If this is a leadership contender, I'm a banana

Bill M

"a frightening level of delusion that derives from a mind that is so hermetically sealed by the force of ideology that he simply inhabits an intellectual, political and moral sphere in which the normal rules of reason just don’t apply."

As I read this from the States, it sounds eerily familiar.

Tamara

They are staggering.

Utterly staggering.

They have alienated - forever, I think - their core voters, the white working class and still they think that what they've done and will continue to do is right - and dare to suggest we should all be grovelling with thanks.

It's over, Miliband. A party that for a century held the Billy Elliot connotations of looking after lowly paid mine workers is now considered by many in the constituency of the white working class to be nothing other than a de facto sponsor of Islamic terror.

They're clearly going to be unrepentant to the end - and this really is the end of the Labour Party.

Mark Williams

I6 will no doubt come as a relief to the 1,600 C&G employees about to lose their jobs that this is all part of a radical government initiative.

Terry

It's become difficult to write about politicians lately without using some pretty awful language, most of them of good old anglo-Saxon origin.

Frank P

Remember, Melanie, his was weaned on this garbage by his Marxist papa Ralph, one of the early imported disciples of Gramsci et al. and an academic architect of the counter-cultural hegemony that has now engulfed us all. I fear it would now need a bloody revolution to oust them, but the natives of the once Great Britain are now ovine in their docility. We bleat, but no longer bite and one man and his dog can shepherd us into any makeshift pen to dip and shear us.

Jeremy

In his silly, flapping and incoherent way "Bananas" is probably trying to soften us up for Labour's Big Attempt to gerrymander the political system - in order to keep itself in power forever. This attempt has been given the working title of "Radical Political Reform". Nobody asked for it, nobody has voted for it (or for them, for that matter) and Labour have no political mandate for it, but that's never stopped the Left from imposing its doctrines upon us in the past, has it? They - the "enlightened" ones - know what is best for us and they're not going to let a silly little thing like democracy prevent them from giving it to us.

We should be grateful.

The caption in the (excellent) photograph really does say it all.

logdon

The semi nationalisation of Lloyds was the result of Miliband's new bestest friend's meddling in matters way beyond his famed financial acumen.

Brown colluded with Blank in a takeover where the poke dwelling pigs were either completely ignored or overlooked. How much squealing did it need before those toxic assets were discovered?

Suddenly a previously pretty sound organisation was saddled with a financial anvil dragging it into icy depths of failure.

Then our very own world saving Mr Wizard of Finance stepped in, stumping up taxpayer cash to shore up the debacle he was responsible for in the first place.

And Miliband thinks that's a good thing?

These lying marxists never start at point one do they?

Always the bad news nakba which creates and defines the catastrophe is airbrushed away leaving the good news cure as if it came from nowhere. Or was planned all along as a deranged Miliband is now preposterously attempting to assert.

Looks like Browns tall tales are infecting all around him.

Chris SE9

I thought he was good actually. Certainly better than Cameron, but that's not saying much. And good that he shut up Naughtie who constantly tries to put words into people's mouths. The truest remark was that a week in government is worth years' in Opposition which is why Labour want to hang on and Cameron wants to be PM so he can do the same.

Hysteria

he's a joke.

And is he (and fellow travellers) using "progressive" as a hip sounding New Word - or is it based on the progressive thinking of the early 20th C.? Either way they are a joke.

MikeF

The point about having a 'political class' - and I suppose we do - is that like any other class system it becomes hereditary. David Miliband - the offspring of a left-wing intellectual family - seems to epitomise this. If he did not have a surname that might make lots of Labour Party activists swoon would he have got anywhere even in internal Labour Party, never mind national, politics? You tend to doubt it.

Arguably the politics of the early 21st century UK look alarmingly like those of the late 18th century - with power in the hands of an elected pseudo-aristocracy in which personal patronage and family connection increasingly oil the wheels. The trouble is that they have all the sense of entitlement and just about none of the sense of obligation that was a hallmark of the real thing.

woody

I always thought he was complete and utter idiot and simply cannot understand how he and his brother are talked up as being geniuses. But then if you look at the rest of the party they are, relatively speaking. Time to expose him as the complete fool he is. Also time for the country to be run by peole who have had real jobs, run something successfully and dare I say it been a genuine wealth creator.

Maximilian

What a poor little weed. It isn't as if he was any good at his FCO job, either.

JohnC

The fact that this non-entity of a person could possibly be considered as a leader of a political party is truly frightening. Straight out of George Orwell's 1984, with his "double-speak". As with the majority of MP's he occupies a position way beyond his competence level. If he wants to be truly radical, maybe he should start to listen to what the majority of the electorate want.

MC

Given that he explicity said Alan Johnson was the best candidate to lead Labour next, then you're right, he's not a leadership candidate.

TomTom

So it is true: Brown did pressure Lloyds to acquire HBOS and render itself vulnerable to Government takeover.

