All The Talents?

Margaret Beckett was the most Eurosceptical Foreign Secretary since Bevin, and without her we might well have been stuck with an EU Constitution which Heath, Thatcher or Major could have signed. Imagine that, if you dare.

By contrast, the first time I met David Miliband, he was Schools Minister and I was a supply teacher. He asked what I did, I told him, and I then added (truthfully, at the time) that the worst school in which I had ever worked was in his constituency, so what was he going to do about it? He just giggled, and walked on to the next person. I then heard him speak soon afterwards, when he described the disparity within schools (often as great as, or even greater than, that between them) as "which teacher you are given"!

His pitch for Labour Leader ended up being published in the Daily Telegraph for a laugh, after the Guardian refused to print it because it was so bad. And if he really had doubts about Iraq or Lebanon, then he should have resigned, and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt for his failure to do so.

So all you little Millies out there, please get off the bandwagon of those who insist that a Prime Minister must have an Oxford degree or (if needs must) no degree at all, the basis for the BBC's campaign for Miliband, astonishingly still going on.

All you little Lib Dems out there, aren't you delighted to see Williams, Lester and Neuberger as "advisors" to Brown? Won't that persuade people to vote for you instead of Labour in Durham City, Newcastle Central, Hartlepool, Manchester Wythenshaw, Birmingham Yardley...? What are you for?

And you trade unionists, I know (indeed, I know for a fact) that Digby Jones would have been given a peerage round about now. But made a Minister in a Labour Government? And even allowed to take the Whip without joining the Party? Brothers and sisters, keep signing those cheques!