Ed Milliband: the lesser of two weevils

Ed has narrowly edged out big brother David for the leadership of the Labour party thanks to being the favourite of the state sector trades unions and to the second preference votes of no-hoper Ed Balls.

Celebrations at LibDem and Tory party headquarters. God knows neither Cameron nor Clegg inspire any great enthusiasm among their respective party faithful, but it's beginning to look as though they are not going to have to rally the troops for battle. Having been led to disaster by a chippy Scot, the Labour party has chosen to replace him with someone even more hostile to English history and culture.    

Milliband père, Adolphe, was born in Belgium of Jewish immigrants from Poland. Fleeing Belgium in turn ahead of the Nazi invasion of 1940, they came to Britain where Adolphe resolved the problem of sharing a name with the Nazi dictator by renaming himself Ralph. He was a hard-core international socialist all his life, bitterly hostile to the efforts to decontaminate the brand by the "New Left" that emerged in the 1950s.

In 1961 he married another Polish immigrant and they produced the brothers under reference in 1965 and 1969. After a mediocre academic career, much of the latter part spent abroad, Ralph died in 1994 and is buried in Highgate cemetery close to his hero Karl Marx.

Both sons went to school at Haverstock Comprehensive in Chalk Farm, north London, and both attended Corpus Christi college at Oxford, where both read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Apart from a failed attempt by Ed to become a TV journalist, neither of them has ever held a non-political job. David hitched his wagon to Blair's star and became an MP in 2001, Ed went with Brown and became an MP in 2005.   

The extreme shallowness of talent in the Labour party became embarrassingly apparent during its thirteen years in power, but all the same it is startling that the only two candidates with a chance of becoming the new party leader were the offspring of a man with the classic profile of a Comintern agent.

For obvious and entirely understandable historical reasons, Jews never feel they belong anywhere, and secular Jews like the Millibands are also cut off from their historic support system. Then there's the additional chippiness of young men who managed to claw their way from a comprehensive school to Oxford, where exposure to the members of the public school elite will have deepened their feeling of apartness.

Add the classic chip on the shoulder attitude of the younger brother, and we find that the Labour party has chosen a leader entirely defined by what he is against. Given his debt to the state sector unions and the fact that a majority of Labour MPs and party members did not want him as leader, I think it safe to predict that Ed Milliband's insecurities will make him not only a poor, but a disastrous leader.