Brains
Banana boy outward bound
David Miliband unable to rescue his party goes to America
The banana and the man
Back in the summer of 2008 we wrote this at the time David Miliband was being heavily promoted by his party and sympathetic press alike. Generally speaking the message was the man is a genius. Well how wrong can you be? And now years later he's off to America. Fraser Nelson says of the new job
then we find out that David Miliband is off to run the real-life International Rescue in New York. Life is mirroring art, or at least British politics is mirroring Thunderbirds.
In the Gerry Anderson ITV puppet show the character, Brains, that Miliband was compared to was horribly nerdy. He was a plodding techno who acted as a foil to the more dashing pilots and other characters.
As Foreign Secretary Miliband frequently made gaffes that showed him up as awkward and unthinking. His social skills let him down at home too. The Labour party demands a particular brand of behaviour from its Ministers. A complex web of forces within the party requires constant attention if the Minister is to survive. Miliband showed himself incapable of dealing with this, it was too subtle for him. Despite the backing of Tony Blair he never made it to the top of his party.
