Dreaming Spires

Now it's not often that I say this, but I almost feel sorry for David Miliband. Time and again, he has said that he wants Gordon Brown to succeed Tony Blair, even though what he really means is that he still wants to have a career in a year's time. But the BBC keeps on asking him the question, presumably in the hope of wearing him down to changing his mind. A Prime Minister, you see, can have either an Oxford (not Oxbridge, Oxford) degree, or no degree at all. That is The Rule. BBC-type people know and keep The Rules, and they expect someone like Miliband to know them as surely as they expect someone like Brown not to.