Given Europe is supposed to be the land of straight bananas, it really was the most supreme folly for the continent to consider handing the role of first-ever foreign minister – a role whose primary remit may be going round the world insisting Europe’s bananas are not really that straight after all – to one young David Miliband.
This time last September, Miliband was busy being caught posing inopportunely with bananas – alongside talking about avoiding Heseltine moments – which cost him a great deal of political credit. Spool forward to the September of this year and the continent of straight bananas is thinking of handing a key job to that very same man whose career was very nearly fatally damaged by bananas. Those pictures from Labour party conference 2008 of Miliband posing with the banana, looking like a twit, would be brought out every time Miliband the foreign secretary opened his mouth on the EU and straight bananas.
But apart from the bananas, for the Insider the story of Miliband coming of age as the Banana Defender was a real humdinger of an ambush. One moment Insider is in Brussels, party to a story about one Tony Blair for EU president, and the next second the story was David. No 10 had pushed their candidate – the first time they’d ever pushed Blair for anything, except away from Downing Street – but it seemed they had simply played into the federalists’ hands. Frau Merkel and Monsieur Sarkozy were able to sit back and watch the reactive hostility from the rest of the 24 member states and then appear conciliatory by offering the candidates they had really wanted all along. But there was a consolation prize … Britain, if it wanted its Eurocrat stars, could have the other job. And so a bunch of unheard of foreign leaders decided they thought young David was head of the pack. Downing Street thought they quite liked this idea too and, again, broke another habit to champion another candidate they had rarely before championed (being supportive colleagues: they could even get used to this).
But though you might think this a new era of chilvary and camaraderie, the Insider can inform you that Miliband was pretty peeved. He thought he had said ‘no’ categorically when asked the question by journalists in Brussels, but by not ruling himself out he had given No 10 the ability to blow wind into the story. Before he knew it: It Was A Fact.
Poor David was miffed. He’d always been irritated by the fact he was seen to be constantly angling for Brown’s job – that was one job he’d never applied for and now here was a second. And he knew that it had come from Downing Street, determined to imply the foreign minister of the UK was more interested in the foreign affairs of Europe than the job of one day leading his own party.
Added to which, the Insider knows that if the phone lines for a leadership campaign haven’t been installed, then at the very least an aide has had a chat with Vodafone about the possibility of a job lot on some pay as you go contracts. Miliband is, of course – duh – more interested in becoming Labour leader than the Straightener of Bananas. He had recently hired a new special adviser from Peter Hain’s failed deputy leadership challenge. What this candidate lacks in proven success, they make up for in party contacts (close to Mandelson) and union contacts (Hain’s platform was admired by the unions). This, the Insider and the Insider’s friends from Inside there, thinks is big news. Signs that Mili is getting Maxi. Serious. Grown up. Making friends in the unions. Very important.
Though the slow maturity of David Miliband is a sight to be celebrated, if Blair’s bid does not rise from the dead, what it leaves behind is now looking more likely to be no UK representative in either of the two top new Europe jobs. Miliband may have come of age for the Labour party, but the first test of leadership many believed him to have passed may be bittersweet, coming at a time of an historic low in relationships between his party, and his country and Europe.
Wanted II: a wanted poster of bankers
Those on the left of the party have been agitating for a windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses as the Santa Claus of banks prepares to do his Christmas rounds and, all the indications are, dole out presents from a swag bag as large as £4bn. Little did they know their position was almost exactly the same as those inside No 10 and, also, the Treasury. Senior ministers had long been minded to execute such a windfall, but having had lawyers working on the legality of the proposals for quite some time, they thought there was too much red tape to make such a raid on individual pots likely. What they really wanted was a return to public life of Sir Fred the Shred and his very large and very public pension. ‘We were in a good shape when Sir Fred was on the scene,’ said one. ‘It gave the public a hate figure. If we lived in the wild west, we’d make up a most wanted poster of the 20 bankers who have caused this mess. But we don’t.’