Community and Solidarity

So, is Ed Miliband going to nationalise our train set, as desired by practically everyone, including the majority of Conservative voters?

He needs to stop talking about "kids", "mums" and "dads", just as the practice needs to stop of playing pop music at these events, and just as all the parties need to stop hiring halls that are far too large, only to fill them for the Leaders' speeches, but for nothing else, with the paid staff of the Political Class and the media who are now by far the bulk of the attendees.

Miliband can claim that he is "not a social conservative", and in many specific ways he is not one. But in his invocation of community and solidarity against the destruction of local Post Offices, of distinctive high streets and of village pubs, he is far more of one than any member of the Cabinet apart from Iain Duncan Smith, as is also the case with his call to rethink our working time culture in the interests of family life, and with his emphasis on that life's importance in teaching unselfishness.

Remember when opposition to the Iraq War was branded anti-Semitic? Well, is Ed Miliband anti-Semitic? The warmongers have gone very quiet on that one, just as they have on their previous, loudly-stated view that the President of the United States was above both the law and the Constitution. They still periodically affect to care about single deaths in Iran, the country on which they wish to drop a nuclear bomb. But who is listening to them anymore? Still, a supertax on all income derived from support for that war would still be well worth it, including to set an example for the future.

And the need for a purge is now central to the credibility or otherwise of Labour under Miliband. Every member of either House who as an MP voted to invade Iraq must be presented with a public recantation to sign by a given date or else have the Whip withdrawn. Freshers can be forgiven, since they thought that David Miliband was going to win and they therefore supported him in order to get on, but every other MP who did so must be told publicly that they will never again be tolerated as Labour candidates.

The Progress Tendency, the Euston Manifesto Group, the Henry Jackson Society, the private army ritually inaugurated by David Miliband on Bank Holiday Monday, and all the rest of such things, must be declared proscribed organisations, and rooted out as ruthlessly as the far less dangerous Militant Tendency, which never got anywhere and was never going to, ever was.

You get the idea.

But does Miliband? Is he worthy of the support that was given to him by Frank Field, by Neil Kinnock, by Roy Hattersley, by John Smith's widow, and by the majority of that section of the Electoral College which was made up neither of full-time professional politicians, nor of people whose idea of a hobby is going to Labour Party meetings, but of the general public?