When Tony Blair ran for leader of the Labour party he stood on a platform of a statutory minimum wage, a major increase in trade union rights by signing the Social Chapter, curbs on private education and private health, full-hearted engagement in Europe, and other policies that at the time were anathema to the commentators of the eurosceptic right who then as now control most of our political comment columns.

Because Labour in office under Blair turned out to be a cautious Swedish or Willy Brandt style market-friendly, free trade, Atlantacist social democratic government it is to easy to forget that Blair’s policies 15 years ago ran contrary to the conventional wisdom of the commentariat.

Today Sir Simon Jenkins in the Guardian and Daniel Finkelstein in the Times are making the same mistake as, eh, Mr Simon Jenkins and Daniel Finkelstein of the mid 1990s.

Both are complaining that David Miliband is dangerously leftwing and stuck in a 1945 rut. In fact, the nationalisation of banks happened in 2008 not 1945 with the full approval of the City establishment who know how to make the state work for their interests in a way workers and unions can only dream of.

Miliband along with his brother, Ed, have raised a number of questions about policy that were ruthlessly shut out in the last years of Labour. The Independent devotes two pages today to astonishing pay rises private sector bosses have awarded themselves as the nation face a generalised reduction of take-home pay and pensions.

Our CEOs or top BBC brass (and most editors let it be whispered) are scorning George Osborne’s view that “We are all in this together.” We are. They are not, nor are the 16 or is it 18 millionaires in the cabinet.

So if David Miliband talks about the problem of high pay he is only reflecting the moral outrage across vast swathes of the population that a new paradigm of fairness is needed.

When David Cameron was elected as Tory leader in 2005 he appealed to his activists across the range from anti-EU posturing to talking up defence. In power Cameron is more centrist and wise to be so but he would never been elected in 2005 on the politics and policies he espouses today.

The Labour leadership contenders are no different. First get yourself elected is an ancient rule of politics the commentariat never grasp. Once the new leader is in place the real politics will start as the politeness of the summer hustings is replaced by the ruthlessness of shadow cabinet elections.

Then a real choice of policy and priorities will be needed. That will be the test as to whether Labour opts for the rhetoric of opposition as in the 1950s or the 1980s or confronts the realities of forging a replacement government, alone or in coalition.

Labour councillors who have to manage cuts and trade union leaders ditto are in a different place from the Scargills or Derek Hattons of the1980s. The new generation of extraordinarily able Labour MPs also want power, not the transient pleasure of the Today or Newsnight interview ranting against the ConDem cuts when all know that austerity was inevitable after the OECD borrowed its way out of the 2008 banking crisis.

I hope David Miliband wins because he has the biggest intellectual and policy grasp of what went wrong and what needs to be done.

Asking if he is a 1990s style Blairite or Ed Balls is a 1990s style Brownite is pointless. Life, politics and Britain have moved on. If only the commentariat could.

Photo: ShiroNekoEuro