You wonder if “Hot Totty” was a ticking time bomb kept for instant detonation in case of an emergency. The beer didn’t suddenly appear in the Strangers’ Bar yesterday, people must have noticed it beforehand, but it only became the Twitter outrage du jour yesterday.

Until “Hot Tottygate”, the perpetually outraged on the Labour left were, well yes outraged, that David Miliband had popped up to lob a few grenades in his brother’s direction. Silly David doesn’t he realise that if you are on the right of the party you not permitted to make any comments  about the state of the party?

Besides we already have people to do that, they’re the ones who have the golden pass that allows them to tour the studios slagging of the last Labour govt and its most successful leader- some even have a book out, so they must be an expert on such things.

Tottygate distracted us from the continuing drama of the last Labour government, two people who we are told we are close, one is the leader, the other one isn’t and feels they should be.

I voted for David Miliband, I was impressed by the way I saw him interacting with younger people during the general election. I didn’t vote for his brother, I was unimpressed by the way he was playing to the gallery. Defining himself by what he was not, than what he was. (He did the same thing at conference and it brought him some instant gratification)

Such a tactic is always going to unravel when, in power, you start behaving differently to how your supporters believed you would behave. Criticism from backers of David Miliband is to be expected, but the uncomfortable truth is that some of the most vocal have been from those who backed him. (Although ironically if you are the general secretary of Unite your brickbats are applauded, however if your name is Tom Scholes-Fogg you are pilloried and insulted.)

So while I wait for Ed Miliband to show me and the nation that he is a PM in waiting (drums fingers),  I along with all the other ‘Bitter Blairites’ clutch a heart shaped photo frame of David to my bosom, blissfully dreaming of the day David receives his rightful coronation as the leader of the party.

Actually no.  Firstly the party wouldn’t stomach another coronation, we saw how badly that turned out last time. The party would not accept anyone being foisted upon us.  In the subsequent contest there will be other candidates and I imagine the party would choose someone who’s contribution to the party was deemed to be helpful rather than unhelpful.

Fraser Nelson in today’s Telegraph is right when commenting on ‘a crisis of leadership in the Labour Party’, he says,

It will not be resolved, though, by David Miliband. He has a habit of popping up whenever his brother gets into trouble, waving across the hall to MPs he hasn’t spoken to in months and conducting meetings in the House of Commons’ coffee bars, rather than his office. When Ed is doing better in the polls, David disappears back to the overseas lecture circuit. If he genuinely wanted to help, he’d join the shadow cabinet or resign from Parliament. Instead, he is posing as the man-who-may-run-again. As Sarah Palin found out, such status can certainly up your rates as a pundit, or corporate adviser. But Labour has no question to which David Miliband is the answer.

If there were to be a Labour leadership contest before the election I wouldn’t vote for David again. There is plenty of talent in the party and framing the debate around one Miliband or the other is like being told the vegetarian option is fish or chicken. Did I mention I was a vegetarian?