Farewell David Miliband

There we have it, David Miliband has announced that he is standing down from frontline politics. In his statement just now, he fluted all the anticipated notes. “The party needs a fresh start from its new leader,” he started, before adding that, “I genuinely fear perpetual, distracting and destructive attempts to find division where none exists, and splits where they don’t exist, all to the detriment of the party.” He said he will stay on as an MP, although he wants to do further work in the areas of education, the environment and foreign policy.

It puts something of a fullstop under his career at the top of the Labour party, although I’m sure that new paragraphs will be written in future. How will he be judged? With a mixture of respect and mockery, I expect. Some will remember the policy advisor, there in the early days of the Blair project, who rose to be Foreign Secretary by the age of 41.