If Miliband becomes PM, I’ll join the right-wing coup to topple him

Rod Liddle is outraged by the Foreign Secretary’s alleged comparison of himself to Michael Heseltine: like comparing a Big Beast to a stumpy little Muntjac deer. Where have all the political giants gone?

Apparently, David Miliband’s speech to the Labour party conference was deliberately low-key because he did not wish to have a ‘Heseltine Moment’ — that is, he did not wish to be seen as being too obviously a threat to the Prime Minister, too openly desirous of his job. What a fabulous strutting little cock this man truly is. Flying around the world in the Queen’s private jet to deliver fatuous or anodyne pronouncements to the media at an extortionate cost to the taxpayer, all the while considering himself the heir to the leadership of a great political party which in better times would have considered him a smug, jumped-up, risible little wonker who was maybe suitable for a very junior role in the Department of Work and Pensions, at best. And of course, heir to the leadership of a great country; come on, Britain — that simply cannot be allowed to happen. Do you remember all those leftie rumours of how a coalition of the secret service, the army, industrialists and hard-right Tory politicians were about to take over the country in a coup towards the end of Jim Callaghan’s premiership? I assume quite a few of you Spectator readers were actually part of the coup — in which case, can’t you get something up and running for the day Miliband takes over? I’ll help. Just say the word. At the very least I could sit by the guillotine, doing some knitting.

The remarkable thing is the extent to which Miliband clearly believes that both leadership of the party and the country are sort of his by rights, that his qualities are so self-evident that his elision to power should be unquestioned.