David Miliband has said he would stay off the Labour front benches to avoid creating a "soap opera".
The former leadership candidate told BBC Breakfast that suggestions he should return to the shadow cabinet were "flattering", but he added: "I think I was right to say 'Look, I've lost the leadership election'."
He went on to say: "Ed needs the space to lead the Labour Party as he sees fit. I can help Labour at the grassroots. I am trying to make sure we are taking our message all over the country and not being in the shadow cabinet allows me to do that. I can minimise the amount of soap opera by not being in the shadow cabinet."
When it was suggested that an essay he wrote in the New Statesman, laying out a seven-point plan for the party, had already re-started the "soap opera" that surrounded their relationship, Mr Miliband said: "I promise you the soap opera is not back and certainly not back for daily episodes with me in frontline politics."
Asked if he would stand if there was a leadership contest, he said: "There is not going to be one, Ed has been elected to fight the next election and I think he is going to fight it with real courage and conviction."
Discussing the subject of youth unemployment, Mr Miliband said young people in work should mentor those out of work. Addressing the findings of an inquiry on the issue, he said: "I think there are three really big problems. First we have got to prepare young people for a different world of work and we have got to prepare them better.
"Secondly, if they do become unemployed we help them back into work faster and with more intensive help, and thirdly we have got to make sure there is proper demand for labour among young people, we would like wage subsidies brought in for young people, we would like to see apprenticeships not just expanded but organised on a national scale."
Mr Miliband rejected the claim that immigration has added to the problem of youth unemployment. He said: "We have looked at the allegation it was benefit rates that was causing unemployment, that it was the minimum wage, or that it was migration, and what we found was that some of the areas with the highest young unemployment had the lowest levels of migration from outside the UK.
"We didn't find the connection that says it's immigration that has caused unemployment. It just didn't stack up in the economic statistics that were done in an independent way."
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Miliband denied levelling criticism at his brother's leadership of the Labour Party but said he had never taken a vow of silence. He insisted he wanted Ed to become prime minister at the next general election and that they both agreed about the need to "rethink" Labour's approach.
