Philip Collins reviews the week in politics
Other people’s families are always strange. How much stranger when the idea of a political fight within a family is no longer a metaphor. Ed Miliband recently told of his parents’ journey to England and his gratitude for their refuge here. This dramatic and effective story could have been a moment of emotional differentiation if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that the other serious candidate has the same parents.
The battle for the Labour leadership remains a curious contest which has provoked no curiosity. The public was asked this week which of the candidates would make the best prime minister: 64 per cent said either none of the above or that they didn’t know. Yet this week the pace, if not quite the pulse, quickened. Lord Mandelson’s unconvincing lapse into silence ended with the accusation that Ed Miliband would lead Labour into an electoral cul-de-sac. Lord Kinnock, who never won so much as a raffle, then writes to the Times to tell Lord Mandelson to shut up.
In the postscript to his memoirs, Tony Blair delivers a damning verdict on Labour’s love affair with state action. Columnists wonder out loud, strangers to irony, what Tony Blair has to teach anyone about victory. The Ed Miliband campaign team define themselves against what they call the ‘New Labour playbook’, which now has its biblical script in A Journey. They then respond to accusations that they are playing to the Labour gallery by inventing a new category — the New Labour comfort zone. It is hard to know what is in the New Labour comfort zone. The Iraq war? Tuition fees? Ninety days detention? They may have been right or they may have been wrong but it is hard to recall any of these events as comfortable.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in