After You, Cecil

Other than encouraging the media to discover the word psychodrama and turn it into the new vuvuzela, the catastrophe that befell David Miliband is most notable for bringing to further light a distressing new phenomenon in British Politics: Buggins's Turn.

It began with Mrs. Brown's Little Boy who (for those who cannot remember a time when he was anything other than an object of hissing and derision) was pictured as a sad-faced child looking on in a bereft manner while that nasty Tony boy from next door hogged the Nintendo and crowed about his High Score. "Let Gordy have a turn," encouraged the Great British Public from the doorway while greasing up a cake tin in preparation for High Tea.

Well, the position of Prime Minister is not like your fifteen minutes of fame ... not everyone gets a go.

David Miliband (latest example of the Pod People generation into which our current Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister were hatched in a damp basement some years ago) seems to have thought that letting the sour Scot have a few more moments steering Mario repeatedly off the high cliff and into the rapacious man-eating vegetation below was somehow "the decent thing to do". I suppose with his foot almost upon the stirrup of power, David felt that exquisite pleasure that can be derived from patient expectation.

Quite possibly David was an able Foreign Secretary, although that would be difficult to establish during an era when international detente is actually being conducted by the Ministry of Defence. Like the hare, however, he rather overestimated his supposed lead in this particular race and was to be found napping as his steady reptilian sibling crawled past him and across the Finishing Line.

So now Labour MPs are affronted. Clutching small pieces of coloured paper with numbers written on them and shaking their fists like shoppers at a cheese counter, they turn their fury upon the vuvuzela Ed Miliband.

(The word vuvuzela in my last sentence can (and will) be replaced by ruthless if you are a BBC Political Correspondent.)

Amusing though it was to see David pipped at, and to, the post, for sheer callousness Ed falls well short of the standards of Stalin and Hitler. Unless he actually hangs his brother from a meat hook (something that he might be well-advised to consider) I think that his victory only qualifies for the description "business as usual".

Still, the whole sorry mess has made work for lip-readers who assure us that the comment passed by bad-loser David to Harriet Harman was: "Why are you clapping? You voted for it."

Rarely has the word it been more readily replacable by the word me.