Relax, comrades: David Miliband is Blairesque, rather than Blairite

One Cabinet minister described it to me with dark wit as the ‘Eden Project’: the idea being that, after a summer of reflection, Gordon Brown is gently or not-so-gently persuaded to retire, in the manner of Anthony Eden, on the grounds of ‘ill health’. To which the PM’s entirely predictable response is: have you seen how many press-ups I can do? The revelation that he has hired a personal trainer may have been clunky, but it was a clear signal that he is not going to oblige those who would like him to quit on medical grounds.

I would call the first round of the great Miliband–Brown bout a dead heat. The Foreign Secretary achieved what no other Cabinet minister has done before him, which was to force Gordon to call off his attack dogs. One day, ‘allies’ of the PM were smearing Miliband as ‘disloyal and self-serving’. The next, Number 10 was issuing a statement to say how the Foreign Secretary was spot-on in his analysis of the challenge facing the government.