How the leadership election can be saved

The other item in The Times today (pay wall) is an article by Peter Hyman. Anyone who saw Tony Blair’s former speech writer on Newsnight this week will know that he is even more, er, emphatic than I am about the wrong choice foisted on the Labour Party by the Forces of Whelan. Here is more:

Ed starts on the back foot. He has torpedoed the career of the person who was (1) the choice of party members — 97 per cent of constituencies voted for David; (2) the choice of MPs; (3) the choice of young people; (4) the overwhelming choice of the public; (5) the man Cameron feared; (6) the winner of the hustings; (7) the candidate with economic credibility; (8) the unity candidate; (9) the choice of the majority of the Cabinet who had worked with the brothers; (10) a prime minister in waiting.

So if Ed has seized the crown from someone clearly better than him, there’s only one way for him to stop his leadership appearing to be some ghastly, egotistical flight of fancy, and that’s by winning the next election.

He says that Ed Miliband has shown himself to be “good at short-term media tactics”, which even I think is a little ungenerous about the new leader’s right decisions about how to play a weak hand this week, about which I write in tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday, and which Peter Brookes, the Times cartoonist, illustrates so well above.

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• http://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes Guido Fawkes

  Does the Times not mind you nicking their cartoons?

• http://twitter.com/Broxted Ciaran Rehill

  One could opine that, pay wall or not, The Times permits comments on stories such as the police murder (delete murder, insert shooting) of Mark Saunders.

• http://twitter.com/jayuux jason green

  The unity candidate? Ok then.

• capa75

  You have to say then, bit of a result that for Miliband minor !

• porkfright

  Reading your stuff with its Deja-Vu of endless repeats [a bit like "Friends" or "Top Gear] on the matters of the dumb and stupid invasion of Iraq and the even more dumb and more stupid idea that Milliband D. is what the Labour Party really needs amazes me-talk about flogging a dead horse-or two!

• capa75

  Dead horses…..neigh!