Amid the media storm created by the Foreign Secretary's bombshell article laying out a domestic political agenda yesterday, spare a thought for David Miliband’s brother.
Ed Miliband, himself increasingly seen by forward-thinking Labour figures as a future leader, today finds himself unwittingly caught between two parties within a party, remaining at once loyal to Gordon Brown and naturally close to the Prime Minister’s main rival. Even in a Labour party gripped by feverish summer infighting and introspection, it doesn’t get much more complicated than that.
The Labour party's great and good were literally as well as metaphorically sent to Coventry today, into a parallel universe of - on the surface - togetherness away from the "meltdown" it is apparently suffering across the country.
It is not every day that the national media descend on Warwick University - or, for that matter, on the party's national policy forum. But today the campus was playing unwitting host to Gordon Brown’s first speech after last night's disastrous result in Glasgow East.
It may just be the calm before the storm. But if the Anglican Communion is on the verge of implosion, it certainly doesn't feel like that here in the ancient cathedral city of Canterbury, which, if storm there will be, is about to become its centre.
The once-a-decade Lambeth conference is not yet officially under way – it runs for a fortnight from next week – but organisers are optimistic and the 650 or so bishops, plus hundreds of others including spouses from all over the earth, were smiling yesterday as they descended on a sun-drenched, leafy and sprawling campus at the University of Kent.
Last night 'Origins', a cheap-and-cheerful student bar in the best higher education traditions, was suddenly transformed into a gathering venue for the worldwide Communion’s most animated leaders.
Good to see the view that Gordon Brown has nothing to lose when it comes to implementing radical policies, first floated here, is now becoming conventional wisdom in the Guardianand the Observer. But it's a small development in American politics that should really boost the Prime Minister's determination to fight his way out of Labour's dismal state with an unashamed, progressive agenda: Rupert Murdoch's grudging acknowledgment of the "rock star" Barack Obama's success has finally, fully exploded the myth of his and his outlets' presumed "influence" and proved beyond doubt the point that this blog has made repeatedly in recent months: the media mogul is a businessman who does not determine election results; he works out who is going to win and backs them, even if, say, the candidate - unlike all 175 of his editors - is the only one to have opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. So, although his predecessor allowed policy to be changed and tilted to the right in the face of pressure from Mr Murdoch, the lesson from these intriguing comments is that Mr Brown (and other British politicians including Tories) need not "go the same way", as at least one ministerial ally has feared he will. He can free himself from the needlessly self-imposed shackles. He merely needs to connect with the electorate and unleash a radical agenda. And on that front, he has nothing to lose.
It may not be quite true to say that, like the Americans under F. D. Roosevelt, Gordon Brown has nothing to fear but fear itself. But it is certainly the case that now, after the Crewe byelection disaster, even Mr Brown must see he has nothing to lose.
It is a moment the Clinton campaign, and Obama-haters the world over, have been dreading. The Democrat former presidential contender John Edwards has just endorsed the Illinois Senator, adding his voice to that of Senator Ted kennedy.
Could this be the tipping point that finally - as unfashionably predicted here last year - sees American voters "roll the dice" away from a cynical candidacy prepared to stop at nothing, towards a unifying candidate ready to make a clean break from the Washington establishment? Watch this space.
Questions are being raised in the Saturday papers over the Chelsea shooting by police of Mark Saunders earlier this week, and rightly so. One that doesn't seem to have been answered (or asked), is why did officers apparently spray him with bullets before throwing tear gas and stun grenades into his house, rather than the other way around? The Met, as ever, is behind the scenes heavily briefing its side of the story to the press. But the scrutiny it faces is notably enhanced since the last high-profile police shooting, that of the innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes when he was mistaken for a suicide bomber in 2005.
So, one or two of us were indeed very wrong about the London maroyal election, having underestimated the extent to which real, electoral politics can be influenced by a right-of-centre rampant media pack at Westminster. Clearly also, as has been noted here on Open House, the Tory candidate benefited from a high turnout among the very English, political-chat-show-watching, big-car-driving suburbanites on the edge of the city; while much of the more diverse, inner city and - yes - Labour electorate stayed at home. But the voter is always right, and there is no denying that a victory for a stylish, media-friendly but thin-on-policy Tory Etonian, over a gruff, flawed-but-boringly-substantial Leftist deliverer, is genuinely bad news for Gordon Brown. But is it, along with the horrific local election results across the country, proof of the total national meltdown that is now being reported as a done deal for Labour?
Having been abroad and in a British political news blackout over the past ten days, it is more than ever impossible to know how voting in today's London and local elections will go. But given that this blog was told it would look "silly" on May 1st after predicting - amid 10 point poll leads for Boris Johnson and media consensus that Ken Livingstone was finished - that the Tories would in fact lose this forerunner to a general election based on substance against style, and seeking to help explain why a gulf exists between press and electorate, it is reproducing that post here today, as it was rightly challenged to do.
As to the wider picture across the country, a brief look at Open House shows that the media frenzy around Gordon Brown is more determined than ever. From a distant, overseas perspective, the escape route seems disconcertingly simple: as Ben Chu implies, the Prime Minister can't have it all. Now that not only conventional wisdom, but virtually the entire press pack across the board is hostile, why not choose simply to alienate one side of it rather than both, and pursue a brave, progressive agenda?
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