Exorcising the devil…

Ed Miliband is busy trying to shift both his party and the centre ground to the left. To that end, he announced his support for the Palestinian bid for statehood, which, as Martin Bright notes, was an attempt to distance himself from the legacy of Blair, and to a lesser extent Brown, by supporting a definitively left-wing cause. The British Opposition’s view on Palestinian statehood is utterly immaterial to the Middle East peace process, so the announcement was merely a presentational ruse, a reminder that Miliband is unlikely to talk about substance until Liam Byrne has published the party’s policy review later this year.

By chance, Liam Byrne has written an article for the Telegraph today in which he appeals directly to Tony Blair’s domestic reform legacy. He brands Cameron and Osborne a “second-rate Blair tribute band” and tells them where they’ve misunderstood the Great Man’s agenda. Byrne is on the right-wing of the party; but, even so, it seems strange that he is quite so comfortable to invoke the devil when exorcism seems to be the order of the day.