Well I for one regret David Miliband's decision to withdraw from frontline politics. Whatever one's political stance, it's always sad to see someone who is talented leave the scene. I understand why he has done it but it is a decision the Labour Party will come to regret.
I am not sure it will fulfill his aim of letting Ed Miliband get on with the job of leading the Labour Party in his own way. While David remains in Parliament his supporters will continue to press his case in the media and he will be seen as the King over the water. His every utterance will be pored over for signs of disloyalty to his brother.
As long as he sits on the backbenches there will be many of his acolytes who will believe that his day will still come.
Iain. Are you takling about the David Miliband who served as Foreign Secretary in the last Government. "It's always sad to see someone who is talented leave the scene", yes indeed it is but he isn't talented is he.
ReplyDeletePrepare a list of his achievements both inside and outside politics. If he wanted to serve his party he could have deposed Gordon Brown and he would probably be Prime Minister now.
Just because the Milibands have swum all their lives in Labour/Marxist waters doesn't actually make them talented. The one thing going for Ed is that he has the ruthless streak his brother so patently lacks.
So there's the challenge, what has David Miliband actually done?
Whatever one's political stance, it's always sad to see someone who is talented leave the scene.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. And that's exactly why I feel nothing but joy at Dave's departure.
If you honestly think David Miliband is talented, Iain, you are badly-informed about his tenure at the FCO. This is the man who plunged our relations with India to the lowest they've been in a generation with his ignorant, arrogant and condescending remarks about subjects he simply did not understand. This is the man who was laughed out of Washington. This is the man who stuck his nose into the internal politics of the Baltic and Eastern European countries to score cheap political points against the Conservative Party.
David Miliband is the man who made condescension, self-righteousness and simple pure unadulterated ignorance the hallmarks of British diplomacy.
Our country's international standing, mauled by Labour's illegal wars and schizophrenic attitude to the international community, was finally flushed down the toilet by this half-bright self-satisfied joke of a politician whose intellect has clearly never matured beyond the level of the spottier kind of adolescent.
Let all the nation give thanks for his departure. I know all the other nations that had to deal with his brand of sanctimonious schoolboy politicking will be doing so.
Like Brown he will be swanning the world instead of being a proper MP.
ReplyDeleteThe King lets remember stayed over the water and the labour succession looks every bit as thin as the Jacobite one.
Is opportunity knocking for the 'Liberals'? The confused mess of 'Split Labour' ought to be an open goal.
Interestingly, of the 49 Shadow Cabinet nominees, 30 ranked David ahead of Ed in the leadership contest, only 16 put Ed ahead of David and 3 voted for neither of them (Abbott, Balls and Cooper).
ReplyDeleteSo it will be very interesting to see the eventual make-up of the Shadow Cabinet. Whilst I don't expect there to be many big rifts based on this alone, it does show the potential frailty of the new top team.
He may get a better offer. Maybe something in America?
ReplyDeleteIn what sense is Miliband D 'talented'? He's a failure. He's had several opportunities to shine, but not done so. His position on torture was/is completely untenable. As to his tiff with Harman, well would he have been so 'principled' if he had won this contest?
ReplyDeleteTalented is a relative term in the Labour Party. Yes, DM is more talented than EM, but that is not really saying much, is it?
ReplyDeleteHe'll be back, but probably under someone else. The Miliband Brothers are indeed a talented pair, but nowhere near as talented as some of the people who sat this election out. Ed M will be at best a Hague, possibly even an IDS. He is certainly no David Cameron.
ReplyDeleteInteresting Nick, yes.
ReplyDeleteI think the Tories and LDs can jibe that the coalition cabinet is more united than the Shadow one.
They certainly ought to whether its true or not!
He's a Blairite socialist, and like the rest he will swan around causing trouble for his brother, until someone offers him the chance to do what all his kind do, and that is slide off on his belly somewhere to hoover up an enormous salary and pension to achieve very little at all. They all make me sick
ReplyDelete"So there's the challenge, what has David Miliband actually done?"
ReplyDeleteHe signed the LisbonConTreaty - handing over Britain's Sovereignty to the EUSSR - without the electorate's permission.
Talented? No. A despicable, anti-democratic, socialist apparatchik? Yes.
Good riddance. I hope we have seen the last of him .... but I fear not. The EUSSR looks after its own and I'm sure they are polishing a taxpayer-funded chair for him to sit on.
Ed Miliband understands the greasy pole of internal Labour Party politics.
ReplyDeleteHe has not yet uttered much about the EU though, has he.
David is a fanatical europhile.
Could it be that Labour is going to revert to its former eurosceptic stance?
If it does, it could be the EU that is the real divide between the two Miltants.
Mili-D had his chances and lacked the courage to take them. He may have the intellect, but, for his hoped-for role, he lacked the cojones. Now we have the equivalent of the IDS/WH doldrum years; until a new bright young charismatic MP emerges to lead the union's mouthpiece party, sorry, Labour, to glory in ten years or so. Hooray!
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that both major parites now have somebody who came second in the leadership race & who is called david, on their back benches. Add in Charlie Kennedy as a deposed leader in the same position & our politics looks a slightly strange place.
ReplyDelete