Charles Moore Charles Moore

No, David Miliband isn’t the Messiah

Rachel Sylvester of the Times is a brilliant journalist. I am proud to have given her her first Lobby job. But I cannot help smiling at her columns as she searches desperately for signs that a party which she thinks virtuous — centre-left, pro-European, with ‘open’ values — could rise from the dead (this, literally, is her metaphor in Easter week). Rachel’s current candidate for Messiah is David Miliband, who lives in New York. She quotes ‘one friend’ of his as saying, ‘David is still attracted to Britain.’ That is big-hearted of him, but the bigger question is, ‘Is Britain still attracted to David?’ One must recognise how deeply Blairism lies in ashes before one can find a phoenix to rise from them. The first step, I suggest, is to forget about stopping Brexit. It is as futile as trying to stop black majority rule in Rhodesia in the 1960s: there may be some difficult consequences, but the change has to happen.

Charles Moore
Written by
Charles Moore

Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.

He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.

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