing. Instead, he calls for further reform of public services, faster progress to a "low-carbon, energy-efficient economy" and better protection for the public from "a downturn made in Wall Street". These are all well-worn Labour themes, and echo Brown's words.

Miliband goes on to warn against the "fatalism" that is afflicting Labour following Glasgow East, and says that Labour needs to be "more humble about our shortcomings but more compelling about our achievements". Buried deep within this phrase lies a suggestion that Brown's leadership has not been a PR triumph. But it could hardly be seen as outright disloyalty. More a recognition of reality after the loss of Labour's third-safest seat in Scotland.

So, where exactly is the gauntlet? Why has every newspaper in the land been pronouncing the imminent demise of the prime minister? Well, what really happened last week was that Labour MPs and their researchers started telling journalists that Miliband's article was more than it appeared to be and that this was the beginning of the end for Brown, which I suppose it might be. Whatever Miliband's real intentions - and he denies he was seeking to challenge the PM's leadership - the row may have reached critical mass. If the foreign secretary doesn't step up, he stands to lose what authority he has and any claim to be the future leader, much as Michael Portillo did when he pulled back from challenging John Major.

Then again, Miliband may just go off on holiday, like the hacks, and forget about the whole thing. There is something synthetic and very summery about this leadership story. I'm not sure that the wonkish and bland David Miliband really has all that much to commend him as leader. I've never heard him give a forceful conference speech of the kind that propelled David Cameron to the Tory leadership. His performance last year was a near disaster. The latest YouGov poll suggests that even fewer people would vote for a Labour Party led by Miliband than would vote for one led by Brown.

Nor have I any clear idea of what David Miliband stands for, and I'm paid to know these things. He wants "double devolution" to individuals and communities (yawn) to break the grip of Whitehall. He says climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing government, which is all well and good. He is thought to be in favour of a windfall tax on the energy companies, but hasn't got round to calling for one. He is supposed to be a bit more left than Brown on taxation, but doesn't support tax increases on the wealthy or curbs on private equity or non-doms. He wants more NHS reform, but so does the PM.

On the economy, Miliband sticks to the classic Brown-Blair formulation that Labour should be about "social justice wedded to economic efficiency", implying that nothing should be done to hamper the operation of the free market except to encourage a fairer distribution of the wealth generated by it. What happens when the system breaks down and stops creating wealth, as is the case today, is not addressed. Curiously, Miliband blames Wall Street for the credit crunch, ignoring the fact that the housing bubble and irresponsible bank lending are arguably more of a problem in Britain than in America.

So, if Miliband is the answer, I'm not sure what the question is. He's certainly not the answer to the loss of Glasgow East, where people are clearly fed up with New Labour and all it stands for. They wanted action on energy and food prices, taxation of the rich, a return of social housing and jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. Miliband offers none of these things. He is also silent on the constitution and the future relationship between Scotland and England. It seems to me that if Labour intends to go for David Miliband, it is deciding that it can do without Scotland for the duration, because I can't see him appealing to core Labour voters here.

Don't get me wrong: I fully accept that Brown has been a disaster and has to go. Miliband couldn't be much worse, and at least has a youthful face. How soon before we hear cringeworthy comparisons with Barack Obama? But Labour's problems are so profound that the party surely needs more than just a facelift. It needs to start taking sides and asking some hard questions, not just of public sector workers threatening strikes, but of energy companies who ramp up their prices while earning billions in profits. It requires something more than handing unlimited access to public funds to banks and mortgage lenders who show not the slightest contrition for their predatory lending, their off-balance-sheet scams, their reckless disregard of sound banking practices. At this moment in British history, the country really needs Labour and a Labour leader. Yet the party has left it to financiers like George Soros to condemn the perpetrators of the debt economy. As foreign secretary, Miliband could have stiffened Brown's resolve to pull troops out of Iraq; could have condemned China's human rights record; could have managed more than mere hand-wringing over Mugabe's rape of Zimbabwe. He is supposed to be a bit of a European, but you wouldn't know it from his speeches. I can't remember a single memorable word he has said.

But perhaps I haven't been listening. Anyway, we'll soon see if he has the one thing that leadership really requires: cojones. Brown has ordered him to cancel his trip to India in September and submit to his authority. If Miliband doesn't make his intentions clear before that we will know that he is just another New Labour clone. Or, as they say in America, all hat and no cattle.