Will Milliband be a Witness for the UKSA lawsuit ?

Andre

To think this oddball is actually our Foreign Secretary is quite disturbing. We need an election this summer with fresh candidates of proven moral fibre, demonstrable intellect and spiritual fortitude. It's going to be tricky...

Sam Armstrong

I just want to slap him so hard.

Original Tony

He is an awful character and he epitomises the rot and narcissm that has invaded our politicians from the left to the right, from top to bottom. I despair!

Mark

In what way, Sam?

Nannette

Milliband is absurd and immature.

As long as Peter Mandelson is now the unelected leader of the Labour party, pulling gordy's strings, there will be no leadership contest, no in party opposition (on pain of death). And his bullying of other MPs will put them all in their place.

Then he can sit on a yacht with his friend Oleg Deripaska, have a few drinks, and laugh at how they've ruined Britain but made billions doing so.

Jamal Akhbar

Yes, I thought it was a bizarre performance. What did he mean by "progressive" policies? Did he mean those policies that forced Labour voters into voting BNP?

Joshua

My favourite part of the interview was when Miliband argued that as the current government is only halfway through implementing its program, it will need another twelve years to complete it. Another twelve years of Labour and the only people left in the country will be six Poles, two Lithuanians and a large number of bankruptcy specialists.

Tony E

It's the BBC, what did you expect?
I heard George Osborne on the Today program, fighting to get a word out while Humphries slandered him and the Conservative party.(Apparrently, the Conservatives are allied with BNP style racists in Europe, according to the BBC, the Czech and Polish ruling paerties no less!)

Then this morning I hear Naughtie, announcing a party political broadcast by the Labour Party.

I think I only listen nowadays because I can't get a good enough MW signal in my car to listen to anything else. That, and it makes me so angry that I will enjoy a conservative victory and the end of the current BBC regime all the more when it comes!

Ian C

Spot on Melanie. I listened to his prepared statement at the beginning and from the tone of his and Naughtie's voice could tell after that, that another futile conversation with a Labour apparatchik was in full flow so did not listen to the rest.

Your last sentence says it all. That is the one benefit that the country will derive from this episode.

john

Unfortunately despite the recent elections, Labour could still be in power at the next general election as many voters are sheep "always voted labour always will" baah!

Penny

JohnC:

"The fact that this non-entity of a person could possibly be considered as a leader of a political party is truly frightening"

And 'yes' to everything else you and others have said.

I await - with trepidation - Melanie morphing into a banana. I fear with the current bizarre understanding of the word 'leader' it might yet happen.

De Rigueur

What I find so laughable, which is a far too complementary word to describe them, is the way Labour/Guardian rabble describe themselves and their policies as "progressive" when the opposite would be so much more accurate, as evidenced by all the mess around us.
It's time Melanie, to pick them up on this.
BTW, spot on as usual. Keep it up and God Bless,
De Rigueur

Paul from Mk

Thanks for reminding me'
De Rigueur. I remember now, the catchy little number from 1997
'Things will only get better'.

emwood

"The best example of a radical new phase is for the Labour Government to own two thirds of Lloyds Bank,"

- I think he's got the wrong Bank! - And this man wants to be Prime minister?

Ken

Quite so. The British Intellectual Tradition as Banana, courtesy of Radio 4.

The caged Gramsci wannabe leader-banana, biting before he putrefies, reveals delusion, derangement and dangerous incoherence; a pubescent Miliband mashing and spewing puerile "progressive" views of Britain circa 2020, which by sheer velocity of delivery, leave even cheerleader Naughtie out of breath and voice.

Here indeed is a piece of fruity detritus in urgent need of a severe pruning ... but, one asks, can such a vastly overipened banana, along with the rest of its tribal bunch, be sectioned?

For should they remain decomposing on the plant, the country will soon be swinging on a destructive Marxist bush monkey's tail towards Oblivion.

See what happens when deliberately under-schooled voters enable the jungle to over-run civilisation.

Appalling.

Suki

Looks like Brown and Mandy are going to put a banana skin under the entire electorate and railroad in PR.

Is that going to be the next example of it being, as Milibland might say: ‘our job to make the unconventional conventional’?

Margaret Muller-Johansson

He is not a good banana, no,
he is a bad papaya!

Eagle

Well, with this kind of dysfunctional show, how do you expect to morph migrants to "british" customs? What will other cultures think when they see this? How about the "Reality Borg" whose modus operandi is

"We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own,

You will be assimilated,

Your culture will adapt to service ours."

They are steadily drawing up plans to get us to submit to "the Way of Survival" [literally the "way to water"] as an alternative to this.

If you understand this, the future doesn't look good for the West.

Simon Stephenson

I don't have the book to hand, so I'm having to remember about an incident that John Humphrys described in a relatively recent book called Lost for Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language. It's well worth a read, if you have time.

The Beeb had pushed him into one of those cross-competence shows that were all the rage a year or two ago, and he, along with some other people with reputations in other fields, was sent to "learn how to be" an artist. Sort of "Strictly Come Painting".

