"Sharing Britain's Progressive Future"

Too long, and containing one of those silly yet sinister Political Class words. Without that, it would have been fine, including by being utterly innocuous.

Oh, well, here we are. Let the world take note that the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will be an anti-Zionist Jew. Yes, he comes out of the metropolitan Marxist émigré intelligentsia rather than the Labour Movement. But, unlike his brother, he has bothered to find out about the Labour Movement, to build bridges to it, and even to come to resemble it in parts. Hence his election by easily the largest section of the Electoral College, the one, moreover, not made up exclusively, predominantly, or even all that significantly of people whose hobby is politics, very largely for its own sake. The general public in this process, and which has no role in the Conservative or Lib Dem processes, has backed Ed, not David, Miliband.

No, he has never done anything outside politics. Only Diane Abbott had, and she was the first candidate to be eliminated. Talk of newly elected MPs with a serious chance of getting onto the Shadow Cabinet also illustrates what a closed class politicians have become. But speaking of the Shadow Cabinet, it is now absolutely imperative to keep David Miliband off it. Most of those MPs who supported him did so, in an open ballot, because they thought that he was going to win. But he has lost now, and they now have a secret ballot.

After all, precisely which portfolio would be appropriate for a man who thinks that the only problem with the cuts is that they do not go far enough, and who supports the removal of security of tenure from social housing tenants, the introduction of “free” schools (which no one wants to become, so look out for compulsion), selling off our GP services to American healthcare companies, engaging private companies at public expense in order to persecute supposed benefit cheats, creating for-profit universities, privatising the Royal Mail, abolishing all three Armed Forces by “merging” them under American command, and so many other things now being implemented by this Blairite Government complete with Alan Milburn, but unrestrained by Gordon Brown? He has long wanted to means test Child Benefit. He devised all of these measures while Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit.

David Miliband is, however, opposed to some things about this Government: withdrawal from Afghanistan, restoration of the link between pensions and earnings, taking the working poor out of income tax, the abandonment of identity cards, electoral reform, an inquiry into his own complicity in torture, dismantlement of the surveillance state, a renewed emphasis on a manufacturing-based economy diffused throughout the country, removal from Job Centres of advertisements for the sex industry, David Cameron’s acceptance of the principle of the maximum multiple, Iain Duncan Smith’s acceptance of the principle of a minimum income guaranteed universally by the State, expansion both of nuclear power and of coal, opening up of the serious possibility that Trident might be cancelled, one coalition partner that really did oppose the Iraq War while the other at least has the decency to pretend that it did so, and the pursuit of bilateral ties with Russia, with China, with Latin American countries, with the Arab world in general and the United Arab Emirates in particular, with India, with Indonesia, with Japan, with the major Commonwealth countries of Africa, and through the Commonwealth generally, among others. Again, exactly which portfolio would be appropriate for man who was opposed to those policies, and why? Or, indeed, for anyone who seriously wanted him as Leader?

Still, we are lucky to have been made aware of the result. Perhaps I should have watched it on Sky, or listened to it on Radio Four, but instead I had to sit through Emily Maitlis and Nick Robinson talking over the top of it, in the same way that the BBC's lot talk over the top of parliamentary proceedings, and for the same reason: the utter conviction, both that they themselves are the real point, and that everyone is an uninterested in politics, properly so called, as they are. Nadir was reached today when Robinson imposed himself over Ann Black to announce that the favoured David Miliband had won. We never did hear Ann Black actually announce the correct result. Thank you, Auntie. You have excelled yourself.