Please, Mr Postman?

Not a single Labour MP has been named as having any doubts about Ed Miliband's Leadership.

 

But the hysterical Conservative media, including the Cameron-creating BBC, is determined to distract attention from the party that has seen two of its MPs (admittedly, rather obscure ones) defect to a fringe oddity which now polls almost as well as the Conservative Party does.

 

Either those MPs or Nigel Farage will have left that fringe oddity by the time of the General Election, but that is another story.

 

Heaven preserve us from any mention of Labour's increased share of the vote at Heywood and Middleton, or of Labour's easy hold of the Police and Crime Commissioner's position in South Yorkshire, topping the poll, of course, in Rotherham as well as in Barnsley, Doncaster and Sheffield.

 

Heaven preserve us from any mention of Labour's permanent poll lead, since even a tie in votes would translate into a Labour overall majority, and since Labour is in any case well ahead in the key marginal constituencies, so that's that.

 

Oh, no. Imaginary Labour backbench dissidents, all of them mysteriously afflicted with microphone shyness, have instead to be invented. And poor old Alan Johnson has to be talked up as the latest Alternative Leader.

 

I am almost tempted to wish the Leadership of Alan Johnson on the remains of New Labour. Born as long ago as 1950, he left school at 15, and he is entirely a product of council housing and the trade union movement.

 

His most recent appearance on This Week saw him give robust articulation to the hardline anti-drugs position that was very much his view when he was Home Secretary. He based that then, as he bases it now, on his experience as a council estate parent in the late 1960s and in the 1970s.

 

Sometimes, people deserve to be given that which they have professed to want.