I am a bit uncomfortable about what follows. It may sound a bit like the Staines/Fawkes attacks on “autistic” Gordon Brown, which is far from my intent. I am struggling for the right words.

But David Milliband, the politician, is a bit weird and awkward. He frequently comes across badly on TV, lacking social grace. He is an intellectual rather than a gut instinct responder; Prime Ministers require a quota of both attributes. His sluggish response to this week’s attempted coup confirms that he should never be PM.

He’s the only plausible alternative to Ed Balls.

Brown will try to fix the succession for Balls after the election.
(I’d guess Charlie Whelan’s already on the case part-time now).

Quite a few senior and talented people would rather flip hamburgers for Macdonalds than serve in a shadow cabinet under Balls.

But then I suspect Kettle and the like are just setting themselves up for a new battery of complaints when the new leader is not Blairite enough.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by libcon: :: Is David Miliband the biggest loser from attempted coup? http://bit.ly/4XbfWT...

Doesn’t feel, nor is it much like John Major’s final year when Labour sometimes had 50% in the polls and the governing party had massive policy differences, as the Tories still do.

But they will troll on, in various guises, and in as many places as they can . . . Some of them are actually paid and called journalists y’know?

Let’s be clear – there is little policy difference at the top end of New Labour

And, by goodness, isn’t that a massive problem for the rest of us. A party whose hierarchy is still so blinkered and disconnected from the real liberal and left thinking not only of the grass roots, but which is to the right in many ways of the general populace. The NewLab ‘project’ has been instrumental in enshrining the sickening witless neo-liberal corporatist duopoly that British politics has become, disgracefully eroding civil liberties while overseeing an expansion in inequalities and a more divided,fractured society. The dreadful betrayal of the grass-roots and core Labour voters (taking folk for granted is unforgivably insulting when you proceed to sell them down the river), and the illiberal,undemocratic control-freakery of the NewLab machine, rank-and-file MPs have been filleted of any awkward-squadders and compliant (unprincipled,careerist) permanently on-message drones have been parachuted in (occasionally in nepotistic ways, but almost always to the dismay of local activists). That’s the problem right there: the party was eviscerated by the ‘project’ and the lobby-fodder couldn’t show backbone or demonstrate principle if they tried (not that many seem inclined to do so), while those at the top were all complicit in (if not architects of) the bloody ‘project’..