by Atul Hatwal
The king over the water is an alluring concept. Over the water the grass is greener. Hopes and aspirations are nurtured, castles built in the air.
Rarely does the inconvenience of reality intrude on the floating possibility or what might be, if only the king could return.
Followers of faraway kings tend to assume away questions on what their leader would actually do with power and fixate on removing the undeserving incumbent.
For all those years in the early 2000s, legions of Brownites (back in the days when such a grouping existed) didn’t give a second thought to tricky details like an alternative policy programme. All would be fine. Plans were bound to have been made by pointy headed wonks in backrooms somewhere. What mattered most was removing Blair. That was the business of politics.
And so the wheel turns and now its bonnie prince Davy who awaits with a promise of a better tomorrow.
The reaction across the media to David Miliband’s article in the New Statesman is defined by lost leader syndrome. All the reporting has been entirely through the prism of a leadership challenge, nothing on the substance of what he’s saying.
