If you have to say it...

The BBC is reporting that David Miliband’s rather lucklustre speech today may have been deliberately underwhelming in order to avoid looking like a leader in waiting.

Miliband was speaking with an aide after the speech ‘with staff who told him that it was being given six marks out of ten. He was heard to reply: "I couldn't have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment." ‘

The problem for Miliband, or perhaps that should be the problem for Brown, is that the Forgiegn Sec saw it as being necessary to deliberately put in a less than rousing performance. His aide’s reply was reportedly ‘No, you are right. You went as far as you could. That was what the party needed to hear.’

Miliband’s reasons for seeking to avoid doing a Heseltine was probably due to the old Tory big beast’s observation that ‘He who wields the knife never wears the crown’.