David Miliband: Will he, won't he return to Britain to take another tilt at the Labour leadership?

Speculation is mounting that David Miliband is to return to Britain from a well-paid job in New York to sound out the possibility of replacing his brother Ed, who lost the 7 May election.

Tweeters have claimed that the elder Miliband brother is about to fly to London from his new home in New York, where he heads the International Rescue Committee. And in a bizarre game of Where's David? some have been saying that he has already boarded a flight from JFK.

However, a Labour Party Central Office spokesperson has told The Independent that they "haven't heard anything about that at all".

Ed and David were rivals in the 2010 Labour leadership election, triggered by Labour's defeat in that year's general election, after which party leader and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was ousted.

Ed beat David - who was seen as too much of a Blairite - by just 1.3% after being heavily backed by the trade union vote.

After the 7 May defeat, David tweeted: "Heart goes out to great colleagues who lost seats, Labour teams who worked so hard and of course to Ed."

This tweet has fuelled social media speculation that David was considering a return, with the Spectator's Alex Massie tweeting:

While David received the backing of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and actress/comedian Katy Brand:

There were those, of course, who saw the funny side...