Three Ministers to Write Articles for Sunday Papers as Miliband Fuse Lit - "Vote of Confidence" Passed

Events showed that Downing Street had miscalculated - for retreat came there none. True, Miliband spent a long time dancing on the head of a pin, insisting his challenge was actually to Conservative leader David Cameron. But the nearest he got to a loyalty pledge was when he declared: "Can Gordon lead us into the next election and win? Yes, I'm absolutely confident about that." Note that failure to say the leader elected unopposed just over a year ago "would" or "should" do so. And why - "Can Gordon ...?" - admit to any doubt at all amid a media frenzy predicting an autumn coup? On occasion Miliband appeared frustrated by the persistent questioning. After all, he protested (mildly), he had consistently said he would not stand against Brown last time and nobody had believed him. Few would believe him now, especially in the light of his reply to the simple question - "would the Labour Party be mad to ditch the prime minister before the general election?" As "a loyal member", the foreign secretary could only say "the Labour Party never does mad things." It was hardly beyond the Oxford-educated son of a Marxist intellectual to work out that the "loyal" answer required was that Labour would indeed be mad to do so. Nor did it require the fine legal skills of serial rebel MP Bob Marshall-Andrews to grasp that Miliband understood the "code" in setting out his stall by way of an article "saying one thing and meaning another".