this inert thing

Polly Toynbee offers a lesson in literary style:

Suddenly everything changed. The burst of optimism was so startling it dazzled those too long trapped deep in a dungeon. In that one moment it was all over for the old leader who had plunged them into these depths. Suddenly here was the chance of escape everyone was waiting for.

David Miliband stepped up as the man with a plan to take the fight to the Tories, the man to free the party from the bondage of disastrous leadership.

There you have it: textbook bathos. I found the boy’s intervention this week cryptic to the point of severe constipation. We know he wants it. We know he’s straining to get it out. But nothing emerges apart from the odd strangled squeak.

It’s difficult to see what’s being got at with the Miliband candidacy. There’s a sort of existential absurdity to it, as though the government have acknowledged that they screwed up big style, and to make up for it are giving us a shoe tree, or a random collection of beer mats. And we’re just standing there looking at this thing thrust into our hands, this inert thing, this Miliband.

In fact, it’s hard to conceive of any problem for which the answer is David Miliband, unless for some reason you happen to have a David Miliband shaped hole in a connecting wall, or some other significant flat surface.

Comments

[Dave Weeden]

I haven't read Toynbee for ages. Now I remember why. I do like the way she doesn't refer to that nasty thing, the "real world." Perhaps she missed the poll suggesting she was totally wrong and Miliband's recent record: David Miliband was today accused of letting himself be "duped by the US on a colossal scale" following the publication of new claims about the interrogation of terrorist suspects on UK territory.

Also: "...only a strong state can protect people in bad times." Worked for Adol.... WARNING: GODWIN VIOLATION IMMINENT.

[Philip Hunt]

LOL

[Obnoxio The Clown]

Masterful!