Polly Toynbee
"A leader’s fall always has Shakespearean echoes, and the Miliband brothers’ drama has epic tragic elements. Today Ed stood at the cenotaph like a man at his own funeral. Decent, well-liked, his warm intelligence in private rarely showed itself in his awkward public appearances. He never learned those essential thespian skills for the television age: no use his friends comparing him to Attlee.
Davidites may gloat, but there’s no evidence he would have fared any better. He had different strengths and defects, another north London geek they’d soon have said was the wrong brother too. Unkind, today, to pick over the fallen leader’s failings – but here’s one lesson. He was often praised for his remarkable resilience in the face of torrential mockery and abuse. How could he take such personal humiliation?
The brutal answer is that he shouldn’t have done. Both he and Gordon Brown became millstones around their party’s neck and both should have stood down with grace in the year before the election. They could have earned genuine respect by handing over to anyone who might win crucial extra votes. At the hustings for the next leader, each candidate should pledge to step down if they, too, become a drag anchor, not an asset.
Every time Labour fails, the key issue is not their ejected MPs nor the great Westminster game, but the hardship imposed on the low-paid and hard-pressed. Every Tory government makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, draining public services dry.
Ignore Cameron’s urbane manner, he is driven by a deep anti-state ideology that will leave the welfare state and the public realm unrecognisable in five years. That is what Labour’s failure means."