Will Philip Blond be back for more fun?

Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ conference speech will have put the populist cat amongst Downing Street’s toffee-nosed pigeons. Now young Dave’s people will have to work out how to respond to this inspired piece of political cross-dressing, even if it is essentially diaphanous.

One (alleged) Tory, though, is very happy with the direction in which the national debate seems to be travelling. Mr Steerpike found Phillip Blond, the ‘Red Tory’ and founder of the Respublica think-tank, cock-a-hoop after the speech:

‘Ed Miliband has thrown down a blue Labour challenge to the Conservatives. No. 10 needs a Red Tory response unless they want to see Ed’s One Nation politics win the next election.’

Despite the David Cameron attending the launch of Blond’s think tank before the last election, the flamboyant Scouser has fallen out of vogue in Cameroon circles of late. I imagine, though, that he may well be called in to fire-fight this unexpected conflagration.