Philip Collins is having some fun in his Times column today. Entitled 'The last gasp of vintage social democracy' (£), its conclusion is that Ed Miliband's 'dream of a world run by the good fairies and the angels of our better nature' is doomed, and the Labour Party will eventually have to wake up to this fact. But along the way Collins, who has been to the Beatles museum 'in search of inspiration', tells us that he's been 'scuttling here, there and everywhere in Liverpool'; that at the Labour Party Conference Ed Miliband had given us 'a magical mystery tour through a nation that has been run by people with the wrong values for decades'; that he, Miliband, 'gets precious little help from the people around him'; that a 'presumption is growing that she [Yvette Cooper] will be Labour's next leader' and that '[d]elegates were vaguer on why, apart from the fact that there is nobody else and she's a woman'; and that '[t]he new intake [of Labour MPs from 2010] is getting better all the time'. You see the general idea - though I've missed a few.
Collins says: 'It is clear after this week that Mr Miliband is going to fight from the Left and he is going to lose from the Left.' Collins doesn't leave open the possibility of a long and winding road, or allow that tomorrow never knows. Nor, however, does he call Ed Miliband a 'Nowhere Man', as I have lately seen it put about. (Via.)
