A lesson for all new MPs

Ed Miliband has given a surprisingly good speech this morning: free from all the junk language that his older brother has a weakness for. But he raises an interesting question:

Why did Gisela Stuart win in Birmingham Edgbaston? Why did Karen Buck win Westminster North? Why did Andy Slaughter win in Hammersmith?

Might it have been because all three of these politicians were, at one point, thorns in the flesh of their government? That they all at times campaigned, on principle, against the Labour government? As I said in The Times yesterday, the German-born Ms Stuart was a committed foe of the EU Constitution – who denounced it, and the Lisbon Treaty, as loudly as she could. She shared platforms with Conservatives fighting it, she supported calls for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty which she said would create a “democratic deficit”. Ms Buck withdraw her son from one of Labour’s flagship City Academies saying the standards there were too low and that her son had lost an “entire