The Miliband brothers may yet drown each other in a butt of malmsey

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

From a distance, Tony Blair might be able to persuade himself that the Labour party contest now underway is the fulfilment of his dreams. The ‘brothers’ everyone is talking about are not trade union heavies but two Oxford PPE graduates who have worked their way up through the New Labour machine. But to listen to what they say, there is scant evidence of Blair’s election-winning philosophy. The candidates are outbidding each other on making punitive levels of taxation on the rich permanent, denouncing Labour’s rapprochement with big business and committing to abolishing tuition fees.

Not that anyone is listening much to what they say. At Monday night’s hustings there were no television cameras — their absence a nasty reminder to the candidates of the diminished status of opposition. When they do appear on television, as they did on Newsnight on Tuesday, they are treated like dancing fleas — not big beasts of the political jungle. In the House of Commons, the Miliband brothers are offering friendly waves to people whose existence they barely acknowledged before.

But this leadership contest matters in many ways. Historically, it would be unusual if the leader of a British party with as many seats as Labour has now (258) did not become the next prime minister. The reason that the Lib Dems are in the Cabinet is not because they did well but because Labour got far more seats than expected. George Osborne, who remains the Tories’ chief tactician, is taking a keen interest in the contest because he believes it will play a part in determining the political opportunities for the coalition government.