Actually, no one bothers to attack me these days, if you except DM who corrects my spelling and grammar from time to time, so I don't really need a witness for the defence. Even so, as a bolster to my own self-esteem (sorry, didn't quite catch that) I call in support Mr. Simon Carr of The Independent. He is their Parliamentary sketch-writer with a keen eye for the shifts and turns in that hall of mirrors. He, too, has spotted the bleedin obvious that so far 'Cain' Miliband is, at his best, woefully inadequate. So limp is his grip on the leadership of his party that:
Just before PMQs, there was an all-Labour-members' text message from the whips: "Ed is coming into the chamber. CHEER!"
Oh dear, too, too embarrassing, not just for 'Cain' but for the useless pink sheep he, er, leads. Also, Carr confirms my previously expressed warning not to underestimate 'Postman Pat' Johnson. In rising the other day to reply to the Chancellor's statement;
[He] may not have impressed the Coalition but it certainly did Labour. Here they saw a man with experience of crowds, of three great departments of state, and who "spoke human" like a first language. And while he has said he isn't interested and isn't up to it, he may yet have greatness thrust upon him.
The fact that he did not run for the leadership will now stand him in good stead. I suspect that the Labour party's attack dogs, Ed Balls and his yapping bitch, Yvette Cooper, make many Labour MPs nervous. Like the Russians after Stalin had died, they have emerged nervously from the Brown/Balls soviet into fresh, open air and they will not be keen to return to the sort of commissariat that Balls and Cooper would instantly slap on them. But leadership from nice, affable, self-deprecating 'Postman Pat', now that they could live with.
So we can now witness the delicious irony of 'Cain' Miliband thinking that he has thwarted his major threat by giving Balls the Home Office brief, and appointing a know-nothing nonentity to the shadow Treasury but in fact, inadvertantly, promoting an even greater rival. Johnson is the sort of politician who backs slowly but steadily into the limelight. Carr gives it 18 months. We shall see!
Comments