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The former Labour leader gave one of the great speeches as he eviscerated Boris Johnson
Quite what possessed Boris Johnson to push aside the business secretary, Alok Sharma, at the last minute and open the debate on the government’s internal market bill is beyond me. Sharma had seemed the perfect choice – a man so dull he can put himself to sleep mid-sentence – and it wasn’t as if Johnson had anything to gain by speaking, given that he had already alienated many MPs in his own party by promising to break international law. Still, it did make for brilliant theatre watching him being totally eviscerated by Ed Miliband, who was himself standing in for a self-isolating Keir Starmer. There were so many highlights of Miliband’s speech, though my own favourite was when he realised that Johnson didn’t even understand the details of his own bill and offered to give way to let him try and explain. Boris remained firmly seated. Miliband’s speech was one of the very best I have heard in all the years I have been sketching parliament, and I couldn’t help thinking if he had spoken with that much passion and command of detail – instead of coming up with embarrassing stunts, such as the ill-fated Ed Stone – when he was leader of the Labour party, how different British politics might have been over the past five years. David Cameron might not have got the outright majority that not even his closest aides thought he would win at the 2015 election, the referendum might never have happened and we might never have ended up with a man so patently unsuited to high office as Boris is for No 10. Miliband’s speech had echoes of one of those sliding doors moments and I could feel myself falling into a rabbit warren of “what ifs?”. The older I get, though, the more I think history is often determined more by a series of accidents and cock-ups than the brilliant decisions of great men and women. Continue reading...