David Miliband bows out of British politics – to a roar of Thunderbirds jokes

David Miliband rather grandly told Sky News last night that the public’s “legitimate fascination” with the tension between him and his brother Ed had “obscured the real choice for the country” – that between Labour and the Tories. As if. The truth is that people had just stopped thinking about David Miliband. For all the hopes once pinned on the former Foreign Secretary, he had become an irrelevance. A Puck-like figure who’d pop up on the political stage now and again, to general mirth, then disappear. As Iain Martin says, his departure from Westminster is of almost no significance. Most Blairites bolted at the last election, and those who didn’t chose to sulk rather than fight for the future of their party. David Miliband carried on as if an ungrateful nation/party would realise its mistake, and beg him back. Instead, people seemed to forget that he still existed.

That’s why, rather than mull the implications of Mili Major’s Manhattan transfer, everyone is instead having fun with  Thunderbirds