Anyway, despite initial reluctance, he decided to put some enthusiasm into this, because he was interested to see how competent he could become after a short period of intensive instruction by some people acclaimed in the art world. He reported, however, that at no stage in the entire instruction was he advised about anything that HE would describe as competence. The techniques, materials, equipment - all totally irrelevant. The only thing that was of any relevance was "concept" - what it was that he was trying to express. So, as far as he could see, the quality of a product is to be judged entirely on the validity of the concept it's supposed to represent.

The reason I've gone to this great length is to suggest that maybe the same sort of thought construction is behind judging quality in modern politics. Perhaps those who really know will look at Miliband's performance with an eye only for the concepts that he was trying to express in what he said. And in the same way that we plebs are incapable of the mental processes that allow the expert to grade the quality of modern art, so we don't have the acuity to be able to recognise a good policy when we see one.

Just a thought!

Raymond Joseph Douglas

Our own Feeble Sally Keeble (MP Northampton North ) has withdrawn her support for Gordy. Those of us who know Borg drone clone Keeble , will know that this means Gordy really is finished ! Or is he old king log ?

just Louise

From Lord Palmerston to this appalling political pygmy; how has a once great office of state fallen! I suppose that fall is symbolic of the detritus of a nation in which, thanks to the appalling misgovernance of Miliband and his ilk over thepast decade, we are now mired.
I don't trust that scion of a Communist household to stand by Israel either.

Skippy

Out here in the Colonies..Oz..the Labour party when in opposition for 11/12 years was always banging on about the wicked liberals(Tories) and their Industrial Relations Policy.In fact most people here feel that it was the Liberal Partys' Industrial relations that lost them the election some 18 months ago.
Julia Gillard,now the Labour Govt.Industrial Relations Minister was quite forthright about the nasty Liberals and how she would put a stop to their shennanigans.
My youngest son works on a drilling rig in the middle of nowhere.The company that he works for took over another company some 2 months ago whose employees were paid substantially more than my sons company paid him.Within weeks of the takeover the company started laying off workers,all from the well paid part of the workforce,citing lack of work etc. etc.They then proceeded to work the rest of the labour for 13 hour days for 14 day stretches which included no regular meal breaks/days off, etc.Hardly a symptom of lack of work.
The company now has an advert on an internet employment site advertising for workers at all levels including the levels from which men were sacked.So far Julia Gillard has not been available for comment as have not union officials.
So you see,it's not just in Britain that the Labour party are a bunch of scum but also in Australia as well.
Think twice about emigration lads ... it may well be that you should sort out your own neck of the woods.

Mark

This is very funny! What has David Milliband done to exercise you all so? Young, bright, able and articulate. Maybe that's it?

Augustus

New Labour lies in a corner, like the tattered and discarded robes of a defeated king, bedecked with footmarks and stains of blood. Democracy has disappeared from the scene. Only the worn out garments remain.

boxermk

Leftist politicians are like the locusts of humanity

James Murphy

Mark - "Milliband - young, bright, able and articulate" - Excuse me while I choke on my mid-morning croissant! John Keats and Percy Shelley were young, bright, able and articulate. Disraeli was "young, bright, able and articulate"- Milliband is a typical 21st century blinkered know-nothing, an intellectual thug with no cultural references beyond the Marxist borders he was born in. Sadly, the tragic lack of intellectual perspective you display in praising him, Mark, shows just how this bunch of crooks and mediocrities got voted in in the first place.

hadrian

One really must wonder if the world hasn't gone barking mad after that 'ministerial' performance!
The really radical thing to do would be to admit that as a nation we are in debt shit up to our eyeballs and must cut our cloth according to our hugely dimninished purse. After PMQT it's blindingly obvious they are totally devoid of and incapable of this virtue of plain honesty. The longer they seek to kid the public on the worse it'll be for them..and alas, us!! As for the BBC...words fail me.

Greg

I'm with Peter Hitchens. I truly hope that Labour pull off what, right now, would seem like a miracle and win the next election. That would just about consign the Conservative Party to the scrap heap and allow space for a true conservative party to move in.
So I hope Milliband or someone else does get the leader's job, and does well leading up to election time.
http:theantipolitician.wordpress.com/

Francis R

I often wonder whether there is any value to the public in interviewing politicians on TV and radio.

I believe that they won't appear there without knowing what they'll be asked to comment upon and even censor certain areas of questioning.

It's all a promotional pretence of off-the-cuff responses when, in fact, these are probably so well rehearsed, making the politicians appear more articulate and profoundly knowledgeable on the subject.

How refreshing it would to hear some real impromptu interviewing -- might even help their image to be seen and heard as normal human beings.

Davemaz

Didn't we mean 'incoherently' instead of 'incontinently?' I know we Americans are not usually considered as experts on the language, but unless he had a large spot in the middle of his trousers, that is the contextual phrase that makes sense.