Justice In the End

A fond farewell to Philip Gould. He understood that the purpose of opinion polls is not to measure public opinion, but to influence it. Ask the right questions of the right people, and you will be given the right answers. Do this often enough, and you can create the illusion of a mass movement, making people feel that they do not want to be left out.

But it had all come unstuck by the end. With Blair gone, Gould failed to arrange a safe seat as his daughter's graduation present. The Lib Dems, whom he had wanted to take over Labour's ideology while Labour took over their organisation, have decided to do what Liberals have been doing for a century and a half, namely exactly that, but with the Tories instead.

And it is now Ed Miliband, protégé of Gordon Brown, who is "ahead in the polls". Most of the media, still utterly Blairite and therefore devoted to David Cameron and David Miliband (not necessarily in that order), refuse to report this fact. None of them can bear to dwell on it. But they are all powerless to change it.