Gang Aft Aglay

The question posed by the Book of Job can now be recast. No longer do we wonder what it is that mankind has done to earn the wrath of God. Instead we can boil it down to a single person.

What has David Miliband done to have deserved being so cruelly smitten by The Lord?

Daviband (for lo, thus is he known in nutshells) has been awaiting the moment of his brother's downfall with the patience of Richard of Gloucester putting in the monthly order for barrels of Malmsey. His Acme 100-ton weight was already nicely hanging from the merest of canine whiskers above his brother, and - in the event that this failed - his denizens (betoga'd and fully equipped with the contents of a Sabatier display case) were ready to greet Ediband on the steps of any convenient government building.

Yet Ediband - and not through any great display of competence on his own part - seems about to saunter past every lethal trap with the slightly distracted air of one standing upon a precipice to admire butterflies.

Cameron (the swinish toff) had gone and messed it all up on the metaphorical eve of the May council elections, falling so precipitously in the public esteem that the only precedent is said to be the pride & joy of Old Mother Brown. Since becoming as unpopular as Gordon logically necessitates the occurrence of a miracle, we can be sure that The Creator Himself has His thumb in the scale.

Not since Pharoah hardened his heart has a human been blighted more pitilessly than Daviband. His Lamentations must indeed constitute a Jeremiad ... not least given the Culture Secretary's looming presence at the end of the list of plagues.

Why do bad things happen to such good people?

Only a vile Manichaeist, surely, would suggest that Daviband's ultimate goal of leading Labour to the Promised Land has been scotched not by the malevolence of God but by the actions of t'other fellow.

Yet ... take a look at that photo and tell me that horns and a tail wouldn't complete the picture.

Alas Woolas

Generally speaking, a party in opposition has little opportunity to demonstrate its suicidal lack of political judgement.

Even, however, where little opportunity exists, Labour MPs will heed its gentle knock, which is perhaps why they are lining up to voice their support for disgraced former ballot-swindler Phil Woolas.

Phil, who has only appeared in these pages or the public imagination once previously - whilst being verbally spanked to universal delight and approbation by renowned Gurkhaphile Joanna Lumley - has again been the victim of public matriarchal chastisement. This time it was at the gloved hand of Harriet Harman, who told the Resident Intellectual that while a judicial review might reinstate the mendacious Phil, it could not exonerate him of the accusation that he knowingly lied in order to win an election, and he would therefore not be reinstated as a Labour MP under any circumstances.

By any sane standard, this should have seen an end to the story, but seemingly not so, and for reasons that may point to a deeper schism in Labour ranks.

Harman, bug-eyed sophomore grandee of the Labour rump, has also become its Cassandra: universally vilified despite doing the obviously right thing. Having presided over a leadership election process that delivered the "wrong" Miliband as leader, she was marked for death when the loser, David, visibly reproached her for applauding his brother at the Labour Party Conference.

If Harman, however, is regarded as an Ediband loyalist, then her antagonist is a doyenne of the Daviband insurgency. When Daviband needed someone to run his sleazy leadership campaign, he turned to Phil, who proceeded to bring to national politics the approach that had worked so well at Oldham East and Saddleworth. Although the wholly negative campaign, which depicted Ediband as a raving Marxist, has Phil's grubby fingerprints all over it, he actually nominated Diane Abbott, in what he termed "an act of pluralism" (a.k.a. "an attempt to dilute the left-wing vote").

The man whom the rest of us regard as a festering canker on British politics is, to the Davibandians, a poster-boy for political effectiveness.

Of course, this cheers Sordel as a rotting pear does the fruitfly. What could be better for the cynical onlooker than the hyenas of Millbank angrily contesting the last bone of political power?

It is worth acknowledging, however, that for Elwyn Watkins, the Liberal Democrat candidate mercilessly defamed by Woolas, the smear campaign was perhaps less entertaining. A sober account of the judgement in the Saddleworth News reminds us that the thrust of the lies was to imply that Watkins was pro-Islamist in a constituency with racial tensions, which goes rather beyond the rough-and-tumble of regular politics.

There is only one group of people in the world who will question the severity of Phil's punishment, and they all take tea with David Miliband.

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.