THE NEXT STAFFORD CRIPPS?

Funny as it is that someone once nicknamed “Brains” has joined an outfit called International Rescue – if you don’t get it, you didn’t watch Thunderbirds in the 1960s – it’s not really big news. David Miliband was never going to be part of his brother’s top team, simply because the former foreign secretary can never escape the fact that Ed beat him for the Labour leadership in 2010.

I wonder, though, whether David sees himself as Stafford Cripps. The onetime darling of the Labour left, expelled from Labour for advocating a popular front with the Communist Party, Cripps was sent to Moscow  by Winston Churchill in 1940 as ambassador. When he came back in 1942 – having brought Uncle Joe into the war according to popular myth – there was widespread support for Cripps to replace Churchill as PM. Of course, it didn't happen, but ...