David Miliband has become a candidate without a contest, after an ostentatious week, said The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
Miliband has made himself available to his party, should Gordon Brown go, and by doing that he has made the prime minister’s departure this autumn more likely. But he has not made it certain; nor has he lessened the dangers, which are huge, since only guesswork suggests that the public would tolerate a change of leader, or warm to Miliband’s charms should he win. A coded article in the Guardian, a cheery but evasive press conference and a soft ride on a radio phone-in are not in themselves a platform for government — even if they are a start, and a response to the threat of electoral annihilation and Tory rule, which he understands even if Brown does not.
The prime minister has been set a challenge he is struggling to answer. Miliband’s vigorous performance on Radio 2 yesterday contrasted with personal briefing from the prime minister’s camp, suggesting a leader whose friends believe that he must control his opponents by demeaning them. Out of necessity, Miliband has been speaking so far in an odd language that only Westminster can translate.
