The Daily Telegraph story about David Miliband offering Number 11 to Alan Milburn rings true for a number of reasons: not least that Milburn has also been in to see Gordon Brown about a possible return to Government. At a time when Labour is desperately in need of combative talent in its front row, the absence of Mr Milburn is – as he would say – “plain daft”.
Like Fraser, I admire AM and his restless energy enormously. It is a shame that he has not felt comfortable simply staying in Government or, better still, defecting to the Tories.
But the Brownites will be thrilled by this story, for reasons I discuss in tomorrow’s magazine. The key to keeping Miliband in his box is to caricature him as a puppet of the neo-Blairite faction: a sort of mini-me Tony, or the Knock-off Nigel of New Labour. Gordon knows this much: Labour may be terrified of losing but it does not see the neo-Blairites as the answer. Indeed, any candidate seen as the captive of that faction has no chance whatsoever.
Remember: if Brown is toppled it will be by a party club (see Simon Jenkins’s terrific piece on this in today’s Guardian). It follows that his successor would be chosen by the Labour selectorate, too. That selectorate has no affection at all for Messrs Milburn, Byers et al for precisely the reasons that I like them so much.
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