That's got to be a joke right? 
Rightly or wrongly, it was the narrative going around in the run-up to the election.
He won for the same reason that Mitt Romney and Michael Dukakis won their respective party nomination - he was the best or least worst of an unimpressive field.
The big Labour-supporting unions are certainly not 'lefty' in Labour Party factional terms.
Yes, because we all know that union members are not capable of researching candidates on their own terms and have to be told who to vote for... 
Except on those occasions when they haven't (which is quite often).
He won because he was up against a drunken idiot in the second round. He would have lost a two-way battle between himself and Callaghan. Just over two years prior to his election, Wilson lost by a 2-to-1 margin to Hugh Gaitskell.
Granted, though Heffer was obviously to the left of Kinnock.
And, as I previously said, those unions are generally not on the Labour left.
Smith had been seen as Kinnock's natural successor even when a 1992 victory looked likely. The main alternative to Smith was the then-leading moderniser Gordon Brown (though of course he did not contest). Blair, yes, although he charisma had a lot to do with it too.
Have you ever seen that image of him holding a banana? As for looking and sounding like a potential Prime Minister, the same could have been be said of Tony Benn.
Sure, but there is little correlation between the faction of party leaders and their electoral successes/failures. Of Labour's three most successful post-WWII leaders, two (Wilson, Attlee) were from the left and one (Blair) from the right. Of Labour's two lowest post-WWII vote shares, one came under a left-winger (Foot) and the other a right-winger (Brown).
I was literally just about to say this haha, you've hit the nail on the head. Brilliant Analysis.
As a labour member, there's pretty much 3 reasons why Ed Miliband won
1) He had ideas about how to reform the country, and the economy. He actually knew that after 2008 the markets had failed, and we need reform
2) He had high profile backing from across the party-not just the unions. About 45% of members and MP's voted for him.
3) David Miliband acted like he deserved the leadership-he tried to coup Brown in 2008 and backed out because Brown was despite his faults a good operator. His 2010 campaign had an air of 'clinton 2008' where he assumed that the nomination would a naturally come to him. He didn't distance himself from the blairites, he was shamefully New labour and we just faced our biggest defeat since 1918.
In regards to trade unions, they're often ironically voting on the right of the labour Party. A lot of members want to scrap Trident, but the Trade unions block it because it gives like 400 people jobs. And as said they don't simply meet in a smoke filled room, and individual members can vote as well.
Ed won in 2010, and I believe that the same could happen in 2015.
The problem with UK politics, is the crap that comes out in polling.
'The two parties are too similar... Ed Miliband is too left wing'
'I don't like Career Politicians... Ed Miliband looks weird''
'labour crashed the economy... Ed Miliband supports Austerity''
